Re: ARC patent

> I think there is zero probability of being sued by IBM in the near
> future. They would instantly destroy the credibility and good
> relationships they've worked so hard to build up with the entire
> open source community.
>
> However, I don't want to be beholden to IBM indefinitely --- in five
> years their corporate strategy might change. I think that a reasonable
> response to this is to plan to get rid of ARC, or at least modify the
> code enough to avoid the patent, in time for 8.1. (It's entirely likely
> that that will happen before the patent issues, anyway.)
>

If PostgreSQL 8.0 is released with ARC, and then PostgreSQL 8.1 is
released without ARC, and then the patent is granted to IBM, would
everyone be fine if they just all switched to 8.1 at that time? Or would
we have some kind of retroactive problem? Would people that are still
using 8.0 in production, but not distributing it, have difficulty?

Regards,
Jeff