
Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android - jbarham
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oracle-sues-google-for-patent-infringement-2010-08-12?reflink=MW_news_stmp
======
cscotta
The biggest issue I see with Oracle's lawsuit is not with Android itself, but
the future of Java as an open platform.

The claims are pretty serious, and Oracle is going straight for the jugular.
It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out, but I've got to hope that
Google will come out of this in good shape for the sake of Java. It's
unfortunate that Oracle is interpreting Google's implementation of Dalvik and
a Java-based system as a direct infringement upon their patents.

Android aside, it raises some fairly serious questions around Java's future
development as a platform vis a vis the uncertainty recently resolved between
Microsoft and the Mono project. While Microsoft extended their "Community
Promise" to Mono implementors and users, Oracle seems to be taking the
opposite approach to companies developing alternate JVMs and Java-based
devices. It'll be interesting to see Oracle's stance toward other alternate
JVMs such as IBM's.

If you're curious, the original complaint is here:
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/35811761/Oracle-s-complaint-
agains...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/35811761/Oracle-s-complaint-against-
Google-for-Java-patent-infringement)

The patents upon which Oracle claims infringement are:

\- Protection domains to provide security in a computer system (6,125,447)

\- Controlling Access to a Resource (6,192,476)

\- Method and apparatus for pre-processing and packaging class files
(5,966,702)

\- System and method for dynamic preloading of classes through memory space
cloning of a master runtime system process (7,426,720)

\- Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual and native machine
instructions (6,910,205)

\- Method and system for performing static initialization (6,061,520)

~~~
shasta
Oracle may claim that Google infringes on all those patents, but they'll never
sue. Patents are just a nuclear deterrent.

Edit: Wow, -7 and dropping. I guess I should have included a sarcasm symbol.
Spoiler: My point was that patents do get used, and this argument about them
just being for defense is nonsense.

~~~
Confusion
A nuclear deterrent only works if both sides have nukes. Google is a pretty
young company, with few patents. Oracle is a much older company, that bought
many old companies along the way. Oracle's patent portfolio vastly outstrips
that of Google.

~~~
daveungerer
We currently have enough nukes to destroy the world many times over. If you
take the comparison between patents and nukes to its logical conclusion, the
same probably holds. Google vs. Oracle == mutually assured destruction,
regardless of how much bigger Oracle's portfolio is.

------
tptacek
_"Java is the single most important software we've ever acquired," Oracle
Chief Executive Larry Ellison said during a conference call [...]_

... "and if you don't do everything I say, I'll blow up the moon! Ah-
hahahahah!"

How do you not love this guy? Somebody get him a black cape.

~~~
gahahaha
He is just trying to save /more/ children in Africa.
[http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704...](http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704017904575409193790337162.html)

Larry Ellison is a saint! ... and an asshole.

~~~
Timothee
The letter he wrote for the Giving Pledge website actually shows a bit of him
being a saint and an asshole:

<http://givingpledge.org/#larry_ellison>

 _To whom it may concern,_

 _Many years ago, I put virtually all of my assets into a trust with the
intent of giving away at least 95% of my wealth to charitable causes. I have
already given hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research and
education, and I will give billions more over time. Until now, I have done
this giving quietly – because I have long believed that charitable giving is a
personal and private matter. So why am I going public now? Warren Buffett
personally asked me to write this letter because he said I would be “setting
an example” and “influencing others” to give. I hope he’s right._

 _Larry Ellison_

On one hand, he _is_ giving a lot, on the other, you can tell he couldn't care
less about the pledge and the letter.

~~~
iambvk
I wonder how much did google give away till now...

~~~
micrypt
"In 2004, when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote to prospective
shareholders about their vision for the company, they outlined a commitment to
contribute significant resources, including 1% of Google's equity and profits
in some form, as well as employee time, to address some of the world's most
urgent problems. That commitment became a range of giving initiatives
including Google.org."

\- <http://www.google.org/about.html>

------
guelo
My dream for wrestling my profession away from the lawyers and CEOs is the
formation of a programmer's union. The union would mainly be concerned with
issues like these patents. A strike would be called on any company that tried
to use software patents. A strike would mean not only that the programmers of
that company would stop working, but also all programmers nationwide would
refuse to work on that company's products and platforms.

If such a union existed it would immediately stop the use of software patents.
The union could also lobby congress for the elimination of software patents
and could work on other programmer related laws, establish standards bodies,
etc. IOW, give programmers some say in the industry that is currently driven
by the suits.

