Sun CEO Says NetApp Lied in Fear of Open Source

Lucas123 writes "In reaction to NetApp's patent infringement lawsuit against Sun, CEO Jonathan Schwartz today said in his blog that NetApp basically lied in its legal filing when it said Sun asked them for licensing fees for use of their ZFS file system technology. In a separate statement, Sun said NetApp's lawsuit is about fear over open-source ZFS technology as a competitive threat. 'The rise of the open-source community cannot be stifled by proprietary vendors. I guess not everyone's learned that lesson'."

Comments

Suits and countersuits

[CodeShark]

All based on what? Patents on software algorithms, that brainchild of the '90's when some legal geniuses decided that "how you do business" is as patentable as a device, which was not the intent of the Founding Fathers of the good ole' US of A.

Well, like my own position on buying stuff from Amazon or Disney (which means that at present I have spent $0 on them in the last ten years), I think I can successfully live without tech from Sun OR NetApp -- until the current software patent madness comes to an end -- or at least the injunction induced extortion rackets die down.

Which is where Open Source and GPL'd software really starts to make sense, don't you think?

This suit is more pathetic than funny

[Morgaine]

NetApp and Sun should jointly back down and call it quits. And fire all their lawyers, or at least give them something useful to do like bring in the coffee.

When a company resorts to legal crap, it's because they're no longer viable on technical merit. And both Sun and NetApp *are* still good technically, so this argument is pointless.

Seriously, fire the lawyers on both your staffs who suggested to litigate, as they are bringing your companies down. And no, I don't care who started it, since you're both at it now.

And then go back to doing good things.

Re:Just another SCO wanabe?

[swordgeek]

"Sun is not historically a friend of Open Source."

Bollocks! Sun has been pushing open source and (far more important) open standards since before the religion was formed and the term was capitalised.

Ever hear of...

NFS
NIS
NIS+

Looking at a relatively short-term, recent, and (eventually) harmless contract with The Enemy and calling them 'not historically a friend of Open Source' is just more whining.

Re:See what Dave Hitz has to say

[jedidiah]

Stringing together something with bubblegum and duct tape is easy. Making that bubblegum and duct tape appear like a seamless storage cluster is another matter. This is what people (still) pay netapp for.

Re:not quite

[mhall119]

I hope somebody mods your post "funny", because I don't think you'll get "insightful".

The FSF defines what free software is because they came up with the term. With very few exceptions, software that isn't GPL compatible also isn't free software, although it may be open source software. The FSF maintains a list of GPL incompatible licenses that it considers "free software", CDDL is on that list.

Sun chose the ZFS license deliberately to be incompatible with the Linux kernel and to hurt Linux. Sun has always preferred the CDDL, it has nothing to do with trying to be incompatible with the Linux kernel. OpenSolaris is CDDL, so it would only make sense for it's flag-ship file system to be CDDL as well.

Sun has also released Java under a GPL license but is cleverly retaining control of the development process, mostly because they didn't like all the other free and open source Java implementations that were emerging and were hoping to put a stop to them that way and retain control. How do you maintain control of the development of a GPL'd work? If Sun is in such control, why is RedHat doing the most OpenJDK development at the moment? Why would Sun open-source their TCK if they wanted to stop the development of open source implementations not under their control? Do you have any idea what is going on in the open source Java community, or are you just talking out your ass?

EMC says: Bye-Bye NetApp

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read both Jonathan Schwartz's and David Hick's blogs, and yes, they both are trying to spin it their way, as would be expected.

However keep in mind that NetApp started this. NetApp saying that Sun started this is incorrect, because that would be equating StorageTek with Sun. And if this were purely a StorageTek issue, then ZFS wouldn't be involved.

So what really happened is NetApp is being damaged or fears being damaged from open source storage platforms, ZFS in particular, and they have decided to sue Sun. NetApp is rightly very concerned about a big backlash from bringing this kind of suit, so they are trying to confuse the issue as much as possible by saying that the fight goes back all the way to StorageTek.

And I really believe Jonathan when he says in his blog that he was blind sided by NetApp on this. David Hitz is trying to paint a picture that Sun wouldn't return the NetApp lawyer's calls so NetApp had no recourse but to get their attention by sueing them. If Dave Hitz really wanted to get some traction on this with Sun, why didn't he call Jonathan himself. Had he done so, David Hitz would have said so in his blog.

Once the community thinks about this, and realizes that if NetApp prevails, and kills ZFS, then the prospects for improvements in open-source file system technology will be greatly set back. I would expect an army of open source volunteers scrutinizing all of NetApp's patent claims, and trying to find prior art. Also a large number of open-source organization Amicus Curiae briefs, should this thing progress.

I just don't think Sun is stupid enough to steal someone else's IP if they believe they didn't believe they had a reasonable chance of defending their actions in court. Time will tell though....

Meanwhile, EMC must be delighted at the prospect of NetApp losing this thing. Bye-bye NetApp. But, they're probably furious though at NetApp for validating the concept that ZFS running on a commodity platform is a competitive storage platform. Because in the long run, EMC's storage business is just as much at risk as is NetApp's.