Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android
marketwatch.com
marketwatch.com
The claims are pretty serious, and Oracle is going straight for the jugular. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out, but I've got to hope that Google will come out of this in good shape for the sake of Java. It's unfortunate that Oracle is interpreting Google's implementation of Dalvik and a Java-based system as a direct infringement upon their patents.
Android aside, it raises some fairly serious questions around Java's future development as a platform vis a vis the uncertainty recently resolved between Microsoft and the Mono project. While Microsoft extended their "Community Promise" to Mono implementors and users, Oracle seems to be taking the opposite approach to companies developing alternate JVMs and Java-based devices. It'll be interesting to see Oracle's stance toward other alternate JVMs such as IBM's.
If you're curious, the original complaint is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35811761/Oracle-s-complaint-agains...
The patents upon which Oracle claims infringement are:
- Protection domains to provide security in a computer system (6,125,447)
- Controlling Access to a Resource (6,192,476)
- Method and apparatus for pre-processing and packaging class files (5,966,702)
- System and method for dynamic preloading of classes through memory space cloning of a master runtime system process (7,426,720)
- Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual and native machine instructions (6,910,205)
- Method and system for performing static initialization (6,061,520)
Are they serious? Unless I'm missing something this is a fantastic joke, JITs far predate Java.
In a computer system, a method for increasing the execution speed of virtual machine instructions, the method comprising:
- inputting virtual machine instructions for a function;
- compiling a portion of the function into at least one native machine instruction so that the function includes both virtual and native machine instruction; and
- overwriting a selected virtual machine instruction of the function with a new virtual machine instruction, the new virtual machine instruction specifying execution of at least one native machine instruction.
You think that sounds like an idea worthy of a patent? Probably depends if you're a programmer or a patent lawyer.
I'll leave you to judge the merits of the other 46 claims, the next of which are:
2. Claim 1 in a box
3. Claim 1 with a fox
A patent isn't an idea. It's the specific method for implementing an idea. If there is a way to get the same end result using a completely different method, the patent doesn't apply.
And the first few claims generally paint way over the lines. It's in the later claims that you talk about the unique stuff that you did.
So bottom line: Oracle may actually own all prior art via Sun (Self research was done at Sun).
Edit: Wow, -7 and dropping. I guess I should have included a sarcasm symbol. Spoiler: My point was that patents do get used, and this argument about them just being for defense is nonsense.
Oracle Corp. said Thursday it has filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google Inc.>> The American commanders in the field reported that the Czarist reign of terror was far more horrific and disturbing that the actions of the Reds. The American forces also discovered that the vast majority of Russians sympathized with the Bolsheviks and supported the revolution. In the end, the American troops were brought home without any fanfare, and the ordeal was considered one of the most ill-conceived interventions in American history up to that time.
From http://rationalrevolution.net/war/russian_revolution.htm
"How Google routed around Sun's IP-based licensing restrictions on Java ME": http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/110/
It's apparently not a complete surprise, this guy in 2007 predicted that
... in the future expect a shit-load of IP-related lawsuits
on this.The trick is that Google doesn’t claim that Android is a Java platform, although it can run some programs written with the Java language and against some derived version of the Java class library. Sun could prevent this if they had a patent on the standard class library, but they don’t and, even if they did, I strongly doubt it would be enforceable since Android doesn’t claim to be compatible (and in fact, could very well claim that their subset/superset is an innovation on the existing patent and challenge Sun’s position).
http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/oracle-google.p...
IBM could completely paralyze the entire computer industry with their portfolio. That they don't is a testament to how much money they earn in simply letting others do the "hard" PC stuff while they singularly engulf the big iron market.
IBM was the only company that I know of that actually outlasted the US government in antitrust litigation. The DoJ, after 15 YEARS of litigation, simply dropped the case due to lack of will and resources to continue. Oracle wouldn't dare try IBM in court.
http://www.google.com/finance?catid=66529330&sort=MARKET... Cap
I assume Oracle is angling for a settlement here. I can't imagine they want to make Android apps not be written in Java, they just want a piece.
