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
edit: to be clear: not grellas, for whom I have the highest respect, but the fosspatents dude
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).
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-...
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.
Sooner or later the money paths to his handler will show up..
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.
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).
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.
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.
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...