Re: How can we submit code patches that implement our (pending) patents?

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 11:38:47AM -0500, Nico Williams wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 11:55:01AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 11:40:41AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 08:19:35AM -0700, Andres Freund wrote:
> > > > I'm fairly sure that I'm right. But my point isn't that we should "trust
> > > > Andres implicitly ™" (although that's obviously not a bad starting point
> > > > ;)). But rather, given that that is a reasonable assumption that such
> > > > agreements are legally possible, we can decide whether we want to take
> > > > advantage of such terms *assuming they are legally sound*. Then, if, and
> > > > only if, we decide that that's interesting from a policy POV, we can
> > > > verify those assumptions with lawyers.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Given we're far from the first project dealing with this, and that
> > > > companies that have shown themselves to be reasonably trustworthy around
> > > > open source, like Red Hat, assuming that such agreements are sound seems
> > > > quite reasonable.
> > >
> > > Sun Microsystems seemed reasonably trustworthy too.
> >
> > I realize what you are saying is that at the time Red Hat wrote that,
> > they had good intentions, but they might not be able to control its
> > behavior in a bankruptcy, so didn't mention it. Also, Oracle is suing
> > Google over the Java API:
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc.
> >
> > which I can't imagine Sun doing, but legally Oracle can now that they
> > own Java via Sun. Of course, Sun might not have realized the problem,
> > and Red Hat might have, but that's also assuming that there aren't other
> > problems that Red Hat doesn't know about.
>
> That's not about patents though, is it.

No, it is not. It is just a case of not being able to trust any
company's "good will". You only get what the contract says.

> (I do believe that case is highly contrived. Sun put Java under the
> GPL, so presumably Google can fork it under those terms. I've not
> followed that case, so I don't really know what's up with it or why it
> wasn't just dismissed with prejudice.)

Yes, it is a big case with big ramifications if upheld.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
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