jeffr_tech ([info]jeffr_tech) wrote,
@ 2007-09-05 13:20:00
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http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/

Netapp is suing sun for what seems to be blatant patent infringement in ZFS. WAFL, Netapp's filesystem uses a novel method for consistency using checkpoints that sun directly copied. Allegedly, this was instigated by sun trying to collect royalties on other patents. If this is true, I'm glad it's biting them now. You can't position yourself as an open and friendly player and then start suing companies to generate revenue. Especially when your hands are dirty too.

I was actually a little surprised that sun decided to use WAFL's COW check-pointing system to implement ZFS. It's a great idea but requires a lot of extra metadata writes compared to a traditional filesystem. I believe netapp uses a nvram to store the block allocation bitmaps to eliminate the extra cost of the io associated with this scheme. However, sun is using it on normal disks so they're just sucking up the extra IOs.

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[info]evan
2007-09-05 10:22 pm UTC (link)
(Here's the permalink, because when he posts again your link won't make sense.)

This other post of his about how the patent system works is incredibly depressing.

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[info]nealsid
2007-09-05 10:56 pm UTC (link)
That second link is interesting and explains a lot - it is unlikely that they didn't know about ZFS's infringement until recently. But they could never go after Sun without being forced into the cross-licensing shenanigans! Which is what happened anyway, unfortunately

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[info]cnst
2007-09-06 11:08 pm UTC (link)
> http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/2007/06/how_the_patent_.html

Nothing new here, all of this, but in much detail, was already presented long ago by RMS in his speech titled "The Dangers of Software Patents".

For example, here is a link to his presentation on May 2005 at Calgary Unix Users' Group:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6390784544771380326&q=cuug

The video is lengthy, but it's worth a watch. ;)

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[info]angryskul
2007-09-05 10:40 pm UTC (link)
One idea I had to mitigate costs was to dedicate a box with a UPS to be the "nvram box" so that in a cluster of 20 boxes, you use just one box as a logging/stable storage box.

Other ideas include using a quorum of your neighbors.

One UPS + one machine is a lot cheaper than nvram for all.

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