This makes me think that cscotta's point on uncertainty is not so strong. It'll be certainly an unpopular measure among developers, but Oracle can say that the case against Google is similar to the one against Microsoft and use the usual "fragmentation" argument.
Microsoft's "Community Promise" does not cover the whole .NET stack - it covers only the ECMA standardized parts. It has "It's a trap" written all over it.
I would also think twice before relying on promises from a convicted monopoly abuser.
It has been already demonstrated they are willing to place profits above ethical and responsible (not to say lawful) behavior.
Can we start putting questions like these on 1st year bachelors exams, so we can finally prove that someone "reasonably skilled in the arts" can figure it out?
... "and if you don't do everything I say, I'll blow up the moon! Ah-hahahahah!"
How do you not love this guy? Somebody get him a black cape.
Larry Ellison is a saint! ... and an asshole.
http://givingpledge.org/#larry_ellison
To whom it may concern,
Many years ago, I put virtually all of my assets into a trust with the intent of giving away at least 95% of my wealth to charitable causes. I have already given hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research and education, and I will give billions more over time. Until now, I have done this giving quietly – because I have long believed that charitable giving is a personal and private matter. So why am I going public now? Warren Buffett personally asked me to write this letter because he said I would be “setting an example” and “influencing others” to give. I hope he’s right.
Larry Ellison
On one hand, he is giving a lot, on the other, you can tell he couldn't care less about the pledge and the letter.
(Or maybe he's just pissed that he had to blow his cover as a supervillain.)
Maybe he's irritated that Google has been getting all the 'evil' headlines lately and wanted to outdo them.
If such a union existed it would immediately stop the use of software patents. The union could also lobby congress for the elimination of software patents and could work on other programmer related laws, establish standards bodies, etc. IOW, give programmers some say in the industry that is currently driven by the suits.
Or companies would just hire overseas programmers...
How much money is there in programming compared to sports?
"Making GitHub More Open: Git-backed Wikis"
"Twitter Polling in the Cloud in 30s using PiCloud"
or, my favorite:
"Burning man defeats PayPal"
(I envision something like the Biblical story of Jesus driving money-changers out of a temple, but this time, Jesus lights himself on fire first. It's very intimidating.)
"Twitter Polling in the Cloud in 30s using PiCloud" wouldn't have made sense only 5 years ago.
People thirty years ago? Heck, I wonder what my in-laws would make of those headlines :)
Oracle probably doesn't realize the massive damage it has done to the java platform just by going forward with this suit. Due to the looming threat of Oracle closing the java platform, startups and companies may begin avoiding the java platform in the same way they avoid the Microsoft stack. In fact, I can't see any reason why I WOULDN'T choose the .NET framework over java if both are so closed. At least C# has lambdas...
And an open-source alternative which compared to other open-source Java efforts, is in pretty good shape, and also has a pledge from Microsoft.
I feel attracted by .NET, but every time I end up using it I wish I didn't ... it's like every year I wish for summer to go to the beach, but when it's finally summer and I'm at the beach ... it's too hot, it's too crowded, the water is dirty and I don't want to be there :)
But of course, if you consider F#, you may want to use the more free and open Ocaml.
My suggestion: drop the term "object-oriented" altogether, and refer to more specific features.
>> You can like lambdas without wanting to go fully functional
Once you like lambdas, functional programming becomes more attractive than a black hole.
And extending a third party sum type is not very hard:
data LibType = Zero
| One Int
| Two Int Int
data MyType = ZeroOneTwo LibType
| Three Int Int Int
Finally, if you really want to extend a sum type, no work around allowed, you might want to look at Ocaml's variant types.
Runtime extensibility matters at systems that you cannot shut down, where have to upgrade live systems, for example. If you are doing just "run it once again, no big deal" application, then it does not matter, you are right.
new_function ZeroOneTwo x = old_function x
new_function Three a b c = -- handling new caseThe world of shrink-wrapped closed-source software may be a foreign world to many functional advocates, but it's the world I live in, and extensibility here is often done with polymorphism and inheritance. The code in the closed-source kernel (application, framework, whatever) interacts with values polymorphically, with modules and third parties relying on inheritance and overriding to work their behaviour into the system.
