Oracle says 'Google wants to throw its licensees and users under the bus' | Hacker News Reader

Oracle says 'Google wants to throw its licensees and users under the bus'

fosspatents.blogspot.com

22 pointsgrellas23 comments

To summarize: Google is asking Oracle to provide evidence of specific devices that are infringing on Oracle's patents/copyrights. Oracle suggests, and author agrees, that this constitutes Google throwing its partners under a bus. Author goes on to make somewhat questionable claims that this might eventually cause Oracle to sue popular app makers.

"Instead of holding Google responsible for the downstream, Oracle might then have to enforce its rights against device makers, telcos, app developers, or users. I doubt Oracle would sue every app developer or user out there, but developers of wildly successful apps could be at risk, and it wouldn't be a comfortable situation for corporate users that have thousands of Android devices in operation."

I made it clear that it's both a burden-of-proof question and a liability question. If Google refuses to accept liability for the downstream, then Oracle may feel forced to go after the downstream directly. Any better idea for how to interpret Oracle's claim that Google 'wants to throw its licensees and users under the bus'?

Your interpretation of Oracle's claim is spot on. I am just questioning the validity of the said claim. As you note, both parties are trying to make the current case more costly for the other. The burden-of-proof question does very little to alter the basic cost/benefit calculus of suing Android partners for Oracle.

The liability question (Google offering patent indemnification to Android trademark licensees) is a different issue. While in an ideal world, Google would be able to provide such protection to its licensees, it is simply more expedient for Google to vigorously fight Oracle's claims in court and provide protection to its partners indirectly.

I see we agree on large parts of this.

Concerning cost/benefit ratio, Oracle wouldn't have to sue them all. It could contact many of them and some would pay. Some would refuse to pay, and then Oracle would single out one or two or more of them and sue. Just the fact that they make good on their threat to sue would get some others to pay. And if they prevail over only one, they will get everyone to pay.

Big guy says to another big guy :"You better pay me, or I'll beat up all your little friends!"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Oracle's argument essentially "Google is throwing its partners under a bus because we're going to sue them if we don't get what we want"? How is Google throwing people that Oracle is suing under a bus? Is anyone else reminded of the RIAA's decision to sue people who pirate music? Either:

1) Oracle is bluffing or

2) Oracle really is stupid enough to sue Google's users.

If Oracle really does decide to sue the users of Android, it isn't Google that's going to end up looking bad. People are going to blame the company that's suing them. It would be about the dumbest PR move they could possibly make and would destroy any goodwill they have left in the developer and open source communities. Either way, I think Google should call Oracle's bluff.

Seven patents. Seven. The most intellectually dishonest thing Oracle (and Mueller) are doing is pretending that the seven patents involved are somehow evidence that Android ecosystem is reasonably the property of Oracle. Even if the patents are ruled valid, they still represent a tiny fraction of the IP involved.

Only takes one patent. I don't know the details, so maybe its some corner that can easily just be cut off. But the quantity of patents brought is generally not evidence of anything, except how long the trial might take.

Neither Oracle nor I claim that the Android ecosystem is Oracle's property. It's just that if one or more of Oracle's patents read on Dalvik, every Android phone and every Android app can potentially be viewed as infringing material.

As far as I'm concerned, those seven patents are way too broad and fundamental. But they exist.

This guy is the epitome of concern trolling.

Isn't this the liar that had to walk java source code showing up in android claims way back just last month?

edit: to be clear: not grellas, for whom I have the highest respect, but the fosspatents dude

yep. same troll

How exactly is he a troll? He's been one of the leading fighters against software patents, and has presented years of good analysis.

The notion that he's some kind of troll seems to have originated at Groklaw, most likely because he violates the Groklaw Prime Directive (do not criticize IBM).

You are right about the Groklaw/IBM "prime directive". Groklaw actually linked to my NoSoftwarePatents campaign several times in 2004, and the relationship turned sour in January 2005 when I criticized IBM's patent pledge. Groklaw was then against me in connection with the Oracle/Sun debate, and completely flew off the handle in the IBM/TurboHercules context.

I have repeatedly (and even somewhat recently) tried to engage with "PJ" in a constructive dialog. Unfortunately, I didn't walk through an open door there.

He's not fighting software patents any more though is he? He's decided that fight can't be won and now he inserts himself into every other press article involving patents and open source and says that whoever holds the patents will win and those opposing stand no chance. Often this campaign of patent FUD (yes, I know it's a cliche) involves linkbaity headlines and articles like this one.

Whether it's just out of control self-promotion or something even better paid, I'd quite like it if he stopped getting himself quoted as if he's speaking for the wider open source community. They have a variety of opinions on patents and how to work with, work around or work against them but even within that broad spectrum Florian's more recent opinions seem to be somewhat extreme and idiosyncratic, not to mention overly dramatic.

I take a more differentiated look at those patent disputes than what you claim. I encourage you to take a look at the documents contained in this folder: http://www.scribd.com/my_document_collections/2770688

What you call a "linkbaity headline" was just a quote from Oracle's filing.

I never claimed nor implied to speak for the wider open source community. In this blog post (published in December) I even made it absolutely clear that I don't: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/12/foss-focus-philosoph...

I don't recall him lying about anything. He seemed pretty open about it. Said what he found and where he found it. Shady would be, "I found Oracle code in Android, but won't disclose where".

He laid the cards on the table, gave his interpretation, and let the community weigh in. While not nearly as damaging as he thought, I can't really ask for much more.

miss stating things on purpose is called LYING!

Sooner or later the money paths to his handler will show up..

Hi earl, I was informed of you calling me a "liar" here and I understand words like that are used in online discussions without being meant personally. Anyway, I had provided links to where the code could be found -- in the public repositories of Android 2.2 and 2.3 (i.e., the currently most relevant versions for smartphones).

And in addition to the general repository, the code could also be found in various source availability packages published by Motorola, LG and Samsung: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/01/android-device-maker... Dell and HTC left those files out.

Most of the confusion resulted from a very aggressive blog post by Ed Burnette, who runs a ZDNet blog that officially covers all sorts of software development topics but is overwhelmingly about Android evangelism. I'm an Android user, too; my blog is hosted by Google, and I use other Google services (even Buzz, really). But I'm skeptical of the IP situation concerning Android (and WebM, to be honest).

I just reread your original post [1]. I'd like to apologize -- I just skimmed your article and those by Burnette [2] and ars [3]. I came away with a very wrong impression.

The relevant quote is "I have discovered additional material that Oracle might present to the court as examples of copyright-infringing material in the Android codebase" [1]. Which is indeed true. The other articles draw a distinction between code in the repo under unit tests and code that is built and deployed onto devices. Which is helpful to Google, but still much worse than there simply being no Oracle owned code in the repo.

So, my apologies.

It would probably have been better if your original article more clearly distinguished between code in the repo and code that becomes a binary and is deployed onto the android devices, but it was also my responsibility as a reader to pick up on that.

[1] http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-evidence-support...

[2] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/oops-no-copied-java-code-...

[3] http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/01/new-alleged-...

I can't believe I'm seeing Florian Muller glibly being called a liar and troll and getting upvoted on HackerNews.

Disagree with him on particular points all you want (and back it up), but he's done more for FOSS than 99.999% of the posters here. Anyone remember the NoSoftwarePatents campaign in Europe several years ago? Guess who led it.

Calling him a liar and troll should be way below HN standards.

Since I can no longer edit this post, please see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2199496

Groklaw's take:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110209012513344

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110206222954641

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