General question by throwing ZFS into this discussion: I never exactly understood what's the problem related to ZFS' adoption in Linux (problem related mainly to the ARC algorithm?).
> You cannot patent a formula. However, you can patent an application of that formula.
So... with "application" does that mean that Oracle/Sun patented some piece of ZFS (e.g. the ARC mentioned above) in the context of "IT data caching technology" and that therefore anybody that wants to use it in IT (even by writing the logic from scratch) in any area (programs, databases, filesystems, etc...) cannot without paying fees, but if I use/implement that ARC logic to e.g. handle my inventory of "shoes to rent" (dummy, but let's say that I have such a shop which has multiple rooms used to store shoes and I keep in the main one the shoes that have been most frequently & recently rented, in the other rooms other stuff split by the same ARC-logic) then I'm OK because the "application" is different than what is mentioned in the patent?
> I never exactly understood what's the problem related to ZFS' adoption in Linux (problem related mainly to the ARC algorithm?).
The problem with ZFS adoption in Linux is copyright, not patents. The license used by the ZFS code and the license used by the Linux kernel are incompatible, so one cannot distribute the combination of both without violating one of the licenses. This means that the ZFS code cannot be incorporated in the Linux kernel, so it's doomed to forever stay out-of-tree.
This could in theory be worked around by a clean-room reimplementation of the ZFS code, keeping the same filesystem format, but I suppose most people who could do that work either are already working with the ZFS code, or find it more interesting to create their own filesystem. It would also be a lot of work, and take a long time until the reimplementation would be considered stable.
I read e.g. here ( https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-cant-be-... ):
> You cannot patent a formula. However, you can patent an application of that formula.
So... with "application" does that mean that Oracle/Sun patented some piece of ZFS (e.g. the ARC mentioned above) in the context of "IT data caching technology" and that therefore anybody that wants to use it in IT (even by writing the logic from scratch) in any area (programs, databases, filesystems, etc...) cannot without paying fees, but if I use/implement that ARC logic to e.g. handle my inventory of "shoes to rent" (dummy, but let's say that I have such a shop which has multiple rooms used to store shoes and I keep in the main one the shoes that have been most frequently & recently rented, in the other rooms other stuff split by the same ARC-logic) then I'm OK because the "application" is different than what is mentioned in the patent?
Thx :)