Re: ARC patent

Tom Lane wrote:

>Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
>
>
>>Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>>
>>
>>>What will you do if the patent is granted, 8.0 is out there with the
>>>offending code, and you get a cease-and-desist letter from IBM
>>>demanding the removal of all offending code from the Net?
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>We can modify the code slightly to hopefully avoid the patent. With the
>>US granting patents on even obvious ideas, I would think that most large
>>software projects, including commercial ones, already have tons of
>>patent violations in their code. Does anyone think otherwise?
>>
>>
>
>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.)
>
>
>
>

There's a very recent paper at
http://carmen.cs.uiuc.edu/~zchen9/paper/TPDS-final.ps on an alternative
to ARC which claims superior performance ...

Maybe this will give us added impetus to make the 8.1 cycle short, as
has been suggested previously.

cheers

andrew