Analysts: Oracle vs. Google May Hurt Future of Java as Dev Platform
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If you were contemplating starting a new project using Clojure, for instance, would this lawsuit give you pause? I think I would worry about it, at least a little.
Those fretting about "Oracle's stewardship of Java" all need to take a breath. Honestly, things can't be worse than they were under Sun -- except perhaps in the eyes of those that make platform decisions based on the patent-management policies of multinational corporations. If FUD or "morale" or "community" is the chief concern for others, then they've forgotten the lessons of Java's history: i.e. the shit keeps hitting the fan in different ways, yet code running on JVMs is everywhere, and that'll continue to be the case for decades.
Anyway, I honestly can't see how this has any bearing on "userspace" as it were. If I were a VM vendor, I'd be very concerned, but application and library developers would seem to be entirely unaffected by the suit.
Imagine you are developing a new language to run on the JVM, and it turns out that to get a 10x performance improvement, it would be really great to have this new bytecode instruction added to the JVM. To get it into every JVM, you would have to go through Oracle anyway, so nothing changes there. But if you wanted to distribute your own variation, a hypothetical openJVM+, Oracle is saying that they may well go after you with patent suits.
Good for people happy with the current JVM, looking for stability. Bad for people wanting to bring innovations to the JVM without explicit consent from Oracle.
So as I said, the exceptions to this might be highly VM vendors, such as Azul, GAE, and various people that have worked on (maybe deployed, I don't know?) full-stack Java operating systems and/or Java-on-a-chip (for embedded applications I suppose). Anyone developing applications, libraries, et al. are entirely unaffected AFAICT.
On devices, there is only Dalvik, no Java.
What uses Java is Android SDK, for their tools. Clojure is Java application the same way, as Android SDK tools are.
The best developers at Sun were already leaving, with this ? - if I was a recruiter I'd be outside their offices on monday handing out flyers.
Oracle has committed seppuku. They simply won't be able to hire good developers any more, they've horribly tainted their brand. For the next 3-5 years while the lawsuit goes on they're going to be the SCO of the developer world. No decent developer is going to want to touch them.
Any time one of their developers introduces themselves as "I work as a developer for Oracle" to another developer at a party, conference, meetup etc. what do you think the topic of conversation is going to be ?
Once software development companies are no-longer able to hire the best developers there's only one direction for the company to go in.
It's not like super talented hackers were beating down the door to work there already (with maybe the exception of their core database team).
But still, no other company in the world has attracted so many bright minds (Jon Von Neuman, John Backus, Ted Cobb, etc), got so many Nobel prizes or made so many important technological achievements.
If you want to see a company dying because it can't hire good developers because of it's reputation look at Nokia.
If the fork subsets or supersets Java, or if it fails to comply to the Java specification, I believe that Sun's patent promise does not apply, and so the fork would be vulnerable to Oracle patent suits.
A discussion of vertical integration and competition and of maintaining control over the key parts of the product stacks, of managing outside dependencies, of Adobe, and of Google and J2ME, from a few months back:
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-is-a-genius-contro...
And what Oracle might seek in return here will be interesting. Buckets of money would be the most obvious, but Oracle can also play a much longer game.
Indeed, it kills Java ME stone dead. But it was dead a couple of years ago. So no loss there.
However, I'm not clear how this affects Android, since Android is not Java.
When I code Android I 'feel' like I'm coding Java, because the syntax is the same. But I'm not running Java. I know that, and I feel that.
So, if Oracle want to attack Java, or protect its patents, take your pick, I say: knock yourself out. Here in Android world, it's no concern of mine as I'm not using Java.
Attacking Java isn't an attack on Android development. Although that appears to be what Oracle thinks it is doing.
Forrester Research analyst John Rymer agrees [ this will have a chilling effect on developers ]: "I think this lawsuit casts the die on Java’s future," he said. "It will become a slow-evolving legacy technology. Oracle’s lawsuit links deep innovation in Java with license fees, and that will kill deep innovation in Java by anyone outside Oracle or startups hoping to sell out to Oracle. Software innovation just doesn’t do well in the kind of environment Oracle just created."
"Deep innovation" in e.g. JVM GC for functional languages (Clojure) is exactly the sort of thing I'm interested in ... and that's now at best on hold while I get a better grasp of this mess and its implications. But the real scope of the implications probably won't become clear for years and I'm certainly not going to wait that long.
Maybe that's not such a bad thing.