6 ms·

Re: License for Google's patent

30 points by helwr 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago
For some reason this strikes me as really weird. We should be happy that google grants a license for something they shouldn't have had a patent on in the first place? Continued generosity indeed.
- fierarul 17y ago
  Didn't Google actually introduce mapreduce into the mainstream and thus Hadoop is just an open-source clone of Google's system ? Given that patents are a way of live in the US, why wouldn't Google patent this ? Would you prefer someone else instead ? On a related note -- how many patents does the Apache Foundation own ?
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Mapping and reducing have been part and parcel of programming for the longest time. Packaging the concept in a framework and patenting it should not have been possible.
    - jbooth 17y ago
      It's not like they just patented the method signatures map(sequence) and reduce(sequence) -- there's a global-scale distributed filesystem, the method of dispatching tasks so they have high odds of node-locality or rack-locality to the data they're operating over, all sorts of redundancy and failover necessary to run clusters where machines fail every minute by virtue of having so many of them.. I mean I'm as against software patents as the next guy but this isn't the most trivial one I've seen. Glad they licensed it to ASF.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        In their original map reduce documentation they explicitly state they were inspired by programming languages containing map/reduce functionality. Adding all kinds of bells and whistles to it does not make it 'novel'. Redundancy, failover, node locality and rack locality have all been done many times over in the past, maybe not in that context but that is just a combining of concepts. To be awarded a patent you should at least do something original.
        jbooth 17y ago
        "Inspired by", what's that mean? Even the most novel and patentable innovation surely has inspirations. I already said I'm against software patents -- but this is one of the worse cases to back up the viewpoint, they actually invent something here.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        That's prior art. Even the names are the same. 'on a network' or 'on a cluster' or 'more reliable' or 'much larger' are not worthy of patenting, they are incremental extensions and not inventions. The first time someone did map/reduce, the first time someone did quicksort, that was invention. Doing it larger or through some other variation does not make it an invention. Anyway, you seem to be set on your position that they invented something, I really think they didn't. Map/Reduce to me is actually a poster child for a very bad software patent.
        jbooth 17y ago
        Well, just to explain my point of view better, you could rephrase aviation as just moving stuff "through the air" and "faster" -- hey we've had transportation for thousands of years! And we had combustion engines before they were ever used to power an airplane. I'll admit that it's a fuzzy line and you can make a case for this particular thing to be on either side of it -- but having components that are previously established isn't enough IMO to definitively say "nothing was invented".
  - jfoutz 17y ago
    C* and zeta lisp both supported parallel map reduce at the language level.
    - tghw 17y ago
      At the language level, yes. At the on-computers-all-over-the-world-on-petabyte-datasets level? No. That was Google.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        That's like those 'on the internet' patents then. Only this time it is the 'on a cluster' variation. Take an existing scheme, implement it on a cluster, instant market lock.
        tghw 17y ago
        Yeah, it's not that simple. You're talking about one of the biggest scaling problems ever addressed. You have to figure out how to shard the data, how to deal with failures and inconsistencies, how to return results from terabytes of data, and how to make it all fast enough that your search results come back in less than a second.
        gsmaverick 17y ago
        Map-reduce isn't used in search queries only for indexing.
  - brainlounge 17y ago
    Apache owns zero patents.
    - fierarul 17y ago
      Then they aren't doing a great job given they did choose to create the foundation in the US. When in Rome...
      - brainlounge 17y ago
        On the other hand, ASF is receiving major tax-reducable donations from US companies. The ASF is not in the patent business.
- emarcotte 17y ago
  Indeed, however, I suppose another company could have applied for and gotten the same patent and started trolling with it.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    But that's not really an excuse. Bogus patents should not be applied for and when they are applied for they should not be awarded. Applying for them on the grounds that someone else will do it is not a valid reason, and google is not exactly the most transparent company in the world. If they're so generous they should donate the patent to a neutral party. Most - if not all - software patents are bogus.
    - emarcotte 17y ago
      I am not suggesting it is valid or acceptable behavior. I'm just trying to point out that "It could be worse" :)
    - btilly 17y ago
      Most - if not all - software patents are bogus. Many years ago I saw a lawyer say that he had examined a random sample of IBM's software patents, and estimated that about 70% of them wouldn't stand up in court. And it was his belief that IBM had better patents than most companies out there. The problem was, of course, that if they drop a stack of 15 patents on you neither you nor they know what they will get to stick, but they will definitely get you with something. And why not file those patents? Their main purpose is to be an unused threat, and they are threatening whether or not they are used. Therefore even by the very relaxed standards the that US legal system does, most software patents are bogus. If you hold a higher intellectual standard, then it isn't hard for that 70% to become 100%, or close enough to it to make the exceptions negligible. (There is hope that Bilski will restore some sanity to the US system.)
- gfodor 17y ago
  You can't be seriously suggesting that Google, a multinational corporation, cease to apply for software patents? The problem isn't that people are applying for them, it's that they're being granted. Or as they say, don't hate the player, hate the game.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    About 15 years ago I was in a position to apply for a patent on the 'streaming webcam', live video over the internet. I found a way to stream video to netscapes new browser ('Navigator'), without using plug-ins. I expressly did not do that because to me it was an obvious extension of being able to do 'stills'. After all, simply making it move does not require much ingenuity, merely a couple of nights of hard work. Looking back I'm happy I didn't do that. I refused to 'play the game', even if it could have made me a boatload of money I still stand by that decision. Whether google is a multinational or a one man shop, to apply for a patent simply because of scaling an existing algorithm up to 'cluster size' in my opinion is not the nicest thing. For them to 'grant' licenses like these and then to receive the kind of groveling gratitude present in that email in return is really disgusting.
    - richardw 17y ago
      It was good of you, but you have less of a risk of being sued than Google does. They need a war chest to negotiate with.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        > you have less of a risk of being sued than Google does. In fact, a company called Acacia tried just that. When they found out the parent company was European they lost interest.
        richardw 17y ago
        So you have less of a risk than Google does?
- richardw 17y ago
  No large company can afford to ignore IP these days, partly because they might need a defensive portfolio to negotiate with, when another large company sues them. Look at Apple & Nokia.
wingo 17y ago
What does that mail really mean? Does the patent grant extend to end users of Hadoop, or just the Apache foundation? What about users who patch their Hadoop? Is it revocable? I'm sure there is good will here, but the system is disgusting.
- brainlounge 17y ago
  Google granted the license under the Apache License terms, and through distribution of Hadoop these extend to the end users of Hadoop under the very same Apache license. (AFAIUI, IANAL)

30 points by helwr 17y ago

For some reason this strikes me as really weird. We should be happy that google grants a license for something they shouldn't have had a patent on in the first place? Continued generosity indeed.

fierarul 17y ago
Didn't Google actually introduce mapreduce into the mainstream and thus Hadoop is just an open-source clone of Google's system ? Given that patents are a way of live in the US, why wouldn't Google patent this ? Would you prefer someone else instead ? On a related note -- how many patents does the Apache Foundation own ?
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Mapping and reducing have been part and parcel of programming for the longest time. Packaging the concept in a framework and patenting it should not have been possible.
  - jbooth 17y ago
    It's not like they just patented the method signatures map(sequence) and reduce(sequence) -- there's a global-scale distributed filesystem, the method of dispatching tasks so they have high odds of node-locality or rack-locality to the data they're operating over, all sorts of redundancy and failover necessary to run clusters where machines fail every minute by virtue of having so many of them.. I mean I'm as against software patents as the next guy but this isn't the most trivial one I've seen. Glad they licensed it to ASF.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      In their original map reduce documentation they explicitly state they were inspired by programming languages containing map/reduce functionality. Adding all kinds of bells and whistles to it does not make it 'novel'. Redundancy, failover, node locality and rack locality have all been done many times over in the past, maybe not in that context but that is just a combining of concepts. To be awarded a patent you should at least do something original.
      - jbooth 17y ago
        "Inspired by", what's that mean? Even the most novel and patentable innovation surely has inspirations. I already said I'm against software patents -- but this is one of the worse cases to back up the viewpoint, they actually invent something here.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        That's prior art. Even the names are the same. 'on a network' or 'on a cluster' or 'more reliable' or 'much larger' are not worthy of patenting, they are incremental extensions and not inventions. The first time someone did map/reduce, the first time someone did quicksort, that was invention. Doing it larger or through some other variation does not make it an invention. Anyway, you seem to be set on your position that they invented something, I really think they didn't. Map/Reduce to me is actually a poster child for a very bad software patent.
        jbooth 17y ago
        Well, just to explain my point of view better, you could rephrase aviation as just moving stuff "through the air" and "faster" -- hey we've had transportation for thousands of years! And we had combustion engines before they were ever used to power an airplane. I'll admit that it's a fuzzy line and you can make a case for this particular thing to be on either side of it -- but having components that are previously established isn't enough IMO to definitively say "nothing was invented".
- jfoutz 17y ago
  C* and zeta lisp both supported parallel map reduce at the language level.
  - tghw 17y ago
    At the language level, yes. At the on-computers-all-over-the-world-on-petabyte-datasets level? No. That was Google.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      That's like those 'on the internet' patents then. Only this time it is the 'on a cluster' variation. Take an existing scheme, implement it on a cluster, instant market lock.
      - tghw 17y ago
        Yeah, it's not that simple. You're talking about one of the biggest scaling problems ever addressed. You have to figure out how to shard the data, how to deal with failures and inconsistencies, how to return results from terabytes of data, and how to make it all fast enough that your search results come back in less than a second.
        gsmaverick 17y ago
        Map-reduce isn't used in search queries only for indexing.
- brainlounge 17y ago
  Apache owns zero patents.
  - fierarul 17y ago
    Then they aren't doing a great job given they did choose to create the foundation in the US. When in Rome...
    - brainlounge 17y ago
      On the other hand, ASF is receiving major tax-reducable donations from US companies. The ASF is not in the patent business.
emarcotte 17y ago
Indeed, however, I suppose another company could have applied for and gotten the same patent and started trolling with it.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  But that's not really an excuse. Bogus patents should not be applied for and when they are applied for they should not be awarded. Applying for them on the grounds that someone else will do it is not a valid reason, and google is not exactly the most transparent company in the world. If they're so generous they should donate the patent to a neutral party. Most - if not all - software patents are bogus.
  - emarcotte 17y ago
    I am not suggesting it is valid or acceptable behavior. I'm just trying to point out that "It could be worse" :)
  - btilly 17y ago
    Most - if not all - software patents are bogus. Many years ago I saw a lawyer say that he had examined a random sample of IBM's software patents, and estimated that about 70% of them wouldn't stand up in court. And it was his belief that IBM had better patents than most companies out there. The problem was, of course, that if they drop a stack of 15 patents on you neither you nor they know what they will get to stick, but they will definitely get you with something. And why not file those patents? Their main purpose is to be an unused threat, and they are threatening whether or not they are used. Therefore even by the very relaxed standards the that US legal system does, most software patents are bogus. If you hold a higher intellectual standard, then it isn't hard for that 70% to become 100%, or close enough to it to make the exceptions negligible. (There is hope that Bilski will restore some sanity to the US system.)
gfodor 17y ago
You can't be seriously suggesting that Google, a multinational corporation, cease to apply for software patents? The problem isn't that people are applying for them, it's that they're being granted. Or as they say, don't hate the player, hate the game.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  About 15 years ago I was in a position to apply for a patent on the 'streaming webcam', live video over the internet. I found a way to stream video to netscapes new browser ('Navigator'), without using plug-ins. I expressly did not do that because to me it was an obvious extension of being able to do 'stills'. After all, simply making it move does not require much ingenuity, merely a couple of nights of hard work. Looking back I'm happy I didn't do that. I refused to 'play the game', even if it could have made me a boatload of money I still stand by that decision. Whether google is a multinational or a one man shop, to apply for a patent simply because of scaling an existing algorithm up to 'cluster size' in my opinion is not the nicest thing. For them to 'grant' licenses like these and then to receive the kind of groveling gratitude present in that email in return is really disgusting.
  - richardw 17y ago
    It was good of you, but you have less of a risk of being sued than Google does. They need a war chest to negotiate with.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      > you have less of a risk of being sued than Google does. In fact, a company called Acacia tried just that. When they found out the parent company was European they lost interest.
      - richardw 17y ago
        So you have less of a risk than Google does?
richardw 17y ago
No large company can afford to ignore IP these days, partly because they might need a defensive portfolio to negotiate with, when another large company sues them. Look at Apple & Nokia.

wingo 17y ago

What does that mail really mean? Does the patent grant extend to end users of Hadoop, or just the Apache foundation? What about users who patch their Hadoop? Is it revocable? I'm sure there is good will here, but the system is disgusting.

brainlounge 17y ago
Google granted the license under the Apache License terms, and through distribution of Hadoop these extend to the end users of Hadoop under the very same Apache license. (AFAIUI, IANAL)