Hacker News Reader

Comment by Steko | Hacker News Reader

Some companies will have to pay a slightly higher per device royalty than they had wanted to and/or remove/modify some functionality. It's the Apocalypse! It's Thermonuclear War!

View on HN

I'm not sure if you are aware but "thermonuclear war" was the term Steve Jobs used. It's certainly not just Groklaw's observation.

I'd wish he didn't. It's not a "thermonuclear war" until there are iCBM's flying everywhere. Some phrases have too profound/big meaning to be hijacked by business marketing like that.

Apple isn't gunning for royalties, they are trying to use the courts to remove their competitors from the market entirely.

Requiring royalties for open source, independently developed software is Wrong. An attack on Android is an affront to all independent software developers. Also, Apple has said they are not interested in licensing.

"independently developed"

This is a new claim and not one that will find many takers imho.

"Apple has said they are not interested in licensing"

This is far from the truth. They certainly offered licensing to Samsung. $30/device might sound like a lot but that was a starting point in a negotiation.

Do you think Samsung's 3G patents cost Apple as much as they want charge Samsung for rounded corners?

Samsung isn't the only Android manufacturer. It also isn't the only one being sued by Apple.

One of the benefits of Android being open source and free software is that it encourages small players to start competing with giants by giving them a nice OS and the ability to tweak it. This is why we can have smartphones, tablets, netbooks, smartwatches, ski goggles, cameras running Android. All designed and produced by many different companies, from multinational giants to small Kickstarter startups. No worries though. Soon, every one of them will realize they can get sued for "text correction" and how naive they were to think that they can just build upon open source and free software to realize their goals. As a startup should you care? Absolutely not! You should simply develop for iOS only, using iMacs and Macbooks.

If you don't like Apple Open WebOS and MeeGo are interesting open options, I hope these will gain traction. I have never been a fan of the whole Dalvik/JVM architecture on Android. The update mechanism has always been especially shitty as well, every single device seems to need massive amounts of driver tweaking and customisation making the whole point of Java and its high portability rather pointless.

> If you don't like Apple Open WebOS and MeeGo are interesting open options, I hope these will gain traction

And if they gain traction, they will be sued by Apple.

And, unlike Android, neither Open WebOS nor MeeGo have a sponsor that would even consider trying to protect them.

If you wanted to see either Open WebOS or MeeGo in the US (rather than China), Apple's lawsuits have effectively closed that door for the foreseeable future. No smartphone startup would be crazy enough to wade into this legal minefield.

Where did you hear $30/device? The number I've seen quoted was $50. Both seem outrageous to me at first glance.

> "independently developed"

> This is a new claim and not one that will find many takers imho.

So Netscape Navigator 2.0b1 was cribbing off the the iPhone when it designed "Live URLs" detecting URLs and email addresses in mail and newsgroup messages? And Borland had a particularly good time machine to add detecting phone numbers to dial in your notes to the Sidekick TSR in the 80s?

Oh, I forgot, Google clearly copied Siri when it released "universal search" for the G1 (in Cupcake, IIRC). I mean they should have known that porting Google Desktop Search to Android would obviously infringe on Apple's patents. I've sure Eric Schmidt got the idea for Desktop Search in an Apple board meeting. I just wonder how he got his notes back to Googlers in 2004.

Just being open source should not provide blanket immunity. This is also hardly some small, independent developers we are talking about, they are very large international companies. IIRC Android Alliance rarely, if ever, accept 'independent' contributions, it is just a dump of source code when they feel like it (Android 3?).

I am a big fan of open source but I totally disagree on this specific case.

If you are big fan of open source, I would suggest you to consider diving into source and send a few patches. Because AOSP receives about 100 independent contributions every month and almost half of term are merged into the master tree.

Look here. IP licensing is the tradition in this industry. All big telecom vendors pay each other yearly amounts for IP rights. Normally they simply bulk them together and see who got most. Now and then a court case flares up (it's a negotiation tactic). In this case, what has happened is simply an escalation between two biggest competitors where no one wants to back down, and Apple "got lucky" in this particular court's interpretation. Apple is not a bully among nice guys. Everyone has been suing. Nokia, Microsoft, Motorola, etc. Everyone is gathering patents like crazy. And remember, Android device vendors are already paying large amounts to Microsoft.

Yes, it's not the signs of a healthy industry, as most software patents are silly and things will get sillier as this progresses. Most are being patented simply because they can, to add a number to the total as ammo for next licensing discussion.

Its funny that you say 'slightly'. The demands from apple are 4-5 orders of magnitude what they paid samsung for royalty fees on samsung's patents.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com