~~~
maweaver
I'd rather see us become licensed professionals, like CPAs, with a large
professional organization (like the AICPA) to lobby for us on issues like
software patents, etc.

~~~
noarchy
I see your point, but I worry about this creating barriers for people wanting
to get into our profession. As it stands, you can still get a job in this
field without any formal education in it, as long as you can show you've got
the goods. I'm quite fond of this fact, and there is some real talent out
there that might get the door shut in their face if there were a wall of
licensing.

------
Eliezer
I like this headline because if we sent it back in time 30 years it wouldn't
make any sense at all.

~~~
pjscott
Looking over the front page, I wonder what the people thirty years ago would
have made of some of the other headlines:

"Making GitHub More Open: Git-backed Wikis"

"Twitter Polling in the Cloud in 30s using PiCloud"

or, my favorite:

"Burning man defeats PayPal"

(I envision something like the Biblical story of Jesus driving money-changers
out of a temple, but this time, Jesus lights himself on fire first. It's very
intimidating.)

~~~
jemfinch
> Looking over the front page, I wonder what the people thirty years ago would
> have made of some of the other headlines

People thirty years ago? Heck, I wonder what my _in-laws_ would make of those
headlines :)

------
jchonphoenix
The most worrisome factor in this lawsuit is how this will impact java as a
language and a platform. If Google loses this lawsuit, java as a language and
platform could easily die. Many companies would refuse to use it, just to be
on the safe side and avoid litigation from Oracle.

Oracle probably doesn't realize the massive damage it has done to the java
platform just by going forward with this suit. Due to the looming threat of
Oracle closing the java platform, startups and companies may begin avoiding
the java platform in the same way they avoid the Microsoft stack. In fact, I
can't see any reason why I WOULDN'T choose the .NET framework over java if
both are so closed. At least C# has lambdas...

~~~
loup-vaillant
If you like lambdas, you'd probably like F# better: lighter syntax, types are
inferred, and it looks like it's quite well supported by Microsoft.

But of course, if you consider F#, you may want to use the more free and open
Ocaml.

~~~
bruceboughton
You can like lambdas without wanting to go fully functional... just like you
can like objects without wanting to go fully object-oriented.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Well, I'm not sure. First, assignments are evil[1], which means you should
avoid setters. Second, inheritance is evil, for similar reasons (thick
interface). Third, every time I saw mixins or class polymorphism, lambdas or
sum types, would have been simpler, respectively.

Once you like lambdas, functional programming becomes more attractive than a
black hole.

[1]: <http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/articles/assignment>

~~~
barrkel
Sum types are not as dynamically extensible at runtime, or by third party
libraries, as class polymorphism.

~~~
loup-vaillant
For the particular cases I saw, runtime extensibility never mattered. (Do you
have one where it does?)

And extending a third party sum type is not very hard:

    
    
      data LibType = Zero
                   | One Int
                   | Two Int Int
      
      data MyType  = ZeroOneTwo LibType
                   | Three Int Int Int
    

(It of course implies that you use MyType instead of LibType in your code.)

Finally, if you _really_ want to extend a sum type, no work around allowed,
you might want to look at Ocaml's variant types.

~~~
barrkel
The code using LibType is code you don't control; you can't change it to use
MyType instead. Indeed, you don't even have the source code to it. That's also
why the extensibility happens at runtime.

~~~
loup-vaillant
So What? Just do what you would have done in Java without inheritance:
aggregate. For each function that matters, you can write a new one that handle
the extra case:

    
    
       new_function ZeroOneTwo x = old_function x
       new_function Three a b c  = -- handling new case

~~~
barrkel
I'm not sure if you're being willfully obtuse or not. The functions that
matter are functions you didn't write. You don't have the source code to them.
You cannot rewrite them with an extra case because you can't rewrite all the
calling sites, because those are baked into executable binaries.

The world of shrink-wrapped closed-source software may be a foreign world to
many functional advocates, but it's the world I live in, and extensibility
here is often done with polymorphism and inheritance. The code in the closed-
source kernel (application, framework, whatever) interacts with values
polymorphically, with modules and third parties relying on inheritance and
overriding to work their behaviour into the system.

