This cracks me up. NetApp helped themselves to a bunch of Auspex patents years ago, and quickly purchased them once Auspex went under so no one else could sue them for patent infringement. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
----- Original Message ---- From: Tim McCarthy tmacmd@gmail.com To: Maxwell Reid max.reid@saikonetworks.com; owner-toasters@mathworks.com; Glenn Dekhayser gdekhayser@voyantinc.com; NetApp Toasters List toasters@mathworks.com Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 6:09:26 PM Subject: Re: The End of All Filers?
Last I heard years ago...
Portions of ONTAP we're borrowed from FreeBSD (like TCP). A number of years ago, all that borrowed code had been re-written, so much so that it could no longer be FreeBSD fragments.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
-----Original Message----- From: "Maxwell Reid" max.reid@saikonetworks.com
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:52:14 To:"'Glenn Dekhayser'" gdekhayser@voyantinc.com, toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: The End of All Filers?
FYI, FreeBSD is used primarily by GX based systems.
Classic ONTAP is proprietary, with some stuff borrowed from NetBSD (probably for portability across different processor architectures.)
Regards, Max
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Glenn Dekhayser Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 5:20 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: The End of All Filers?
OK, here's what bugs me about Schwartz's comments.
He brings up FreeBSD, and Netapp's 'use' of this open-sourced OS on which Ontap is 'based' - let's just put the validity of that statement away for the time being because we'll start a whole fork of the conversation just on THAT (yeah, and Vista is based on MS-DOS 1).
He (jonathan) vilifies Netapp as hypocritical for using the open-sourced OS, yet trying to kill poor little open-sourced ZFS, insinuating that Netapp will approve of open-source when it suits them and fight it when it becomes inconvenient.
Here's the thing- BSD VOLUNTARILY open-sourced FreeBSD. It was THEIR CHOICE because THEY OWNED IT. Netapp didn't take SCO Unix (if they 'took' anything at all) and said "we'll use that, I found the code on Gopher" (well, it WAS a long time ago.).
Netapp did not voluntarily release WAFL nor would one expect them to. For Sun to open-source IP that it did not own is NOT LEGAL OR CORRECT, assuming that Netapp's patents hold up to the prior art claims (and I think they will, since ZFS and its underpinnings came later).
Someone with a cynical view could concoct a few scenarios in which Sun DELIBERATELY open-sourced ZFS because perhaps they KNEW they would get crucified in a patent battle, and by open-sourcing it, they let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. They do say that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission, right? Tagging Netapp with an 'anti-open-source' label gains an instant fan-base of many Linux freaks (I say 'freaks' affectionately as I am one), and comes with some real possible economic pain for Netapp, so maybe there was a mis-calculation that netapp would just let it be. A mis-calculation, by the way, that could have severe ramifications on Mr. Schwartz's employment I'm sure. The tone of jonathan's blog does wreak a bit of mad desperation, doesn't it?
Well enough of that. I'm going out with netapp tonight in san Francisco! :-)
Glenn (the other one)
Subject: RE: The End of All Filers?
Glenn wrote:
Let me see if I got this straight: ZFS copied the snapshot technologies, and general way that
WAFL works,
which is patented by NetApp. Then released it to the open source community.
You got that about right.
What did I miss?
StorageTek's Iceberg product was where a lot of the concepts came from originally.
It's a matter of the judge & jury's preference and the questions that are put before them - should you be able to implement a technology solution concept with your code if you use some of the same algorithms? Did Sun actually see the source code and steal it? Who is a llowed to copy who? Who owns the original patents?
Looks like quite a circular argument to me.
It'll be interesting to see who wins.
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