Comment by jedsmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jedsmith | Hacker News Reader

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Your comment leaks quite a bit of bias against Oracle. You'd be just as frustrated if someone violated licensing on a tiny part of your software, then relicensed it and gave it to OEMs for worldwide distribution. In fact, I'd wager that you'd be more frustrated, because you don't have the legal resources that Oracle does to go after it.

Sure, whatever opinion you have about Oracle might be valid, particularly with the way they're handling the JCP and OpenSolaris. Whatever. However, there is an underlying issue that is a bit bigger here, and the blog author is pointing that out in a reasonable fashion. It doesn't matter who is suing and who is sued; copyright infringement is copyright infringement.

You could make the argument that this isn't any of Oracle's business, but they absorbed everything about Sun: their IP, their liabilities, and so on. Sun was perhaps considering this action before Oracle bought them, and we'll never know.

What if the companies were reversed? Would you make the same remarks?

"...It doesn't matter who is suing and who is sued; copyright infringement is copyright infringement...."

One of the few positive things about our legal system is that it at least attempts to take "intent" and "proportionality" into account when making judgments.

Hopefully who ever makes decisions about this case will think about what was actually done. There's a world of difference between a hard-working team inadvertently cribbing a little code, and a large company gaining a massive strategic advantage by violating copyright on mission-critical source code.

"What if the companies were reversed? Would you make the same remarks"

Given google's reputation for being open, they're not likely to pursue a law suit like oracle just because there's money in it. The media outrage will hurt their reputation more than the monetary gain.

Oracle doesn't need money. License Oracle Database if you don't believe me.

It's silly to imply that Oracle brought this suit against Google just to score a few bucks, but easy to say when you dislike Oracle. The alternative, and very likely real reason for the suit, is that Oracle actually cares about its intellectual property and would prefer that Google not do what they will with it.

>The alternative, and very likely real reason for the suit, is that Oracle actually cares about its intellectual property and would prefer that Google not do what they will with it.

I think it's far more likely that Oracle has seen a way to get a slice of the Android pie, and the rapidly growing long-term revenue stream that it likely represents.

> and the rapidly growing long-term revenue stream that it likely represents.

Again, they don't need a long-term revenue stream. I'd wager that their revenue stream from Oracle Database and other products, as well as the long-term support contracts for those products, shadows Android in comparison. Bold, I know, but Oracle is widely, widely used in the enterprise sector. The salary for an Oracle DBA alone speaks volumes regarding this.

In your world, Oracle executives sit around and think: boy, we could score a small percentage of that Android market. It pales in comparison to what we can make off of enterprise customers, but that cash flow is definitely worth the negative publicity and community recoil!

Completely ridiculous.

Your comment is merely another angle of repetitive arguments attempting to make Oracle out to be the bad party for suing Google. While I dislike Oracle just as much as the next geek for their treatment of open-source products, they might actually have a point with this lawsuit. That's all I'm saying, and watching my karma swing around wildly for taking the middle ground instead of jumping on the anti-Oracle bandwagon is amusing.

Oracle does not, and never has cared about their reputation with the technical community. They care about their reputation with the people who actually buy their software.

The people who buy their software understand things like duty to shareholders, and Oracle has historically determined that exercises like this are part of that duty.

I never said I disliked oracle, I don't have any opinion of them since I don't use any of their products. However, I am implying that they don't have or depend on the same public reputation that google does. Google depends on its reputation to hire the best talent and anything that will make them look like the bad guys will turn away a lot of people good enough to be choosing which top company to work for.

About suing for money: The accumulation of patent in large companies is necessary because if they don't patent everything, someone else will and they'll be in trouble. But suing another big corporation "just to protect the patent" is mutually assured destruction because the company being sued has probably patented a lot of petty little things that the company suing is using and can counter sue. Unless there's a lot to gain, they don't because the only people that will get anything out of it is their patent lawyers.

Oracle does have a case against google, but saying that they're doing it just to protect their intellectual property is a bit naive.

I think it has a lot to do with the failure of Java ME.

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