

Re: License for Google's patent - helwr
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/hadoop-general/201004.mbox/%3C121803A3-CFB9-489B-96EF-027234E55D25@apache.org%3E

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jacquesm
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
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
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.

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jbooth
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
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.

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tghw
If someone builds a better mousetrap, it's patentable. And it's still a
mousetrap. Combining a bunch of existing concepts in a new way is the basis
for the patent system. It's the only way to progress: iteration.

Putting that aside, what Google did with MapReduce _was_ original. There are a
number of challenges that each of the individual concepts never had to
overcome, which required new, unique concepts to be introduced to make the
system work.

~~~
jacquesm
> If someone builds a better mousetrap, it's patentable.

Only if the mechanism is novel. And that's the problem here, the mechanism is
identical, just larger.

Running map/reduce on an array or on a petabyte data set does not change the
fundamental method at all. There are just countless implementation details to
be taken care of, but any competent programmer could extend the original
concept of map/reduce to that level.

~~~
tghw
_Running map/reduce on an array or on a petabyte data set does not change the
fundamental method at all._

It very much changes the fundamental method. It takes something that was once
impossible given all existing techniques and technologies, and makes it
possible. The new techniques and technologies are at the core of the patent.

 _any competent programmer could extend the original concept of map/reduce to
that level._

Patently false. At the very least, you need a decent sized team of very
competent programmers, DBAs, and system administrators to architect and build
the system, and another programming test team to ensure that it is reliable.
And then you'd only have a working prototype. This isn't nearly as trivial as
you make it out to be. Hadoop is evidence of that, it's going on 4 years and
four thousand changesets, with changes by over 50 people from Apache, Yahoo!
and the general public. Its source directory (for only the common project, not
including the HDFS) clocks in at 328 KLOC.

MapReduce wasn't some little side project hack-job.

But then again, you could probably code up Stack Overflow in a weekend,
couldn't you?

~~~
jacquesm
> But then again, you could probably code up Stack Overflow in a weekend,
> couldn't you?

Thanks for playing.

------
wingo
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
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)

