Response from Oracle to Apache on JCP | Hacker News Reader

Response from Oracle to Apache on JCP

blogs.oracle.com

27 pointsjancona24 comments

"Oracle provides TCK licenses under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms consistent with its obligations under the JSPA"

IIRC, the whole problem of the Apache folks is that this is simply not true.

It's been my experience that when someone says "reasonable" terms, in regards to a contract or license, the meaning of "reasonable" is largely skewed in their favor.

So, what agreement did they actually offer?

http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/sun_apache_ip_in_pi...

Is probably one of the best explanations of the situation.

FOU restrictions would stop any real open source implementation.

And didn't Oracle agree with the latter before they bought Sun and therefore Java?

Does Oracle still not realize that there's no-one in the entire FOSS community that trusts them?

To Oracle: If you want to get our trust back, you need to do these two things:

1) Drop your stupid patent dick-waving against Google 2) Open source Java proper

Then, and only then, will we talk.

Yeah, that was a wonderful statement which TLDR; to "nuh-uh!" rather than any actual addressing of the issues.

As much as I would love to see that happen, it wont.

What is developer trust and why does Oracle care?

As long as CIOs trust Oracle to run their business on Oracle products, they are fine.

Hmmm, I have to wonder.

E.g. when will "Javaschools" (for which I'll include MIT since it's a Python and Java school) switch to something else?

Not any time soon (new curriculum development is expensive and very political), not even in the foreseeable future ... but when I started playing this game (1977) lower tier schools were teaching FORTRAN and COBOL. That situation did not last forever.

I'm having a difficult time reading their response, as their raised middle finger aimed in the ASF's general direction appears to be obscuring the view.

Disappointing.

I haven't seen such a shining example of, "This response has been vetted by legal and PR" in quite a long time.

I like Jim's response on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/jimjag/status/4284342641623040

The way I put together this whole issue is this:

1. ASF wants the java license to be a grant of patent license.

2. ASF needs this for the Apache Harmony project.

3. Google Android uses Apache Harmory.

4. Oracle sues Google because of copyright infringement in the apache harmory related codes.

5. Oracle couldn't sue Google, if Harmory had a proper TCK license with patent grant in it.

Am I seeing this through correctly?

While Oracle is making copyright claims, the bigger issue is their patent claims. Oracle is claiming patent violation by Dalvik, which is Google's JVM that they developed independently. See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101111114933605

Well, more like it's Google's not-a-JVM VM that they provide a JVM -> Dalvik bytecode translator. E.g. from stack based to the rather rare choice of a register based VM.

Therefore no Harmony patent grant could cover Dalvik, as wmf points out elsewhere in this thread.

No. First, understand that the Sun-ASF disagreement is older than Android. Second, TCK licensing doesn't matter to Android because they would never pass anyway.

The issue is really about Sun promising to certify Harmony, then realizing that such certification would jeopardize the J2ME cash cow and finding a sneaky way to break their promise. (I suspect the cow has already died from other causes, but by now the parties are deeply invested in their respective positions.)

Oracle needs to wake up and see that J2ME is dead and deader...

Still, feature phones are still sold with it. I don't know the licensing conditions, but it's quite possible Oracle expects to get some money out of that.

I know one of my phones has it and its Gmail client requires it.

AOL still makes money on dialup. You can safely bet that Oracle still makes money from Java ME.

Won't mobile phones soon be powerful enough to run OpenJDK SE? Will this matter in one year?

I think wmf implied the dead cow is also an irrelevant one. I am not sure about it being dead - lots of phones still come with it and, if licensing terms include number of units, that's quite a lot. It will die soon, but, in the meantime, it may be getting Oracle some free money anyway.

Sure, but which ones?

iOS: Java is banned

Android: already has Dalvik

Blackberry: already paid for J2ME

WebOS: Java is non-strategic

Nice, phones with 4GB of memory on their way? :)

It's not just "promising" to certify Harmony. Sun had a contractual obligation to do so.

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