NetApp Threatens Sellers of Appliances Running ZFS

eldavojohn writes "ZFS is licensed under the CDDL and is considered to be open source, but NetApp is sending threatening legal letters to startups who look to offer ZFS on NAS appliances. This assault on Coraid has a few people worried about the future of ZFS as NetApp rears its ugly head yet again. The CEO of Coraid replied to NetApp's demands, saying, 'We made the decision to suspend shipment after receiving a legal threat letter from NetApp Inc., suggesting that the open-source ZFS file system planned for inclusion with our EtherDrive Z-Series infringes NetApp patents.' Will NetApp effectively destroy any future ZFS might have enjoyed?"

Comments

Re:Boycott

[bill_kress]

Boycotts don't work when the percentage of the "Purchasing" population that cares significantly outweighs the percentage that cares. No matter how hard you protest, you will never get to every idiot out there.

I think it would be interesting to create a 401K/IRA fund where tech workers can invest into the fund, the fund buys up significant percentage of the stock in a given company, changes it's policies and then backs down slowly to attack another company.

As a group, the investors could target specific problem companies to go after and vote for policies they want implemented. If their policies are workable, they may even increase the rate of growth of their investments.

In the same way, employees paid bonuses in stock could pull their stock to enable at least partial control over the company they work for (although it is pretty rare for companies to hand out voting stock to employees, probably for just this reason).

Re:Boycott

[jeffasselin]

About the only organisation that never abused any of those is probably the Catholic Church. Unfortunately they support pedophiles, sexual abusers, and asking for favors from invisible friends in the sky.