You want a market for components, where both buyers and sellers are protected;
sellers do not necessarily want to reveal their source code, and buyers
especially don't. Binary, executable code is the medium of interchange. In
order to fit these things together you need protocols: sets of expected
messages and documented responses. OO polymorphic interfaces, in other words.
Inheritance at the interface level is necessary, and at the implementation
level it decreases the burden somewhat - using aggregation instead can lead to
problems of identity (the sub-parts of an aggregate each have a different one,
since they are mutable).

~~~
loup-vaillant
First, I believe that the world of shrink-wrapped proprietary software should
die.

Second, I fail to see how inheritance solves your problem: " _The code using
LibType is code you don't control; you can't change it to use MyType instead._
"

OK, let's try this with inheritance.

    
    
      class LibType                { Handles 3 cases       }
      class MyType extends LibType { Handles a fourth case }
    

Now tell me: how would you make the code of the library use an object of type
`MyType` instead of `LibType`? If you don't control its code, I see only one
way: somewhere, this library expects an object of type `LibType` as a
_parameter_.

Interestingly, idiomatic functional programming do just that: passing
functions as parameters. Or tuples of functions, in that case. You know that
an object is just a tuple, right?. For instance:

    
    
      // Statically typed, Class based OO language
      class Foo {
        int   bar(int,);
        float baz(float, int);
        int x;
      }
    
      -- Haskell
      data Foo = Foo (Int -> Int)
                     (Float -> Int -> Int)
                     Int
    
      -- The same, with record syntax. (for easy access)
      data Foo = Foo { bar :: Int -> Int
                       baz :: Float -> Int -> Int
                       x   :: Int
                     }
    

Note that the functions in objects of type Foo aren't fixed. So I can override
all I want. Class Polymorphism is cool, but I can do the same with mere
parametric polymorphism if I really need to. Sure, the library must be
designed for extensibility in the first place, but the same is true about OO
libraries: inheriting from a class that isn't designed with inheritance in
mind is dangerous.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Dear down voter: would you care to explain which line I crossed please?

------
patrickaljord
According to this thread on the Android mailing list, Oracle tried to settle
privately with Google but Google refused. This may mean that Google has a
strong case against those patents:

[http://groups.google.com/group/android-
developers/browse_thr...](http://groups.google.com/group/android-
developers/browse_thread/thread/a0d97347e53e94?hl=en)

------
seldo
Excuse the really really obvious question, but how can you sue somebody for
intellectual property infringement on open-source software? Didn't you already
give anybody the license to do what they wanted with it? If they've violated
the license terms in some way, isn't that different from IP infringement?

~~~
wmf
It's important to understand that Android doesn't use Oracle's open-source
OpenJDK. An argument could be made that Oracle licenses the necessary patents
_only_ for OpenJDK and not for alternate implementations such as Dalvik. An
argument could be made that Oracle licenses patents only for JVMs that are
TCK-compliant, which Dalvik isn't. An argument could be made that Oracle
licenses patents for GPLed JVMs but not for ASL-licensed JVMs (because ASL is
"too free" perhaps?)

~~~
icey
Thank you for this explanation. Until reading it this way my understanding of
the whole affair was somewhat wrong.

Given that Oracle doesn't seem shy about going after a giant like Google makes
me wonder what _other_ software Sun owned the rights to that might be even
remotely popular. If I were a company using a lot of old Sun IP in even
moderately unique ways, I'd be a little concerned right now.

~~~
nostrademons
MySQL? BerkeleyDB?

~~~
seldo
Well, Sun own MySQL. But the drop-in replacement MySQL engine makers
(infobright, percona, etc) might be a little worried.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
The comment you're replying to pointed out that Oracle owns MySQL (acquired
with Sun) and BerkeleyDB (acquired with SleepyCat).

~~~
seldo
I had forgotten they also owned BerkeleyDB (obviously I know that Oracle own
Sun, is that why I'm getting downmodded?).

But my point still stands: makers of replacement engines for MySQL could be in
violation of MySQL-related patents, which Oracle could then sue over.

~~~
bravo_sierra
They could, but they haven't, and probably won't. Oracle had a big database-
related portfolio long before they acquired Sun/MySQL, which had relatively
few. They even bought Innobase, makers of the InnoDB engine a few years ago.

Other database vendors (Percona et al., not IBM) don't have assets for Oracle
to take, don't directly threaten their core business, and going after them
would get Oracle in trouble with regulators.

Better to land a tuna than chase sardines around.

------
dminor
Google's an engineering company and I think they should fight back as such.
Get together a team of your best and brightest, take Postgres, and turn it
into a drop-in replacement for Oracle. And be very public about your efforts.

