Oracle scrubs site of embarrassing Java blog | Hacker News Reader

Oracle scrubs site of embarrassing Java blog

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56 pointsabraham24 comments

Congratulations, Oracle! Not only have you completely failed to eradicate that information from the internet, but you've just made arguments to estoppel 10x more effective.

You'd think Oracle wouldn't be this ignorant. At least an apology would have saved some face.

As a long time follower of Jonathan's blog, I must say I'm shocked Oracle would step down to this level. Oracle may be more business-savvy and able to make more money out of Sun technology than Jonathan was, but I'll be the first one to say that Jonathan ran a much nicer and more ethical company (for whatever that is worth).

Oracle's been fucking up links/etc... to the sun.com domain for a while now.

Remember all the research papers that you can't get to that were originally on sun.com? Same thing as this. Not overly surprising, but its sad to see so much useful content get nuked. The sun engineers that blogged generally had some really cool things relating to what they did. Like the dtrace guys, the kernel guys, and generally anyone in their engineering groups.

It was extremely open as far as businesses go, and I for one will be sad to see oracle nuke the sun.com domain's useful bits away behind contract paywalls. Even though the company I work for has contracts, the general vibe isn't close to the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

It's astonishing how many companies try it. I love the Internet for things like this :)

I guess you only hear about it when it has the Streisand effect. Perhaps there are many more cases that succeeded which you don't hear about?

I think the comparison to Streisand effect is way off. Oracle has not issued any cease and desist letters to third parties. All they did was edit their own website. Big whoop.

If a company's policy changes, they can't update their website to reflect the new policy? Really, the internet is carved in stone?

the Streisand effect doesn't just apply to someone attempting to silence another, It applies to any attempt to remove information (although it does usually need to be information of some interest in order to apply).

I don't think that google was originally going with Sun Java is in dispute by anyone, thus I don't see the relevance of this to estoppel. This is just an admission by Sun that Google had licensed (at one point) Sun software.

Not as interesting as this smoking gun from Andy Rubin.

This is pretty damning evidence of willful infringement on the part of Google.

One of the most interesting passages in today's order quotes from an October 2005 email by Google's Android boss Andy Rubin back in 2005:

"If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language - or - 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way"

If a jury sees that statement (and if there is a trial, then the jury will see it for sure), Google has a very serious problem. And "very serious" may be an understatement. Moreover, a statement like that showing up in publicly accessible court documents now may cause significant concern among many of Google's Android partners (including, but not limited to, device makers).

http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/judge-orders-overhau...

Florian Mueller, is that you?

You copy/pasted this comment from your identical comment 14 hours ago, which was rebutted and downvoted into oblivion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2797179

what rebuttal? just a bunch of comments from people who are in denial of the fact that Google willingly and knowingly infringed on Java patents when they were developing Android.

Google already indicated that they are willing to pay and settle this thing with Oracle.

  > what rebuttal? just a bunch of comments from people who are
  > in denial of the fact that Google willingly and knowingly
  > infringed on Java patents when they were developing Android

At this point, you've revealed yourself to be a troll, but I'll bite because I'm bored.

All of those comments were pointing out the same things that people are pointing out here. The phrases "defend our actions" and "make enemies" within the context of Java does not logically (nor legally) imply willful and deliberate patent infringements against Java patents.

Note that nothing in this 'rebuttal' says that Google didn't "willingly and knowingly" infringe Java patents. The argument is that you have not presented anything that proves that they did.

ahem dude.. 99.9999% of all US patents suits are never brought to trial..it was not settlement offer but a debate on stay two different things ..could not MS find better mouthpieces?

> could not MS find better mouthpieces?

They need knowledgeable people with low moral standards. That's hard to find.

I don't see anything in that statement which admits to infringement, willful or otherwise. You may be reading a bit too far between the lines on this one.

Note that the alternative was to abandon "our work." That pretty solidly indicates that they believe that what they've made is their own.

But that's what I hate about software patents: it forces people to abandon their own work because someone thought of something that, when phrased in the broadest language legally possible, makes it sound like they've though of someone else's ideas, even when they've never actually created anything of the sort.

Andy's email, together with the fact that Google executives discussed obtaining a license for Java just weeks before Oracle filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit is pretty damning.

"documenting the discussion could make Google look bad to a jury, which might conclude that Google knew it was using Oracle's technology without permission."

"I'm not saying there was willful infringement, but how are you going to answer this?" demanded U.S. District Judge William Alsup, as he grilled Google attorneys during a hearing in which he repeatedly probed for weakness in the arguments of both sides."

At one point, Holtzman directed Alsup to an internal email sent to Google Android chief Andy Rubin from a Google engineer.

Under the direction of Google co-founders Page and Sergey Brin, Google engineers explored alternatives to using Java technology, but ultimately concluded they "all suck," the email said.

========> Google should license Java technology, according to the email, which Alsup read aloud in court.

SOURCES:

http://www.siliconvalley.com/companies/ci_18525231?source=pk...

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/California/News/201...

That makes more sense, but that doesn't rule out the idea that they believed they had a legal right to do this in spite of Oracle's position. It's clear that they knew they'd be in hot water with Oracle, so if anything, I would say that they believed that they would be vindicated in court.

In the end, I guess it boils down to whether or not one believes that they infringe on any valid patents or copyrights. I'm not sure that I do, but I have a hard time seeing any software patents as valid.

That quote is not damning in any way. It is completely normal for a company to discuss the options of:

1) Licensing technology or

2) Not licensing technology and working around the barriers the unlicensed patents pose, either technically or legally.

Both are completely valid ways of doing business.

He forgot that the Sun and Google talks were about not patents but on joint venture to build out android..

At one point in Android's development, Google was using Sun Java, and it is not really embarrassing to see the CEO of Sun congratulating google on becoming a customer. For whatever reasons, google later switched to their own VM, etc.

It seems that people who think this is embarrassing to Oracle think that Schwartz is talking about google's VM rather than the Sun one in this blog post.

I think Oracle has been eradicating all signs of Previous Management of Sun from the internet. Not because of the litigation with google but because Sun's management was kinda embarrassing-- at least from the perspective of Oracle.

This post isn't actually damning because it reinforces the fact that Google was a Sun customer, and thus had access to Sun IP, prior to doing their own thing.

Can you give a reference about this assumption:

"At one point in Android's development, Google was using Sun Java, and it is not really embarrassing to see the CEO of Sun congratulating google on becoming a customer. For whatever reasons, google later switched to their own VM, etc."

      At one point in Android's development, Google was 
      using Sun Java

Android developers still use Oracle's Java in development mode -- only after the code gets compiled for distribution it then gets translated to Dalvik's bytecode.

But Dalvik was there from the start and if you're implying that somehow Android used Sun's Java instead of the current Dalvik, then no, it never had.

From the moment it launched, Android has always used Dalvik VM. And that post praises them after Android launched.

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