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Comment by Kylekramer | Hacker News Reader

I just don't buy that everyone is equally a bad actor here. Even if we take for granted that Google are two faced liars who secretly love patents, their public messaging is completely different. Google repeatedly has come out against them. The members of Rockstar brag about their patents, even flaunted them in the iPhone announcement. That difference is enough to make me draw a line in between the companies.

Of course, as Gruber's mocking of Android's openness has shown, he believes attempting to live up to an ideal and failing somewhat is worse than not even trying. At least when it comes to Google.

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A comparison could be made to the journalistic debate over "false equivalence" in political reporting. For reference, see: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/a-bounti...

For entertainment value, I took a paragraph from Gruber's post and made a few substitutions:

    If you want to argue that the whole budget debate stinks, and that all of 
    these politcal parties are abusing it, I agree. But if you want to argue that 
    conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers are in the wrong, and poor Democrats and  
    liberals are victims of one-sided abuse, I’m going to have to disagree. If 
    there’s a difference between Republicans and Democrats in this war, it’s 
    not over nobility, but rather over how well each side has played the 
    game. It’s looking more and more like Democrats made a strategic blunder...

Though you should not take this too seriously, the structural parallels are amusing, superficial or not.

I'd call it, "contemporary boilerplate rhetoric."

It's certainly your prerogative, but realize that you are effectively saying you prefer to be lied to, at least in this instance.

So both sides have different approaches, and are known malevolent actors, but one is better in your book because of their PR?... :(

PR, despite the bad rap it gets as bullshit, is not worthless. Apple, Microsoft and their cohorts proudly try to create a public perception that software patents are essential and deserved. Google has done the opposite by trying to get the public to understand the damage software patents can create. Given that patents are government controlled system, public perception is important. I find that PR distinction enough to not tar everyone with the same brush.

To clarify, I do believe Google is fundamentally doing their best to improve the current patent situation. Perhaps naïvely. I just wrote about the situation with the assumption that Google are evil liars to approach Gruber on his level.

Not both sides.

Apple and Microsoft has been waging anti-android patent war for ages, suing HTC, Samsung, Barns&Noble and many other Android manufacturers.

They are publicly pro-patents and when they are failing in the marketplace are suing anyone who poses a threat to their business.

Google is publicly against patents, releases a lot of source code under Apache license that grants patent rights and, as far as I know, haven't launched an offensive patent suit (i.e. against someone who hasn't sued them first).

The Motorola lawsuits that Gruber (and quite a few anti-Google people) is so keen to quote happened years before Google acquired Motorola.

At this point I don't even understand why people expect Google to just take it and not launch offensive against Apple and Microsoft. You can be pro-peace but if someone points a gun at you and shoot, you shoot back and that's what Google should do: shoot back.

I'd like to know where Apple has been public about patents because I find that surprising. If anything, there seems to be hardly any corporate communication addressing these types of things letting the media speculate to their heart's content.

Your premise about Motorola is incorrect. Google was required to approve the patent assertions against Apple. From FOSS Patents:

>A few months after that Zeitgeist talk, in January 2012, Google authorized a Motorola Mobility lawsuit against Apple over six patents in the Southern District of Florida. The merger agreement was publicly available and absolutely unequivocal about the fact that Motorola needed Google's consent prior to bringing new IP assertions while the merger was under antitrust review.

But even if that weren't the case, there would be nothing stopping them from settling or withdrawing the case.

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