~~~
houseabsolute
Because Oracle doesn't own any patents on the implementation of relational
databases that they couldn't also sue Google over . . .

The most engineer-ish thing to do is a back of the envelope calculation:

    
    
        1. Estimate how much it'd cost to fight the suit.
        2. Estimate the probability of winning.
        3. Estimate the damages if you lose.
        4. Estimate Oracle's ask for licensing the patents.
    

If (1 + 2 * 3) < 4, fight, else settle. They probably have pretty good numbers
on one, three, and four considering they likely discussed this with Oracle
before fisticuffs began. The only perilous part is estimating two.

~~~
lsc
ah, but reputation matters here... you don't want to have a reputation for
being easy money for patent trolls. Additionally, as google doesn't seem to be
a patent troll, it's probably also in their interest to set legal precedents
that weaken software patents.

I mean, obviously, this doesn't mean 'always fight' but it's another value you
need to punch in to your equation, one weighing in on the 'fight' side.

In my business, a similar example would be the money I spend on running an
aggressive abuse desk. Running a less-aggressive abuse desk would be cheaper,
both in the work it takes and in customers I've lost, at least in the short
term.

But in the long term, /because/ I have succeeded in making my service a
hostile place for spammers, my abuse complaint rate is much lower than it
would be otherwise. for a while, another VPS company rented a few servers from
me... and in spite of being something like 1/60th of my size, they produced
more abuse desk work than the rest of my customers combined. I believe,
because I have an aggressive abuse desk.

(I mean, there are other costs... I've lost at least one legitimate customer I
know of, because he was compromised and his box was spewing ssh attacks over
the network. I shut him down with an email notice, the email went to the shut
down box, so he never got it. )

my point is that there are real business reasons to fight that sometimes go
beyond the immediate results of that fight.

~~~
houseabsolute
Maybe there is some space for a 3.1 step where you factor in the benefit from
fighting even if you end up losing, but I doubt there is going to be one
nearly as often as your VPS example.

~~~
lsc
in this case, they'd only get the benefit if they won; assuming that if they
lost they'd have to pay the other guy's court expenses /and/ a license, it
would make loosing more costly, but it would also make the win more valuable,
possibly out of proportion to how much more costly it makes losing.

------
jarin
The headline should read "Oracle sues Google over literally the only thing
keeping Java relevant".

~~~
zmmmmm
I don't necessarily agree about relevance, but I do find it quite mind
boggling that Oracle would strike out against what is clearly a massive growth
opportunity for Java. If they want to destroy the Java brand the fastest way
possible then definitely the right thing to do is start suing people who are
using Java. The million dollar question is why would anybody in their right
mind do this?

~~~
tezza
" The million dollar question is why would anybody in their right mind do
this?"

A slice of Android sales revenue... Perhaps as high as US$1 per handset would
be nice.

~~~
chmike
Isn't Android free ? The problem is more for mobile phone companies that may
now have to pay a license for using it. This will hurt a lot.

~~~
zmmmmm
It might not hurt too much if Oracle just asks for money. I don't think it's
the "free-as-in-beer" quality that is crucial to Android - it's the freedom
for carriers to do what they want with it that matters.

They scariest possibility would be if Oracle actually tries to exert some
other kind of influence - force their own software or restrictions or branding
onto Android (ugh!) - that would really scupper the whole thing. I have no
idea if that is possible or not (someone please tell me it is not).

------
stephenjudkins
It seems like defending against software patent claims are a cost of doing
anything interesting now days. Create a novel, popular platform or tool, and
someone somewhere will probably sue you over infringing on their patents.
Google can probably dig into its mountain of cash and come out OK, but the
precedent is chilling to smaller companies.

It's also ironic that it's Dalvik that got hit, given the amount of anti-
Microsoft hysteria that has surrounded the Mono project.

~~~
phaedrus
I'm reminded of a comment a Mono developer made about the hullabaloo over
whether Mono is a Microsoft Trojan Horse:

"I can only imagine the C++ developers are laughing their heads off at us."

------
gojomo
What an excellent occasion to try the homoglyph hoax attack on friends and
enemies! (See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1571984> .)

<http://www.google.com/search?q=οraclе>

 _Your search - οraclе - did not match any documents._

~~~
jacquesm
It seems to be the o and the e at the end. Homoglyphs were a bad idea. Single
letter or word homoglyphs in ohterwise latin text ought to be highlit somehow
to warn against tricks like that.

