Re: Oracle Innobase Purchase Impacts MySQL.

>>>>Wouldn't be surprised. I'm waiting for Microsoft to release SQL Server
>>>>2005 and its blatant attempt to imitate Oracle's multiversion read
>>>>consistency. Wouldn't surprise me at all if the law suits are already
>>>>drawn up: They should be!
>>>Patents are not to be paid to the one who first uses a feature in a
>>>commercial system. Even IFF Oracle held any patents on the _concept_ of
>>>multiversion read consitency (which I highly doubt and which is entirely
>>>different from a fight about patents in the _actual_implementation_)
>>>these would very likely have expired by now.....
>>>Also keep in mind that most major software vendors have cross licencing
>>>agreements in place:
>>>"You don't sue me, I don't sue you, and btw one of us pays the other
>>>some sort of flat fee because they have more patents (mostly measured in
>>>inch of paper)"
>>Can you say SCO?

> I thought you were going to say Informix... Ah yes.. The story about Informix was that IBM negotiated for x-licensing, but Informix decided they didn't need to. So IBM sued and Informix counter-sued (of course)... the rest is known. Patents are like nukes, lots of sabre-rattling. Usage is last choice. Problem is that there are also a lots of duds because the patent lawyers haven't got a clue, so most anything gets patented unchecked. But testing the validity of a patent is expensive and dangerous (if upheld). That's why they have these funny stacks of claims: Claim 1: This patent covers teh meaning of life. ...
Claim 99: This patent covers something noone cares about.

A carefully laid out minefield ...

Cheers
Serge

-- 
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab