By now, everyone in the storage and OS industry has heard it. NetApp and SUN is going at each other with ZFS/WAFL. Both companies have filed lawsuits against each other claiming patent rights over the technologies behind WAFL and ZFS. Get the details here:
http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/2007/09/netapp-sues-sun.html
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/on_patent_trolling
http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/2007/09/litigoperation-.html
The order of events depends up which blog post you read.
- NetApp approached Sun to acquire some of the patents that STK had. Sun refused but offered to license them to NetApp (for a price of $36M)
- NetApp then asserts that those patents are invalid.
- NeApp also sues Sun for patent infringement.
Now, the only authoritative document one can go by is the email between the lawyers. Constructing events from that, we get this:
- Oct 23, 2006 – NetApp sends a letter to Sun asserting that ZFS code base infringes on seven of the NetApp patents
- Mid 2005 – Sun provided a claim chart to Netapp, seemingly suggesting that NetApp is infringing on some of its patents. NetApp responds that those claims are inadequate. Instead NetApp tells Sun that there are a few patents of its own that Sun infringes. Sun’s engineers do not believe so.
What happened in mid-2005 to cause Sun to provide a claim chart to NetApp is not known. It is possible that NetApp approached Sun to buy some patents. It is also possible that the initiator is Sun all along. No one can tell, not yet anyway.
I am glad this happened. You know why ? In my mind, it forces an issue about WAFL licensing that folks till now have not paid attention to. A few weeks/month ago, I was at the DC NetApp User Group happy hour and commented to the NTAP guys that the time may be approaching for NetApp to release its core WAFL code under some form of open source. The idea did not sit very well (laughs, jeers, jokes… all followed).
I am of the opinion that if you want a piece of software to achieve a de-facto standard and be relevant for a relatively long time, then it is only natural for that software to be matured by the overall community and not just one profit-centric entity. In other words, for ONTAP and WAFL to be relevant in a few years, it needs to be out in the public in some form or the other. It needs to be broken and fixed by the larger community. Further more, the timing is also very good for NetApp. Sun did release ZFS to public. But Sun is also an 800lb gorilla. They change things too fast in all the wrong places and are not flexible where they need to be. (read my post about that here). NetApp should take this opportunity and lead the effort and truly establish itself as the de-facto standard. This lawsuit and the current mentality is not the way to go.
If not anything, hash it out over a six pack.