~~~
cracki
i just set the default encoding of my browser to latin1 and disabled auto-
detection. it doesn't work most of the time because the browser doesn't have
to _detect_ anything because of encoding tags in the page code, but it's handy
if i have suspicions.

now i see gibberish for everything i don't care about, including utf8
homoglyphs.

------
brettnak
I feel a little naive for not expecting something like this. I thought all the
Sun/Oracle nonsense would be around MySQL.

~~~
mkramlich
MySQL: I bet that part is coming.

------
bitsai
What implications, if any, does this have for the future of JVM languages like
Scala, Clojure, etc.?

~~~
cageface
Good question. It's got to cast a bit of a shadow over anything based on the
VM.

This seems like a catastrophically stupid and short-sighted move on Oracle's
part. The reason Java is as big as it is today is that it's been an open
playing field for all comers. Start tossing the odd hand grenade into the
party and the room is going to clear out fast. The timing could hardly be
worse too - Scala and Clojure seem to be building some real momentum lately.

~~~
wmf
I disagree. Java ME is already dead, so there's nothing left to kill. Server-
side Java is all properly licensed, so I don't see a problem there.

~~~
cageface
Patent and licensing issues are so complex and the outcome of litigation so
unpredictable that good faith and precedent are what count. This suit
demonstrates that Oracle is perfectly willing to pursue offensive suits on
Java IP and that's a very damaging precedent.

------
hugh4life
I bet the mono people are laughing their asses off now...

I think Sun suing Microsoft was a mistake too for the Java platform... the
write once, run everywhere ideology made Java the native platform of the
server... write once, run everywhere should be the default, but it should be
easier and encouraged to escape...

~~~
megablast
Microsoft were destroying Java with their own implementation, which was not
compatible with normal Java. They were changing the language, just as they
tried to do with HTML in internet explorer and active-x, so we still see
people having to use ie6.

Sun had to sue Microsoft, before they changed Java so much it was no longer
platform agnostic (or it was way less agnostic).

~~~
MartinCron
I wonder what would have happened, though. Would the market decide that being
platform-agnostic is more important than using MS dev tools? Would developers
just have to work (around) with an incompatible platform, as they do with IE.

I wonder if the MS rift caused more harm to Java than letting Microsoft change
its implementation.

------
rjurney
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison are good friends, best man at your wedding kind of
friends. Ellison was once on Apple's board of directors after Jobs returned to
Apple. Oracle suing Google over Java patent infringements in Android sure
plays well for Apple...

Apple vs (Google vs (Facebook && Oracle))

~~~
jws
… and if you rearrange the letters of "spicy acorn" it even spells
"conspiracy"!.

~~~
pohl
That's the beauty of _quid pro quo_ : it's plausibly deniable and you can poke
fun at those who suspect it.

------
squidsoup
This article is a bit light on detail - can anyone explain how the development
of Android infringes on Oracle's IP?

~~~
tzs
If they were talking about Oracle's patents, it would make sense. It's the
talk of it being copyright infringement that has me confused.

Android is basically, as far as I've read, a Linux kernel, with Google's own
user space on top of that--their own equivalent of libc and their own
windowing system. On top of that, they run their own JVM, which they wrote
themselves and which is NOT even compatible with Oracle's at the byte-code
level. Android apps are written in Java and compiled/JITed for Google's VM.

So, unless the Java compiler itself takes code from Oracle's compiler, it is
hard to see what in their would contain copies of Oracle code.

~~~
pohl
One thing missing from your list: the standard java libs like java.lang.* etc.
Are those google's implementations?

~~~
jancona
They're from the Apache Harmony project, not from Sun's Java.

------
macemoneta
As background, from WikiPedia:

"On November 13, 2006, Sun released much of Java as open source software under
the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). On May 8, 2007, Sun
finished the process, making all of Java's core code available under free
software/open-source distribution terms, aside from a small portion of code to
which Sun did not hold the copyright."

If Sun willingly made the code GPL licensed, and Google isn't using anything
outside the GPL code, even if some of the technologies were covered by patents
I don't see Oracle having a case. Right now, this sounds very much like the
SCO - Linux suit that dragged on forever and went nowhere.

~~~
avar
Giving out software under the GPL v2 does not mean that you grant others a
patent license, that isn't within the scope of the GPL v2.

~~~
ori_b
That's not true. See section 7 of the GPL. In part:

For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution
of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through
you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

However, it seems Sun can relicence the software under whatever they want, and
the current versions of it wouldn't be under GPL anymore. I am not a lawyer,
so I don't know exactly what this implies.

