Oracle, NetApp Drop ZFS Patent Suit 66
An anonymous reader writes "It seems Oracle and NetApp have kissed and made up over the ZFS patent lawsuit. Before Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, NetApp sued Sun claiming ZFS infringed on its patents. Sun later sued NetApp back. From today, all is forgotten and Oracle and NetApp are friends. NetApp CEO Tom Georgens even said the two companies have shared a 'common vision' focused on providing solutions that reduce IT cost and complexity. Both companies now want collaboration between them to continue."
Here's Hoping (Score:1, Interesting)
While that's nice for NetApp, I'm still hoping that they decide to change or dual license ZFS to be GPL compatible. Of course, I don't actually expect them to do that, but the sentence in the summary saying they have "a 'common vision' focused on providing solutions that reduce IT cost and complexity", almost made me laugh. You can say many good things about Oracle, but low cost isn't really their strong point. And if they really cared about reducing IT complexity/cost they could make sure that ZFS becomes standard that anyone can use. If they did that I would bet that ZFS would rapidly grow to become the standard enterprise file system. Oh well, I can dream, can't I?
Why, oh why do I get the feeling (Score:3, Interesting)
that NetApps (and everybody else) are a little more scared of their new Oracle overlords than of geeky, hunky-dory Sun?
Prediction: Google and Oracle are going to patch things up like nothing ever happened. You heard it here.
Re:I am having a hard time (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably, Larry just got around to noticing that NetApp had patent-trolled Oracle's new acquisition and he had Oracle's lawyers send NetApp an offer they couldn't refuse: drop your suit and we'll drop our counterclaims, otherwise we'll bring Oracle's entire IP portfolio into play and totally horse fuck you.
Let's not all lose sight of the fact that two big companies coming to an agreement, whether explicitly or implicitly, not to sue each other over patents does not help small companies, individuals, or Free Software/Open Source.
Small companies, individuals, and Free Software/Open Source in general does not have a large enough patent chest to get the same kind of, "I won't sue you for patent infringement, if you don't sue me for patent infringement," kind of a deal.