TokuDB open sourced • Hacker News Board

Re: TokuDB open sourced

#51

Post by reinhardt » Mon, Apr 22, 2013, 9:29 PM UTC

pi18n wrote: post #48

reinhardt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A data structure should never be patentable - what's the difference between a data structure and a math formula? Both are just notations for reality, and can spring up in the minds of many disparate inventors." Can we please let this disingenuous argument die already? Yes, in theory they can spring up in many minds independently. In practice they rarely do unless they are trivial. If the alleged disparate inventors…

The onus placed on them is too great when it appears as a dilemma between a yearly $X0,000 extortion or one-time $X,000,000 lawsuit.

Fair point, though the lawsuit cost insanity is hardly limited to patents.

Re: TokuDB open sourced

#52

Post by Kalium » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 1:28 PM UTC

reinhardt wrote: post #45

andrewljohnson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, independent invention happens all the time, and we end up with absurd patent lawsuits as a result.

AFAIK none of these ludicrous patents are about data structures, algorithms or math formulas.

I find that somewhat difficult to accept, given that pretty much every single patent that touches software is ludicrous.

Re: TokuDB open sourced

#53

Post by acjohnson55 » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 1:39 PM UTC

Any plans to have this as an indexing option for PostgreSQL?

Re: TokuDB open sourced

#54

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 2:07 PM UTC

zardosht wrote: post #30

continuations wrote: post #24

I can't help but think that this announcement is 5 years too late. 5 years ago the field for write-optimized database was wide open and obviously there was a lot of demand for such a product or otherwise companies like facebook and Powerset wouldn't have had to write their own versions. But since there was no open source software available for this usecase back then, they did write their own, which became Cassandra a…

One big differentiating feature between TokuDB and other write optimized databases is that TokuDB is fully transactional, it is ACID compliant. There is a demand for this. AFAIK, TokuDB is the only write-optimized transactional data store. We (I work at Tokutek) are working on integrating with MongoDB as we speak, and when we do, we will bring transactional semantics to MongoDB in addition to improved performance. So…

[deleted]

Re: TokuDB open sourced

#55

Post by pi18n » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 2:24 PM UTC

reinhardt wrote: post #51

pi18n wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The onus placed on them is too great when it appears as a dilemma between a yearly $X0,000 extortion or one-time $X,000,000 lawsuit.

Fair point, though the lawsuit cost insanity is hardly limited to patents.

That's absolutely true, it's far too easy to get in a situation like that even without considering patent law. I just think patents make the scatter-gun approach too accesible, and the damages are far too high. Software doesn't need to protect R&D costs on FDA studies and years of testing. If the goal is to foster innovation, either software patents should be abolished, or there should be very reasonable limits to damages, or there should be a simple and inexpensive way to trigger a review that invalidates ridiculously obvious patents such as "scan-to-email" and friends.