NetApp is suing Sun Microsystems over the ZFS file system technology (press release). It’s a software patent case, headed for East Texas. The problem? Sun released ZFS as open source, complicating the situation.
451 Storage Analyst Henry Baltazar and I spoke with Dave Hitz, founder and EVP of Network Appliance, briefly by phone today about the lawsuit and the implications for the open source community. Hitz is the named inventor on five of the Network Appliance patents at issue. He has posted an entry about the lawsuit on his blog - NetApp Sues Sun for ZFS Patent Infringement. Take a look. Hitz told me that this case is about NetApp and Sun, not the open source community that has …
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