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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'."
In response to Schwartz, Netapp CEO Dan Warmenhoven declared that he was not in fact lying. Rather, Schwartz was the one lying, indicating further that Schwartz's pants were on fire. Schwartz angrily denied this with a fuming "nuh uh!" and indicated Warmenhoven was a chicken. Warmenhoven then retorted by comparing himself to rubber and Mr. Schwartz to glue.
Stay tuned for the next exciting installment, where Schwartz will compare his father's fighting ability and overall physical prowess with that of Warmenhoven's father.
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?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Typical urban legend. Propagated by a Slashdot troll no less. With Sun pushing up and coming Java projects like Looking Glass, Darkstar, Glassfish, and many others, one would think that people would have figured it out by now. But apparently not.
The real story is that after the introduction of Java, Sun started creating new Solaris components in Java. Unfortunately, they found out at the time that Java wasn't mature enough for what they were doing. So a ban was supposedly implemented on any new Solaris components being written in Java. Which (if the story is even true in the first place) was probably a wise move. I don't know if anyone remembers CDE around here, but having to launch Java just to change the volume was not a good design decision. Sun needed to either make the entire Desktop in Java (in which case most of the performance problems would disappear and the memory hit would be marginalized) or go back to using native components for all the widgets. The idea of a hybrid Desktop just wasn't going to cut it.
As it happens, Sun chose to assist the GNOME project and made that their primary desktop. Then they rebranded it as the "Java Desktop System" in one of the most confusing brand changes in history. And that is where we sit today.
<paul-harvey>And now you know... the rest of the story. Good day!</paul-harvey>
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
According to the wiki entry on ZFS, its under the CDDL. CDDL is based on the Mozilla Public License and on the CDDL wiki is states, "Files licensed under the CDDL can be combined with files licensed under other licenses, whether open source or proprietary. The Free Software Foundation considers it a free license incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL). In fact, this is too generalized. Some restrictions in the GPL prevent GPLd code to appear inside CDDLd projects." So it sounds like the CDDL can go into GPLd projects, but not the other way around. But again, these are wiki entries, take them with a grain of salt.
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Have a look at http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/2007/09/litigoperatio n-.html before jumping into any conclusions.
So it's incompatible with the GPL, not really 'free software'?
GPL-compatibility is not a requirement for free software.
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
Here is an interesting link...
http://www.netapp.com/go/Sun%20Lawyer%20Email.pdf
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.
ZFS is licensed under Sun's CDDL license, which is derived from the Mozilla Public License and is OSI approved, but is not GPL-compatible. A lot of "free software" isn't GPL-compatible, but that doesn't make it any less free. A user-space port has been done using FUSE, and ZFS is available on the BSD's.
http://www.mhall119.com
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.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
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.
"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.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
http://www.mhall119.com
"Sun picked the CDDL because it's incompatible with the Linux kernel license (something that the Linux kernel developers simply cannot change)."
_ faq/
That's borderline cynical to say. You assume with this statement that Sun deliberately picked a license to be incompatible with the GPL, for the purpose of disallowing works published under it to be integrated with the Linux Kernel tarball:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/licensing
If you wanted a copyleft license, why didn't you just use the GPL or LGPL?
We needed an open source license that allowed files released under the license to be linked with files released under other licenses. While a license like LGPL would allow this for dynamically-linked code, we also needed to be able to release software that statically links source files available under different licenses. In addition, we wanted to allow others to add externsions to OpenSolaris with different license terms. This was only possible under a license like the MPL; however, we could not use the MPL because it is not a "template" license allowing reuse by others. Consequently, we crafted a variant of the MPL, taking the opportunity to make it a template license as a step towards reducing license proliferation for others finding themselves in a similar position.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
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.