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Here is a surprising article about how Oracle has made open source
projects, like PostgreSQL, safe from claims of infringing Oracle
patents:

http://www.cbronline.com/article_new...4-CEA7E2D2B954. Oracle, like IBM, Sony, RedHat, and Novell, is now a member of

Oracle, like IBM, Sony, RedHat, and Novell, is now a member of the Open
Invention Network, whose members all offer patent indemnification.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Bruce,

> Oracle, like IBM, Sony, RedHat, and Novell, is now a member of the Open
> Invention Network, whose members all offer patent indemnification.

Hey! We could go back to using ARC!

;-)

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

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Bruce,

This is big news - has anyone checked to see if the agreement for the OIN is
in perpetuity? Or is their agreement to not pursue patents only for as long
as they are members?

- Luke


On 3/30/07 10:43 AM, "Bruce Momjian" <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:

> Here is a surprising article about how Oracle has made open source
> projects, like PostgreSQL, safe from claims of infringing Oracle
> patents:
>
> http://www.cbronline.com/article_new...D-8564-CEA7E2D
> 2B954. Oracle, like IBM, Sony, RedHat, and Novell, is now a member of
>
> Oracle, like IBM, Sony, RedHat, and Novell, is now a member of the Open
> Invention Network, whose members all offer patent indemnification.



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Luke Lonergan wrote:
> Bruce,
>
> This is big news - has anyone checked to see if the agreement for the OIN is
> in perpetuity? Or is their agreement to not pursue patents only for as long
> as they are members?
>
>
I'm sure they would be estopped from enforcing a patent against someone
who relied on the assurance while they were a member, so I doubt this
distinction matters. Otherwise it becomes worthless.

cheers

andrew

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Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> Luke Lonergan wrote:
>> Bruce,
>>
>> This is big news - has anyone checked to see if the agreement for the
>> OIN is
>> in perpetuity? Or is their agreement to not pursue patents only for
>> as long
>> as they are members?
>>
>>
> I'm sure they would be estopped from enforcing a patent against someone
> who relied on the assurance while they were a member, so I doubt this
> distinction matters. Otherwise it becomes worthless.

Either way, we should consider, not considering that this is actually
news. Let us not be enticed by the opportunity that likely has strings
attached.

Joshua D. Drake

>
> cheers
>
> andrew
>
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>


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Luke Lonergan wrote:
> Bruce,
>
> This is big news - has anyone checked to see if the agreement for the OIN is
> in perpetuity? Or is their agreement to not pursue patents only for as long
> as they are members?

I would be worried if I were you (or Joshua Drake for that matter): does
the agreement apply to commercial companies deriving products from
PostgreSQL as well? Note that in the case of most projects, which are
licensed under the GNU GPL, this is not an issue, because any derivative
must also be GNU GPL.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

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Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Luke Lonergan wrote:
>> Bruce,
>>
>> This is big news - has anyone checked to see if the agreement for the OIN is
>> in perpetuity? Or is their agreement to not pursue patents only for as long
>> as they are members?
>
> I would be worried if I were you (or Joshua Drake for that matter): does
> the agreement apply to commercial companies deriving products from
> PostgreSQL as well? Note that in the case of most projects, which are
> licensed under the GNU GPL, this is not an issue, because any derivative
> must also be GNU GPL.

If Oracle truly (or IBM etc..) really was interested in "Protecting
Linux" or other FOSS software, they would put the patent in the public
domain.

The PostgreSQL project should not give any credence to these
announcements and should avoid all patent issues possible.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake



--

=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
http://www.commandprompt.com/

Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/


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"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
> If Oracle truly (or IBM etc..) really was interested in "Protecting
> Linux" or other FOSS software, they would put the patent in the public
> domain.

No, you miss the point of OIN. Doing the above might make FOSS
developers free from the particular patent, but it would do nothing
to defend against the vast sea of other patents out there.

The idea of OIN is to have a large patent pool that can be
counter-asserted against anyone who doesn't want to play nice.
Mutual assured destruction in the patent sphere, if you will.

According to the cited article, Oracle hasn't donated any of their
patents to the pool (if they had, that *would* be impressive) but
they have cross-licensed their patents with those held by OIN,
ie, they've promised to play nice.

I tend to agree that we shouldn't trust Oracle further than we can
throw them, so I'm not about to go out and start looking for Oracle
patents we could use, but this does seem to remove the threat of
being blindsided from that quarter. Now we just have to worry about
Microsoft ...

regards, tom lane

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Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com> writes:
> I would be worried if I were you (or Joshua Drake for that matter): does
> the agreement apply to commercial companies deriving products from
> PostgreSQL as well?

Interesting point. It's doubtless unwise to take this press release as
being an accurate guide to the terms of the license, but what it says
is

: According to the terms of the OIN license, the components covered by
: the agreement include not only the Linux kernel and associated GNU
: applications, but also other open source projects included in Linux
: distributions.

which to me says you're covered as long as your code is commonly
included in Linux distributions. Hence, proprietary derivatives
would *not* be covered. I'd guess that Oracle would have a hard
time suing for any patent violation embedded in the freely
distributed Postgres code, but any technique appearing only in
the proprietary extension would still be at risk.

IANAL, etc. I assume that EDB and Greenplum will have their
lawyers scrutinizing this deal on Monday morning ;-) ... I'd
be interested to hear what the experts' conclusion is.

regards, tom lane

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On Sun, April 1, 2007 01:32, Tom Lane wrote:

> The idea of OIN is to have a large patent pool that can be
> counter-asserted against anyone who doesn't want to play nice.
> Mutual assured destruction in the patent sphere, if you will.

And from the participants' point of view, I suppose the big attraction
must be that they do away with a threat to their patents. If you have a
patent that matches what some open project (not worth suing) has been
doing for the past few years, then anyone else you might want to sue about
the patent could point to that project and say "if you have a valid
patent, why didn't you say something when they infringed it?"


Jeroen



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