I know if I had any brains I'd stay out of this but I'm going against my
gut. I think the point that's being made is that emails have a life
beyond just the immediate read. Ask the tobacco industry about things
they put in writing 40 years ago. If this is a conversation that you
want to have, do so in a less permanent fashion so 10 years from now
it's not used in a court case that otherwise would have no merit.
Robert Treat wrote:
> On Friday 24 October 2008 09:28:28 Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>
>> Suggesting that people should start
>> looking for such problems was in fact what Robert was saying, and I
>> agree with Josh Berkus that it's a very bad idea to do so.
>>
>>
>
> I did no such thing. I simply asked if anyone was looking into it. There is no
> suggestion for anyone to go and do it if not, I just wanted to know if anyone
> was currently doing it... maybe I wanted to tell them to stop.
>
> Further I also said, in far fewer words that what you just dumped out, that if
> someone does know about a patent the applies to postgresql code, that it is
> best to bring it forward, rather than cover it up. I dont think you disagree
> with that. And again, no suggestion to go looking for trouble.
>
> Now, I would say that, IMHO, as the probability approaches 100% that you are
> violating a patent, you might want to start to care somewhere before you
> actually get to 100%, but I'm not going to speculate on where that line is
> exactly. And I suppose it is possible that I mentioned the whole thing
> because of the specific feature involved, my knowledge of other databases
> systems, and the information that was told to me which I might not have
> wanted to go into detail about on a public list...
>
> But if you really think it is more likely that I am trying to get everyone to
> start reading through patent databases in there spare time, at this point, I
> guess I am comfortable letting you live with that assumption...
>
>