Techworld - Sun and NetApp: It´s war

Chris Mellor writes about the NTAP/Sun lawsuits and thinks, that NTAP can´t win from a business perspective:

What someone needs to do, perhaps, is to look Dan Warmenhoven in the eye, someone whom Warmenhoven respects absolutely, and say: "Discretion sir, discretion is the better part of valour. This engagement against Sun is one you cannot, in any real business sense, win."

As your are in gods hands on sea and in front of courts lets think about the both possible outcomes: When NTAP wins, they have a strong competitor less, but the image of beeing a patent troll. A marketing disaster. When Sun wins, NTAP may loose it´s technical foundation (albeit at least some patents should never been granted as of prior art. Perhaps this is the reason for sueing in Texas when both companies are located in northern California). And so i close this snippet with another quote from Chris:

Is NetApp constitutionally averse to negotiation and compromise? Does it have a secret interest in funnelling money to lawyers? Does it fear ZFS so very, very much that it sees itself being squeezed unbearably between ZFS-spreading Sun, a rampant EMC, and myriad NAS and iSCSI minnows snapping at its heels?
If any one of these questions has a 'yes' answer then there is something deeply wrong inside a company that many in the storage industry have a deep respect for.