~~~
jamesgeck0
So you're saying that it grants users of the GPL code an exception from the
patent owned by the original developers?

In that case, wouldn't the exception only be extended to Google if their
implementation of Java was not independent from Sun's implementation? Because
Devrak was derived from Apache Harmony, it might not share _any_ code with
Oracle Java.

------
Encosia
I was reviewing some of Ellison's pre-acquisition talk about Java and found
this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dtqe1e0tXg#t=7m10s>

Interesting and relevant.

------
bliss
As a developer, I'm getting scared off the Java platform here. I know it's the
JVM that's at issue, but I hate the kind of lock in that this implies - I
think they'll do serious long term harm here.

------
noonespecial
It just goes to show that whatever company-de-jour promises about enforcing
the patents that they are granted today, all bets are off when they fall on
hard times and are acquired tomorrow.

Serious about openness? Skip the "patent and promise" dance and just release
the damn thing BSD.

~~~
technomancy
The BSD license would be useless here. Preventing this kind of thing is the
whole point of the third revision of the GPL; to my knowledge there are no
other software licenses that do this.

~~~
bad_user
No, GPLv3 is useless here.

Oracle can sue for patents over any GPLv3 technology, and all GPLv3 says is
that the company doing the suing can't distribute code under GPLv3.

But since they own the copyrights of Java, they can always change its license
and leave the rest of the world in dust.

~~~
purple-people
Uhh, no.

They would be violating the GPLv3 license under which they distributed the
source. Changing the license only affects the next person acquiring the
source. The people who acquired it under the GPLv3 license cannot have this
retroactively revoked or relicensed. If Orcale sued those parties, they would
be violating the terms of the license. In the least instance they shouldn't
have been distributing the source unde GPLv3 so their claim for infringement
would be moot.

------
arghnoname
Can someone remind me why Google didn't buy Sun when it was on the market? The
culture seems like it would have been a relatively good fit and their use of
Java related technologies (obviously now) would have made ownership of those
technologies useful.

Had they bought Sun and then sold off the hardware side of the business they
would have bought a lot of solid engineers and IP.

~~~
el_chapitan
In hindsight, it might have been cheaper to buy them outright than to litigate
a battle like this. Then again, they're going to have some undisclosed
settlement, so we'll never really know how it ends up.

I'm guessing they didn't buy them because of the business they were in.
Selling workstations + Solaris was only part of their business. I think the
services part of their work was bringing in more money towards the end. As far
as I'm aware, Google doesn't do much in the services realm, which probably
factored big into their decision not to buy.

------
dstein
Oracle is sending a very clear message every programmer, young and old.

"If you use Java to make something valuable, we're gonna sue the crap out of
you".

This will have long term consequences for Oracle.

~~~
joeyh
"Java: Write once, run anywhere, be sued by Oracle"

~~~
nivertech
"Java: Write once, run anywhere and hide from Oracle"

------
InclinedPlane
Oracle may do what no other company, even MS, has managed to do: kill java.
They are currently making an excellent case that it's time to move on to a new
technology, not just open source but actually free to use.

------
hugh4life
Google just bought Instantiations... and Google is getting to release their
GUI designers for Swing, SWT, and GWT...

<http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/eclipse4-released>

""""" "You said..."it is expected that GWT Designer will make an appearance
via the GWT Blog in the coming months"

Actually, we are in the process of Googlizing _all_ of our products; not just
GWT Designer. They will all be made available again fairly soon and the
announcement will be made on the GWT blog. """""

------
noelchurchill
Aren't Larry Ellison and Steven Jobs best friends?

~~~
parenthesis
A source: [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/ar...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/14/MNGS649LVB1.DTL)

"Ellison's best friend … Steve Jobs … did double duty as the wedding
photographer [at Ellison's wedding]."

Also Ellison was on Apple's board for a few years after the second coming of
Jobs.

------
thebootstrapper
This sucks. Android is one the best thing happened to Java in recent times.
And this actually means the Apache Harmony people wont get the TCK now. Sucks
even more.

------
dkskalwd
I am happy about this. This demonstrate that patents and copyright in the IT
field can kill the innovation. So a hard war in this field can contribute to
abolish copyright.

Small developers are very vulnerable, let's see what happen when the giants
eat each other.

------
elblanco
Amazing, Oracle's strategy seems to be to purchase good technology (MySQL,
JAVA,...) and then strangle off and alienate users of that entire business
line by being douches.

There must be some kind of business school thing I'm missing here.

------
mmorris
I'm sure there would be speed issues, but Google is really supportive of
Python right? Wink wink, nudge nudge.

(I've heard about the Android Scripting Environment, but it sounds like that
is not as fully supported as might be ideal).