You want a market for components, where both buyers and sellers are protected; sellers do not necessarily want to reveal their source code, and buyers especially don't. Binary, executable code is the medium of interchange. In order to fit these things together you need protocols: sets of expected messages and documented responses. OO polymorphic interfaces, in other words. Inheritance at the interface level is necessary, and at the implementation level it decreases the burden somewhat - using aggregation instead can lead to problems of identity (the sub-parts of an aggregate each have a different one, since they are mutable).
Second, I fail to see how inheritance solves your problem: "The code using LibType is code you don't control; you can't change it to use MyType instead."
OK, let's try this with inheritance.
class LibType { Handles 3 cases }
class MyType extends LibType { Handles a fourth case }
Interestingly, idiomatic functional programming do just that: passing functions as parameters. Or tuples of functions, in that case. You know that an object is just a tuple, right?. For instance:
// Statically typed, Class based OO language
class Foo {
int bar(int,);
float baz(float, int);
int x;
}
-- Haskell
data Foo = Foo (Int -> Int)
(Float -> Int -> Int)
Int
-- The same, with record syntax. (for easy access)
data Foo = Foo { bar :: Int -> Int
baz :: Float -> Int -> Int
x :: Int
}
http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/u3-ocaml/ocaml-objects.html#ad...
It also has monads.
(Not to discourage anyone from trying F#, which is a nice language anyway.)
So if the JVM goes closed source it still wont go away because the support of Sun/Oracle will stay the same.
It would have a big impact but not as big as you discribe. I would still take the JVM because the the languages are better and I don't want to be bound to windows spezialy for servers.
Additionally, the languages in the JVM are not better. Anyone who has used C# can tell you that Microsoft did an extremely good job designing that language. It can almost be stated that C# is hands down better than Java as a language (its dependency on Microsoft products aside).
Also, what do you mean by "languages" as a plural? The other JVM based language are free of Oracle's control. If they wanted, they could use IcedTea, so Java's really the only platform at stake here.
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thr...
This is why the W3C has a patent policy [1] to prevent contributed software and specifications from being covered by patents.
[1]: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/
If this still does not make any sense, realize that patents and copyrights, while both forms of IP, are completely different, legally. Also recall how open source GIF implementations were still covered by the Unisys patent.
Here's some more context:
http://blogs.gartner.com/brian_prentice/2009/08/06/google-op...
Patent owners can't just go around encouraging people to infringe, and then come back later and sue.
[1] I assume that when software covered by patents is released as open source, the patents are also implicitly granted as part of the license, because if they weren't no one would be able to use it for anything because they would be infringing on the patents.
The only situation this can possible make sense in is if Google has somehow violated the license, thereby revoking their permission to use the relevant patents and exposing them to litigation.
It doesn't do memory management nearly as well as the JVM, and it handles dynamic dispatch and one-off closure hacks (local classes) slowly. It won't easily accept generated bytecodes. It has mysterious performance headaches (mostly memory management related I think).
I'd prefer that Oracle go to heck with these bogus patents for the health of the industry but Google should have just cooperated from the start.
In other words, your issues may be caused by mobile development, not by Android development.
Also Sun removed the classpath exception when they put JavaME under the GPL. That means if you used the GPL'ed version of Java on a mobile device then it becomes viral - including to any application code. (That's why most GPL'ed Java programs use the classpath exception).
From Sun's point of view, this was a good idea because it allowed them to protect JavaME licence revenue. Google saw JavaME as outdated, though, so instead of licencing it they took the Apache licensed Harmony project (ie, a clean room, Apache licensed version of the Java class libraries) and build Android around it.
Dalvik limitations are very justified, and even if phones improve over time, Dalvik also evolves.
Also when going head to head with Apple and Microsoft on such a far-reaching platform, having full control over your platform is valuable.
Essentially, Sun said "We will give away Java, Open Source, as we planned to do. Oh, not mobile, because Nokia uses it and it makes us lots of money. Of course, we all understand reimplementing Java ME would be far too much work for any one company to do. Feel free to license."
Google said "Eh, we'll just write our own JVM that runs on phones, thanks. That's how we roll over here."
