“They’re like the FedEx of storage. You go with NetApp not because of their patent portfolio but because they get everything working right together, which for a company is much harder than just having a good filesystem. Sun could copy every line of NetApp code tomorrow, and so what? That wouldn’t make a random Solaris box into drop-in storage that you don’t have to worry about. It would be like Joe’s Delivery Service photocopying the FedEx airbill.”