~~~
statictype
I believe its already possible package python programs as .apk bundles right?

------
waldrews
What does this mean for the almost-but-not-quite-JVM implementation in GAE?

~~~
pjscott
Do you have a link that explains more? The GAE docs say they use "the Java 6
virtual machine (JVM)."

<http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/overview.html>

------
tzs
Google should switch to C# and Mono. Besides giving them a better language and
VM, it would cause the most amusing set of rants from the anti-Mono crowd.
Win/win.

~~~
squidsoup
By better language, do you mean better than Java? The JVM supports many other
great languages like Ruby, Clojure and Scala.

I'd love to see Google provide GWT support for Scala, but that's another issue
:)

~~~
binaryfinery
The JVM bytecode is shitty. It cannot support dynamic languages at the VM
level (yet: <http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=292>), the support for the C#
equivalent of structs has been pushed back, and that makes any kind of
hardware acceleration painful. Then theres type erasure - a total hack to get
generics.

I think Oracle is being beyond stupid here. If anyone has the power to come up
with a language and toolchain to make Java utterly irrelevant, its Google.

~~~
rayvega
History will repeat itself. Sun sued Microsoft over their implementation of
Java. In response, MS drops Java and creates its own language (C#), framework
(.NET), and VM (CLR) which now solidly competes with Java in the enterprise
software space.

If MS was able to accomplish all of that, then imagine what Google could
create if they decided to drop Java altogether ('Go' language might be the
preview.) That would be a huge win for the software industry while a big (long
term) loss for Oracle as Java further wans in popularity.

(Hmm....if Oracle can sue Google over the non-Java VM they created for Android
couldn't they sue MS for their "JVM-like" CLR? This is another reason why
their patent lawsuit is so ridiculous.)

No matter how you slice it, Google has the advantage in the long run while
patent trolls like Oracle have the most to lose in the long term.

------
timinman
"A Google spokesman said the company hasn't yet been served with the lawsuit,
and is therefore unable to comment.

An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment."

With Oracle knowing obviously knowing this could damage their largest asset,
it makes me wonder if they're still in talks. Someone who knows more law than
I do could probably tell us. How hard is it do withdraw a suit once filed. How
expensive is it to file a lawsuit your not certain you'll follow through on?

------
donaq
I'm sorry, but I just don't understand this decision. Is Oracle in need of
cash or something? Why did they become patent trolls? I mean, they're not even
in the smart phone business, and it's not like Google is going to put a DBMS
into Android. How are they being threatened in any way by Google?

~~~
wmf
Oh, but they _are_ in the phone business; every phone that includes Java pays
license fees to Oracle... except Android phones aren't paying.

~~~
zmmmmm
This may be true but it would be amazingly bone headed of them. Android is the
best thing to happen to Java in the last 5 years, and the perception (at
least) that people using Java have less to worry about as far as patents go is
one of the few things really giving it a strong advantage over .NET. This is a
remarkably effective way of destroying several of Java's strengths all in one
go....

~~~
Calamitous
You're assuming they a) care about Java, and b) care about what's good for the
smartphone market. If you flip those assumptions, it's not boneheaded at all.
Just very, very slimy...

------
rquirk
Oracle must be pretty sure of victory, or a positive outcome at least,
otherwise why would they go after Google right away? They could have gone
after HTC, as Apple did. That would have been a more likely victory, which
Oracle could have used as leverage against Google.

~~~
caf
On the other hand, why didn't they go after HTC and the other device
manufacturers at the same time?

------
drv
This bit at the end was interesting:

 _[...] any software found to be in violation of Oracle's copyrights "be
impounded and destroyed."_

How does one go about rounding up all the copies of something as ephemeral and
easily duplicated as software? Is this common wording in software litigation?

------
serichsen
Is Oracle faring so bad? Last I looked, a company actively suing for patent
infringement meant that they have no real product, so it's their only hope of
"generating" "income". It is a sure sign of imminent corporate decline.

