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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'."
Probably the only way to end the madness of patents is to push for patentability of legal arguments and contractual clauses - the former are quite closely analogous to business methods and the latter to software. Lawyers might start singing a different tune if they have to pay Beelzebub, Belial and Azazel USD20000 each time they write a contract that uses the subjunctive or something like that.
Are you suggesting that non-GPL software isn't free? Given the nature of the GPL and it's relative restrictive nature on derivative work, I would venture to say that it is less Free than the CDDL.
Mr. Morton of Linux Kernel fame has in terms advocated that Sun should shoot the dog that is OpenSolaris and that the company should roll over and adopt Linux as its own. And of course the obvious remark that DTrace and ZFS cannot be integrated with the Linux Kernel because both projects are licensed in an incompatible fashion. It strikes me that perhaps the Linux Kernel is licensed in such a fashion that it cannot adopt said projects? After all, how can Sun be serious about Free software unless it adopts Linux. printf("World Domination!\n");
I argue that OpenSolaris is an exciting project that has opened up innovation and has greatly contributed back to the main Solaris branch in positive ways. I don't see Sun dropping this effort anytime soon. The fact that I as a customer have a more informal way of interfacing with Sun's engineers and designers is a great improvement. I have Linux to thank for this, as it challenged Sun to step up to the plate. But that doesn't mean that Sun has to be the big bad company forever and ever. I sense this animosity in the Linux community of late and I think it's unwarranted. It's some sort of elitism that makes it so that Sun's effort is in jest, or at least less worthy. In summary, it has done little for me, but serve as a turn off for Linux.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
By the way when was Java fully Open Sourced? Solaris is only headed that way because Sun sees the end of their proprietary money model, not because of some great love for Open Source.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Looks like IDG (ComputerWorld, ITWorld, NetworkWorld...) is really hitting Slashdot HARD, either that or they have a deal with Slashdot. Here's a partial list of the shills that regularly show up and have almost 100% article acceptance rates: Lucas123
coondoggie
inkslinger77
narramissic
jcatcw
Looks like they spread out the work over a few shill user accounts, which is to be expected. If it's all OK and everything with the corporate ownership of Slashdot to be played by IDG, I suppose that's their business, but one would hope that they are actually getting PAID for being part of IDG's advertising program. And of course there should be disclosure so that visitors to Slashdot realize they are reading advertisements and not an article submitted by a "real" user...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
What we appear to know from the opposing CEO, that Sun's CEO doesn't respond to here, is that both ZFS and NetApps' file system use a structure that NetApps has filed a patent on. So is the patent valid? Does Sun infringe? Does Sun in turn - as the NetApps CEO hints - hold patents that NetApps wants to this threat as leverage to cross-license? Ah, but Sun's CEO says Sun is happy to license the Sun patents NetApps wants - just doesn't want to sell them outright. So is this an attempt to force Sun to sell those outright in order to avoid the mess of fighting NetApps' patent claim?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
First, I don't have anything approaching a 100% acceptance rate. The vast majority of my submissions are rejected, but you'd have to take the time to look at my profile to know what I've submitted. Second, I submit stories from lots of different news sites. Because I edit for Computerworld (and I'm open about my association what that 40-year-old pub -- it's my homepage) doesn't make me some sort of evil shill. I'm proud of my magazine and the reporters here. Why shouldn't I post what I consider the best and most appropriate stories around the web to be read? Who cares where a story comes from if it's good? I have to say, Slashdot is the most democratic news site around. Acceptance is totally based on whether the story is voted up by Slashdot readers through Firehose, unlike a site like Digg.com, which is based on how large a social network you create in order to garner votes.
The reality is NetApp is in trouble. Lets face it, 2TB of storage yesterday was big bucks. Today, it is 4 Seagate drives at Best Buy and fit in one PC. Cluster 4 dual AMD x2's together on 1000GB interconnects and it has never been cheaper to spin 8TB into your own appliance. Do it with Linux or Solaris. Or like NetApps, BSD.
Same thing happened with SCO. Shrinking user base from competition and poor product maintenance. Too much money for Gocci shoes and not enough R&D. NetApp, good-bye.
A lot of "free software" isn't GPL-compatible,
You're confusing "free software" and "open source software". 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.
However, the problem with ZFS is more specific: Sun chose the ZFS license deliberately to be incompatible with the Linux kernel and to hurt Linux. In fact, Sun may even license ZFS under the Linux-incompatible GPLv3 license. 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.
Sun is skillfully using free software and open source in an attempt to maintain proprietary control. I don't think it will work out in the long run, and I don't think ZFS matters anyway, but arguing, like many people do, about "how free" a piece of software is is useless in isolation.