<i>That</i> is "don't be evil" demonstrated. Google could have kept GFS and MapReduce strictly confidential (no paper published, merely a patent) and sue those who implemented anything similar.<p>Microsoft had at one point used Hadoop and HBase (via the Powerset acquisition), they've also made their own MapReduce (Dryad) and Sawzall (DryadLinq) equivalents. It's admirable that Google resisted the temptation to patent-troll them (not that patent trolling has any actual benefit, it just sounds like a typical "evil big corporation" thing to do).
I expected them to do this - good for them. As much as I tend to distrust large corporations, Google has some coolness, and I can't think of another large corporation that I distrust less than Google.
I wonder if this means anyone can use MapReduce (even outside of Apache code). ON the other hand I see no mention of 'derivative works' in this section of the license.<p>So, yeah, I'm curious if this patent license is transitive such that people creating new works based on the Apache code can always use the patent license.<p>Apache Software License 2.0<p><a href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html</a><p>3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
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The submission seems to have dropped the last > of the URL, causing a 404.<p>Here it is as a tinyUrl:<p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/36jzc7v" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/36jzc7v</a>