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Comment by emmanueloga_ | Hacker News Reader

First thing, I think Graal/Truffle is really cool tech. Second thing... what's the story when it comes to Truffle licensing? :-)

Would Oracle control the implementation of a particular language that used Truffle? Could they decide to "deplatform" that language? ("we don't authorize the use of Truffle in language implementation X for Y reasons") Or charge for licenses for users of that language? Or other somber scenarios... according to current licensing or in a hypothetical future ...

Compare with, say, LLVM infrastructure, were it seems more certain that a language can be implemented as free software and with less restrictions or caveats.

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This seems like FUD. Truffle is licensed under the permissive UPL[0]. Even if they decided to make newer versions of it closed-source the opensource versions would still be available, and their licenses would continue to hold.

This happened with solaris: oracle decided to make new ‘official’ development closed, but the last opensource version continued to be used and developed by the community.

0. https://github.com/oracle/graal/blob/master/truffle/LICENSE....

"FUD" is a concerted effort to outsell a competitor or something like that... I'm just an individual with real questions about implications of the licenses involved. I bet others have similar questions.

Graal licensing seems pretty complicated to me, and if I get it right Truffle only makes sense when used together with Graal.

From what I could find in the FAQ [1]:

* "GraalVM Community is free to use for any purpose and comes with no strings attached, but also no guarantees or support."

* "GraalVM Enterprise includes Improved performance and security over GraalVM Community"

In general it seems pretty good, but I think it is a bit painful to have to pay for certain optimizations... again, imagine if projects had to pay to, say, "clang -O3". Also could be painful to get stuck in Graal/Truffle version N if version N+1 switches to different licensing terms.

In general commercial compilers are a bit of a drag to work with... I use Saxon from time to time and sometimes I need to check the matrix to see if a feature is available or not [2]. For instance, until version 10.0, higher order functions (!) was a feature one had to pay for, for whatever reason.

1: https://www.graalvm.org/faq/#how-is-graalvm-licensed

2: https://www.saxonica.com/products/feature-matrix-10.xml

As far as I know, full, profile-guided optimizations are the only paid features. Also, if Graal is instead used in place of Hotspot as a JIT compiler, there is no need for that so you get the “whole package”.

Sadly, a significant number of performance/sandboxing/debugging features is only available in EE. Also holds for JIT (at least wrt. performance).

Which is why you can enjoy all the LLVM features used by Apple, Sony and Nintendo. /s

GraalVM is open source project

This didn't stop Oracle from suing Google about Java APIs.

Google deserved it. They took the APIs out from the commercial implementation.

Google wasn't copying from OpenJDK.

Java wasn’t open-source at the time Google copied it. In fact, the only thing that was prohibited by Sun’s license was mobile usage - they wanted to make money on Java with it. So Google should get sued to hell for blatantly copying it (and they are really bad at shepharding, just look at the state of android java vs openjdk)

This comment is playing fast and loose with the facts. No part of Oracle's suit against Google relied on the claim that "Java wasn't open-source at the time Google copied it" (for good reason).

> they are really bad at shepharding, just look at the state of android java vs openjdk

This has nothing to do with copyright law―the thing that Google was sued for. There is no legal argument in this remark (which is the problem with about half the comments that appear saying that Google was in the wrong), just an assertion based on an appeal to emotion that Google deserved to be sued, and then working backwards from there to present a half-formed argument.

> No part of Oracle's suit against Google relied on the claim that "Java wasn't open-source at the time Google copied it"

It had a specific license explicitly disallowing mobile use. Everything else is irrelevant - google knowingly broke the license, didn’t they? This is copyright infringement. As for whether their copy of Java’s API at the time could constitute fair use and thus not subject to copyright law is up to debate and my personal opinion doesn’t matter on it.

This is a perplexing response. Oracle's case against Google is about copyright infringement. On that point, you are correct, but that's where your comments part from reality.

Oracle in its case against Google is not arguing that "Java wasn't open-source at the time Google copied it". Oracle in its case against Google is not arguing that there was "a specific license explicitly disallowing mobile use". You on the other hand are arguing these things. That's where the problem lies: you're asserting infringement based on two fact claims that don't even match what Oracle's legal team presented to the courts.

(For that reason, your remark that "Everything else is irrelevant" is just bizarre and ironic—it's your comments here that are irrelevant... _None_ of the things you're saying are what the case is actually about.)

Here are some simple questions: to what extent does your knowledge of Oracle v. Google originate from secondary analysis and commentary about the case vs. direct knowledge (e.g. the briefs and testimony provided by Oracle and those who testified)? Do you have any firsthand experience reviewing the material that was presented in/to the courts? This is the problem with Internet peanut galleries. The answer to the last question can be solid "no", and yet commenters are undeterred from spewing nonsense from their gut that has no basis in reality.

About your last paragraph, I did try to get as close to primary sources as possible, without digging into the actual briefs, and I am no lawyer, so my understanding on these topics have a shaky foundation.

But if you have done so, at least you as a presumably secondhand information source, could you give me a rebuttal on why am I wrong?

Just like your last message[1], the answer is "but why male models?" (in other words, I just answered that[2]; do you want me to repeat it[3] or something?)

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25847574

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25846415

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848980

> It had a specific license explicitly disallowing mobile use. Everything else is irrelevant...

The Java Specification explicitly allows people to re-implement the Java Language as long as they follow a few guidelines (which google allegedly did not, hence the lawsuit) -- even if they decide to target a mobile platform.

Google could have bought Sun, decided not to take the opportunity.

They also made a clusterfuck job copying Java APIs for their Android Java (aka Google's J++) dialect, where Java library authors have to hunt down what works exactly in each Android version.

They have only themselves to blame.

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