Now there are lawsuits, because Sun tried hard to make sure you had to pay if you wanted Java on mobile devices.
Given that Oracle doesn't seem shy about going after a giant like Google makes me wonder what other software Sun owned the rights to that might be even remotely popular. If I were a company using a lot of old Sun IP in even moderately unique ways, I'd be a little concerned right now.
But my point still stands: makers of replacement engines for MySQL could be in violation of MySQL-related patents, which Oracle could then sue over.
Other database vendors (Percona et al., not IBM) don't have assets for Oracle to take, don't directly threaten their core business, and going after them would get Oracle in trouble with regulators.
Better to land a tuna than chase sardines around.
Sun/Oracle's Java implementation was released under the GPLv2, which doesn't include a patent license. I don't know if they included any patent license with the open source release. Even if they did, it doesn't help Google, because Android doesn't use the Sun/Oracle code, so it wouldn't benefit from any patent license that goes with it. Android is based on the Apache Harmony libraries on top of Google's own Dalvik VM. (Most of the Android code is Apache-licensed.) That code was all developed independent of Sun's Java and the implementation might infringe their patents, even though it doesn't use their code.
This is probably the biggest reason why companies, like Microsoft, even when they do open source, don't accept contributions. Just because someone contributes specific code, doesn't mean they have the legal right to do so.
Sun showed that Java could be a timebomb. And in the hands of Larry Ellison, I think Google is just the first victim. Oracle will be going through uses of Java with a fine-tooth comb. Get your duck in order now.
Plus, if you are an IT shop in the fortune 500, you company probably has closer ties with Oracle than Google.
// I am a little concerned with non-Java related VM's in case Oracle goes after them with these patents.
The most engineer-ish thing to do is a back of the envelope calculation:
1. Estimate how much it'd cost to fight the suit.
2. Estimate the probability of winning.
3. Estimate the damages if you lose.
4. Estimate Oracle's ask for licensing the patents.
My work has had bad experiences with Oracle license chenanigans. Of course Google probably has better lawyers than my work does!
I mean, obviously, this doesn't mean 'always fight' but it's another value you need to punch in to your equation, one weighing in on the 'fight' side.
In my business, a similar example would be the money I spend on running an aggressive abuse desk. Running a less-aggressive abuse desk would be cheaper, both in the work it takes and in customers I've lost, at least in the short term.
But in the long term, /because/ I have succeeded in making my service a hostile place for spammers, my abuse complaint rate is much lower than it would be otherwise. for a while, another VPS company rented a few servers from me... and in spite of being something like 1/60th of my size, they produced more abuse desk work than the rest of my customers combined. I believe, because I have an aggressive abuse desk.
(I mean, there are other costs... I've lost at least one legitimate customer I know of, because he was compromised and his box was spewing ssh attacks over the network. I shut him down with an email notice, the email went to the shut down box, so he never got it. )
my point is that there are real business reasons to fight that sometimes go beyond the immediate results of that fight.
Giving into Oracle (who owns Sun's patents which were vast and probably only topped by IBM in the industry) is hardly going to give one the reputation for being patent troll bait.
And doing what's best for the rest of the industry obviously isn't something Google cares about.
I am sad that over the last year or so this has gone from a quiet fact of it being a corporation to a in-your-face "Google: do no evil unless you can make money". I guess each generation needs a company to fantasize about being a righteous white knight.
If enough people stop trusting google, they will no longer be able to do this. Consumer trust is integral to their business. and there will always be tension, as to make money, they need to use at least some of that data to serve us ads, and some of us will take offense to that. I mean, really, there's no way they can run gmail profitably without doing things that I feel violates my privacy.
Now, in the short term, they could earn boatloads of money by violating this trust in a more direct manner... but in the long term, it would kill them. I think that ever since they went public there has been a constant war there, short term profits, vs long-term viability.
My own personal expectation was that this trust of google would not have lasted much past their IPO... it has lasted much longer than that.
Personally, I find it odd that now that this trust is eroding, people seem to be complaining more about net neutrality than about google pushing the limits of what they can do with our private data. Of course, I'm a hosting provider, and thus oppose regulation of my market.
Markets must be regulated. I know of no credible market theory that thinks there should be no regulation. As far as I can tell this is just a bizarre invention of American Libertarians.
So here is the cheap way for Google to attack Oracle: Fund startups that research how much it costs to switch from Oracle servers to Postgres, then sell reports to Oracle customers so they can get lower prices.
I can't see that funding some startups makes you vulnerable to suits, but I am not a lawyer.
Another one is that after all the denunciations and sabre-rattling, Google hand over a wad of cash to licence the technology and Oracle score a slice of Android sales.
Merely the threat of future lawsuits... justified or not, could harm Android adoption, so Google may settle (after posturing and sabre-rattling of course) on that basis alone
A slice of Android sales revenue... Perhaps as high as US$1 per handset would be nice.
They scariest possibility would be if Oracle actually tries to exert some other kind of influence - force their own software or restrictions or branding onto Android (ugh!) - that would really scupper the whole thing. I have no idea if that is possible or not (someone please tell me it is not).
It's also ironic that it's Dalvik that got hit, given the amount of anti-Microsoft hysteria that has surrounded the Mono project.
"I can only imagine the C++ developers are laughing their heads off at us."
http://www.google.com/search?q=οraclе
Your search - οraclе - did not match any documents.
Incidentally, these homoglyph attacks are pretty hard to catch. Even Vim (which normally chokes on 8+ bit characters in my setup) didn't seem to show anything different until I checked the hex codes.
http://www.google.com/search?q=οrасlе </noindex>
now i see gibberish for everything i don't care about, including utf8 homoglyphs.
Off topic here though.
For a start, Dalvik is not a JVM implementation at all, in fact it's quite a different beast. See, e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_application_virtu... which lists Dalvik as a register machine rather than a stack machine: definitely not a trivial difference.
Google's toolchain converts from JVM bytecode to Dalvik bytecode, which is probably what Oracle are going after with #5,966,702 but the rest of the patents are much more general. If anything Oracle are turning VM implementation in general into a patent minefield, not Java alone.
Anyway you look at it, Oracle has enabled a lot of FUD to be thrown at Java, and if your observation is correct, andyone who's working on any sort of non-Oracle derived JVM (and there are a bunch) had just been handed a lot of legal uncertainty.
Side note: I don't need hearing this shortly after learning about the RightHaven atrocity factory.
Except Dalvik is not derived from the JVM.
Sure they use the language, but what, are you going to tell me that I can't make a compiler that translates JVM bytecode to something else?
Should projects like http://ikvm.net be illegal?
Oracle is destroying the biggest advantage Java has.
Dalvik very much isn't a JVM. While both are bytecode interpreters you need to translate Java bytecodes into Dalvik ones to use the former. I'll need to read more (just woke up) to see just what Oracle is objecting to.
Bytecode based systems are an old old old concept due to the severe lack of memory available in the bad old days, e.g. I personally know that as of the mid-late '70s the Lisp Machine's compiler went to a bytecode that the microcode would then interpret. As I recall Smalltalk did this and I know it wasn't a new concept. Heck, what about UCSD's Pascal system?
Don't know the history of JIT compilation, let alone various tricks that have recently been developed; Java is the second wildly successful bytecode system, I think, after UCSD's, which was done back when memory was a lot more precious.
And Dalvik optimized for among other things low memory demand, e.g. it is register based and Java bytecode is stack based.
Thanks for pointing this out.
This seems like a catastrophically stupid and short-sighted move on Oracle's part. The reason Java is as big as it is today is that it's been an open playing field for all comers. Start tossing the odd hand grenade into the party and the room is going to clear out fast. The timing could hardly be worse too - Scala and Clojure seem to be building some real momentum lately.
http://github.com/richhickey/clojure-clr/
Now porting your Clojure applications between VMs may or may not be a reasonable proposition depending on what kind of non-Clojure pure Java libraries you depend upon, but the fate of the Clojure language is thankfully not tied to the fate of the Java runtime.
I think Scala has a .NET port too, but I don't know if it's active.
http://flyingfrogblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/scala-is-foremost...
I think Sun suing Microsoft was a mistake too for the Java platform... the write once, run everywhere ideology made Java the native platform of the server... write once, run everywhere should be the default, but it should be easier and encouraged to escape...
Sun had to sue Microsoft, before they changed Java so much it was no longer platform agnostic (or it was way less agnostic).
I wonder if the MS rift caused more harm to Java than letting Microsoft change its implementation.
And no, the CLR is not totally different from the JVM.
Also, I admit I only read the first patent, but I believe it doesn't apply to Android simply because the Dalvik VM does not apply its security at the object level but the process level, thereby nuking the patent. As for mono, I doubt they would worry since they would simply point out that "class" and "object" have been used for determining security access since at least Windows NT. Or mono can simply turn off object level security and rely on the OS to do it. The whole list is replete with holes and workarounds.
I've looked at them, along with about half a dozen others.
> The JVM is entirely a class-focused JVM. The CLR is a general purpose VM. ... blah-blah-non-sequitur-blah ...
They are both VMs with similar overall strategies, similar technologies, and some distinct similarities. They're about as different as any two VMs are.
> Also, I admit I only read the first patent, but I believe it doesn't apply to Android simply because the Dalvik VM does not apply its security at the object level but the process level, thereby nuking the patent.
Unless they point out that the system handles processes as objects.
> As for mono, I doubt they would worry since they would simply point out that "class" and "object" have been used for determining security access since at least Windows NT. Or mono can simply turn off object level security and rely on the OS to do it. The whole list is replete with holes and workarounds.
You don't understand how patent trolling works, do you? The point is to make it so expensive and painful for the innovator to continue without giving the patent troll a big slice of the pie that the innovator capitulates and pays off the troll.
I suggest that these differences are what makes them different as applies to patents. Patents are usually either so broad as to have prior art, or so narrow as to not apply to even "similar" implementations.
6,192,476: Too broad. Applies to any OS since the 70's. 6,125,447: as above. 5,966,702: Too specific (.NET doesnt need to optimize data it creates properly in the first place) and too broad at the same time: it simply describes data normalization. 7,426,720: Unix forks. Either way, .NET does not do this. RE38,104: Not applicable at all. .NET is always fully JITed. 6,910,205: See above. 6,061,520: Specific to JVM implementation detail.
> You don't understand how patent trolling works, do you? The point is to make it so expensive and painful for the innovator to continue without giving the patent troll a big slice of the pie that the innovator capitulates and pays off the troll.
It is impossible to do anything today without infringing on somebody's bullshit patent. However, one can identify patents that can be demonstrated to be bullshit for a reasonable cost.
There is also an element of poker. If someone has a bullshit patent, but they have successfully used it, or think they can, then they risk losing that revenue if it is struck down as invalid. They do have something to lose, in addition to legal fees.
Trolls live on fear. Don't be afraid.
So back to these particular patents: They are bullshit. They are obviously bullshit. I would represent myself if hit with them. I think Google might be able to find a few people better than me to prove it.
You are saying that Miguel de Icaza is not one of these Mono people, nor is he representative of them.
Apple vs (Google vs (Facebook && Oracle))
Android is basically, as far as I've read, a Linux kernel, with Google's own user space on top of that--their own equivalent of libc and their own windowing system. On top of that, they run their own JVM, which they wrote themselves and which is NOT even compatible with Oracle's at the byte-code level. Android apps are written in Java and compiled/JITed for Google's VM.
So, unless the Java compiler itself takes code from Oracle's compiler, it is hard to see what in their would contain copies of Oracle code.
This is about patent infringement, not copyright. Whether or not code was copied is irrelevant.
UPDATE: Sorry, maybe both are at stake. The author of this article seems sadly ignorant of the difference between patent and copyright, as he seems to use them interchangeable. So who knows....
so because the Android platform APIs also include the Java APIs Oracle thinks there is a case. I'm not aware of any precedents that would indicate the likelyhood of this succeeding, but its possible there could be a problem here.
