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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I think it was a tactical mistake to include the folks affiliated with Google. Amicus briefs are supposed to be from parties who have an interest in the dispute, but not a personal stake in either party. Including so many people affiliated with Google will come across negatively.

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Unfortunately, it's just a background fact that Google employs a lot of well-known computer science figures. So this was bound to happen unless they explicitly forbade them from signing this, which I also don't think is good.

I find "30. John Gage" interesting in that he was Chief Scientist at Sun. I always thought that Google's Dalvik was a hack around Sun's business model for Java, in bypassing the need to license JVM. The fact that John Gage signed the brief seems to imply that he considers Google's hack to be less ominous than Oracle's attempt to change the game.

The Java class/jar file formats are inherently slow and Dalvik's dex code fixes that problem. I don't think the licensing hack would have worked since you can't escape patents by making syntax changes.

Well, that is what the courts are discussing at the moment. It may or may not work, but the origins of Dalvik as a "licensing hack" are well-known.

It probably depends whether the people reading it know who the people signing it actually are. Vint Cerf, Ken Thompson and Ray Kurzweil now work for Google but that doesn't mean they aren't still Vint Cerf, Ken Thompson and Ray Kurzweil.

It also doesn't mean that they're not still Google employees.

What are you proposing then? A conflict of interest requirement for amici? Nobody motivated to write one would ever be allowed to.

Like the earlier post said, amicus curiae briefs are filed on behalf of people who are not parties to a case. They may have an interest, but it can't be "we're suing/being sued in this particular case." Maybe it's different for employees of a firm, but Google is certainly a party to the case.

If you know any of the back story of those names you would have known that none of them would need to affiliate with any company. They are basically the deity of our age. Without them we would not have modern computers and the only handhelds we have are rocks.

Yet, affiliate they have, which makes this inappropriate, regardless of their accomplishments.

Everyone who owns a mutual fund has a stake in Google.

And possibly Oracle as well.

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