From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Aug 27 12:01:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id MAA28039 for chat-outgoing; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 12:01:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fallout.campusview.indiana.edu (fallout.campusview.indiana.edu [149.159.1.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA28011 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 12:00:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (jfieber@localhost) by fallout.campusview.indiana.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA23221 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 13:34:41 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 13:34:41 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber To: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Scary lawsuit Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Novadigm sues Marimba and threatens W3C. http://www.novadigm.com/aB5.htm The key point, extracted from the above web page, is over a patent: Novadigm's Patent (Number 5,581,764) "Distributed Computer Network Including Hierarchical Resource Information Structure and Related Method of Distributing Resources" describes the processes needed to generate from a common reference model a unique content configuration for each target end user, and to "difference" the "desired state" configuration with the actual-state of the target, yielding highly granular and very specific updates to distributed content automatically. That about describes a fairly long extensive of software including rdist, sup, cvsup, rsync, ctm and on unix, as well as similar freely available programs on other platforms. I'm no lawyer, is it permissable to get a patent on a technology that has been in the public domain? I would hope not. The above patent was issued in December 1996. -john