Note that http://developer.android.com/reference/packages.html contains the java.* API's, and in the past Sun was pretty strict about companies not hosting that Javadoc itself publicly (eg, they stopped one site that was building interlinked Javadoc references).
"On November 13, 2006, Sun released much of Java as open source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). On May 8, 2007, Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code available under free software/open-source distribution terms, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright."
If Sun willingly made the code GPL licensed, and Google isn't using anything outside the GPL code, even if some of the technologies were covered by patents I don't see Oracle having a case. Right now, this sounds very much like the SCO - Linux suit that dragged on forever and went nowhere.
I am really curious about how the law sees this.
And I would really wonder if they decide against Google. It looks almost like a trap of Sun/Oracle then, kind of "hey, here, use our code, it is open source now grin".
Or to put it different: Why did they use the GPL licence?
The Sun release has some weird field-of-use restrictions associated with it.
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
However, it seems Sun can relicence the software under whatever they want, and the current versions of it wouldn't be under GPL anymore. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know exactly what this implies.
You mean Oracle, of course, and that seems to make a big difference.
In that case, wouldn't the exception only be extended to Google if their implementation of Java was not independent from Sun's implementation? Because Devrak was derived from Apache Harmony, it might not share any code with Oracle Java.
Interesting and relevant.
Serious about openness? Skip the "patent and promise" dance and just release the damn thing BSD.
Oracle can sue for patents over any GPLv3 technology, and all GPLv3 says is that the company doing the suing can't distribute code under GPLv3.
But since they own the copyrights of Java, they can always change its license and leave the rest of the world in dust.
They would be violating the GPLv3 license under which they distributed the source. Changing the license only affects the next person acquiring the source. The people who acquired it under the GPLv3 license cannot have this retroactively revoked or relicensed. If Orcale sued those parties, they would be violating the terms of the license. In the least instance they shouldn't have been distributing the source unde GPLv3 so their claim for infringement would be moot.
Had they bought Sun and then sold off the hardware side of the business they would have bought a lot of solid engineers and IP.
I'm guessing they didn't buy them because of the business they were in. Selling workstations + Solaris was only part of their business. I think the services part of their work was bringing in more money towards the end. As far as I'm aware, Google doesn't do much in the services realm, which probably factored big into their decision not to buy.
"If you use Java to make something valuable, we're gonna sue the crap out of you".
This will have long term consequences for Oracle.
http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/eclipse4-released
""""" "You said..."it is expected that GWT Designer will make an appearance via the GWT Blog in the coming months"
Actually, we are in the process of Googlizing all of our products; not just GWT Designer. They will all be made available again fairly soon and the announcement will be made on the GWT blog. """""
"Ellison's best friend … Steve Jobs … did double duty as the wedding photographer [at Ellison's wedding]."
Also Ellison was on Apple's board for a few years after the second coming of Jobs.
Small developers are very vulnerable, let's see what happen when the giants eat each other.
There must be some kind of business school thing I'm missing here.
(I've heard about the Android Scripting Environment, but it sounds like that is not as fully supported as might be ideal).
I'd love to see Google provide GWT support for Scala, but that's another issue :)
I think Oracle is being beyond stupid here. If anyone has the power to come up with a language and toolchain to make Java utterly irrelevant, its Google.
If MS was able to accomplish all of that, then imagine what Google could create if they decided to drop Java altogether ('Go' language might be the preview.) That would be a huge win for the software industry while a big (long term) loss for Oracle as Java further wans in popularity.
(Hmm....if Oracle can sue Google over the non-Java VM they created for Android couldn't they sue MS for their "JVM-like" CLR? This is another reason why their patent lawsuit is so ridiculous.)
No matter how you slice it, Google has the advantage in the long run while patent trolls like Oracle have the most to lose in the long term.
Mono still has the sharecropper problem to it, that I thought Java got rid of...
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...
This lawsuit is not about google's use of the JVM since they are not, in fact, using the JVM. It is about the fact that the Dalvik VM allegedly infringes on some Oracle-owned patents. It's possible that the Mono VM infringes on the same patents too, so switching VM may not make the slightest difference.
Anyway, Google isn't using the JVM in Android - they use Dalvik.
An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment."
