Tokutek’s Bradley did a session on their Fractal Tree Index technology at the MySQL Conference (and an OpenSQL Camp before that – but I wasn’t at that one), and my first thought was: great, now we get to see what and where the magic is. On second thought, I realised you may not want to know.
I know I’m going to be a party pooper here, but I do feel it’s important for people to be aware of the consequences of looking at this stuff (there’s slide PDFs online as well as video), and software patents in general. I reckon Tokutek has done some cool things, but the patents are a serious problem.
Tokutek’s technology has patents pending, and is thus patent encumbered. What does this mean for you? It means that if you look at their “how they did it” info and you happen to code something that later ends up in a related patent lawsuit, you and the company you work for will be liable for triple damages. That’s basic US …
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