With Oracle knowing obviously knowing this could damage their largest asset, it makes me wonder if they're still in talks. Someone who knows more law than I do could probably tell us. How hard is it do withdraw a suit once filed. How expensive is it to file a lawsuit your not certain you'll follow through on?
[...] any software found to be in violation of Oracle's copyrights "be impounded and destroyed."
How does one go about rounding up all the copies of something as ephemeral and easily duplicated as software? Is this common wording in software litigation?
Please note, I'm not an attorney or expert on Java.
The complaint is quite vague overall, perhaps deliberately. It lists the various patents, says what they are, and alleges that Google infringed upon each one. It also suggests that Sun/Oracle owns heaps of Java source code which has been used by Google, thereby breaching copyright. Oh, and since I own an Android phone I too am infringing on their patents, but fortunately they lay the blame for this at Google's feet. Whew!
Nowhere in the complaint is there any explanation of what licensing obligations were applicable or which govern the distribution of Java. Nor is it clear when Oracle alleges this infringement began in relation to each patent, or why or how they consider it to be infringed upon by Android. The complaint mentions the Dalvik VM specifically.
Looking through the licensing information on the phone itself, there's a bunch of stuff from Sun under a 1993-4 license which is very short and confers the right to use, modify and distribute the software without reservation. Most of the rest is under the Apache Harmony license, and a sprinkling of others. Well, I suppose if google were deliberately infringing, they would hardly mention the fact in their licensing statements.
So where is the problem?
14. On information and belief, Google has been aware of Sun’s patent portfolio, including the patents at issue, since the middle of this decade, when Google hired certain former Sun Java engineers.
A good ZDnet article suggests the engineers in question may be 'Lars Bak, Robert Griesemer, and Frank Yellin, all former Sun employees who now work for Google on Java and Web browser technologies, and all of whom appear as inventors on one or more of the patents in question.'
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/oracle-uses-james-gosling...
Also (possibly, IMHO) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bloch
I don't know what Oracles chances are. On the surface it looks like rather weak sauce, with some of the patents being questionable because of prior art...but like I said, that's an amateur perspective. Oracle appears to be saying the bare minimum necessary at this time. Google will likely move for a summary judgment of dismissal, denying that there is any substance to Oracle's claims, and at that point Oracle may have to make some more specific allegations.
http://beust.com/weblog/2010/08/12/oracle-is-suing-google-ov...
Good luck defending your trademark after the CEO declares it's not really interested in doing so.
You're thinking trademark law. This lawsuit is under patent law. It doesn't matter what Jonathan Schwartz publicly said.
First of all, we should praise Google for making so good decisions, to re-use wast community of Java developers and Eclipse (without which they cannot program ^_^) and avoid bloated and corporative-centered JVM or Java ME, that it resulted in such ridiculous lawsuit about .jar files. ^_^
They also got a lot of buzz and the reputation of not doing evil and even being a victim of a corporate monster and patent trolls.
btw, it looks a lot like an Apples decision about dropping Flash (yet another outdated artificial tumor) just because it simply does not work. Google'd rewrote VM, while Apple invested in LLVM.
So, it is a good news.
<nelson> Ha-Ha! </nelson>
So far Google has been able to get the best of both worlds by leveraging the vast Java tools ecosystem but then in the final step they convert the standard JVM bytecode to run on their own Dalvik VM which means they don't have to pay license fees for the standard Java runtime. IMO this is what is really annoying Oracle. (To be fair there are also good technical reasons why they created Dalvik.)
I can understand where Oracle is coming from legally, but business-wise I think this lawsuit is bound to backfire. Google has the resources to defend themselves and move away from Java in the long term, but in the meantime Oracle has created serious uncertainty about the openness of the Java platform which will scare technically innovative players away from Java that don't have the financial and legal resources that Google does. So Oracle turns Java into the new COBOL, a technically moribund backwater that is only kept alive for legacy purposes.
The JVM is GPL'd, you don't have to pay license fees to use.
There are other Apache licensed JVM's (http://harmony.apache.org/).
If this lawsuit drives people towards the Newspeak and V8 VM that would be a good thing.