------
Confusion
What I don't understand and can't find anywhere: what is in it for Oracle? Do
they want licensing fees? Do they want to destroy Android? Do they want Google
to grant them licenses to certain patents Google owns?

------
anigbrowl
Interesting.

Please note, I'm not an attorney or expert on Java.

The complaint is quite vague overall, perhaps deliberately. It lists the
various patents, says what they are, and alleges that Google infringed upon
each one. It also suggests that Sun/Oracle owns heaps of Java source code
which has been used by Google, thereby breaching copyright. Oh, and since I
own an Android phone I too am infringing on their patents, but fortunately
they lay the blame for this at Google's feet. Whew!

Nowhere in the complaint is there any explanation of what licensing
obligations were applicable or which govern the distribution of Java. Nor is
it clear when Oracle alleges this infringement began in relation to each
patent, or why or how they consider it to be infringed upon by Android. The
complaint mentions the Dalvik VM specifically.

Looking through the licensing information on the phone itself, there's a bunch
of stuff from Sun under a 1993-4 license which is very short and confers the
right to use, modify and distribute the software without reservation. Most of
the rest is under the Apache Harmony license, and a sprinkling of others.
Well, I suppose if google were deliberately infringing, they would hardly
mention the fact in their licensing statements.

So where is the problem?

 _14\. On information and belief, Google has been aware of Sun’s patent
portfolio, including the patents at issue, since the middle of this decade,
when Google hired certain former Sun Java engineers._

A good ZDnet article suggests the engineers in question may be 'Lars Bak,
Robert Griesemer, and Frank Yellin, all former Sun employees who now work for
Google on Java and Web browser technologies, and all of whom appear as
inventors on one or more of the patents in question.'

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/oracle-uses-james-
gosling...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/oracle-uses-james-gosling-
patent-to-attack-google-and-android-developers/2035)

Also (possibly, IMHO) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bloch>

I don't know what Oracles chances are. On the surface it looks like rather
weak sauce, with some of the patents being questionable because of prior
art...but like I said, that's an amateur perspective. Oracle appears to be
saying the bare minimum necessary at this time. Google will likely move for a
summary judgment of dismissal, denying that there is any substance to Oracle's
claims, and at that point Oracle may have to make some more specific
allegations.

~~~
wccrawford
Whenever someone says 'You infringe on my patents! Pay me! ... No, I won't
tell you how you infringe,' I immediately think they're just spreading FUD.

------
epochwolf
Oh joy. I would like some details before I wave goodbye to java and the jvm.

------
bborud
[http://blog.borud.no/2010/08/pull-yourself-together-larry-
el...](http://blog.borud.no/2010/08/pull-yourself-together-larry-ellison.html)

my 2 cents

------
c1sc0
Steve Jobs must be laughing from his evil genius lair about this. You know,
two dogs fighter over a bone and stuff ...

------
loewenskind
Does this have anything to do with the GPL? I mean, is Oracle trying to
enforce Java's GPL license on Google?

~~~
wmf
No, because Java isn't GPLed. OpenJDK is GPLed, but this suit has nothing to
do with OpenJDK.

------
BenoitEssiambre
I thought we were supposed to use java instead of c# to avoid getting into the
this exact situation :-S

------
billmcneale
The biggest issue for Oracle is that Sun's previous CEO publicly congratulated
Google about Android:

[http://beust.com/weblog/2010/08/12/oracle-is-suing-google-
ov...](http://beust.com/weblog/2010/08/12/oracle-is-suing-google-over-java-
theres-just-one-tiny-problem/)

Good luck defending your trademark after the CEO declares it's not really
interested in doing so.

~~~
btilly
Intellectual property divides into 3 fields with 3 different sets of rules.
Anything you learn about how copyrights, trademarks and patents work is more
likely than not to be wrong about the other two.

You're thinking trademark law. This lawsuit is under patent law. It doesn't
matter what Jonathan Schwartz publicly said.

~~~
_delirium
It's not as strong as with trademark law, but patent law does have some notion
of estoppel--- if you know someone is using a patent of yours, and publicly
congratulate them for it, and then years later turn around and sue them, your
job in pulling off the U-turn is at least a bit harder. Among other things,
they can argue detrimental reliance on your public acquiescence to their
usage.

------
bdwalter
I expect this to be the first of many lawsuits from "the larry" surrounding
Sun IP.

------
js4all
As a side note, there is something cooking. In the last weeks, Oracle has been
replacing Sun's copyright messages with their own all over in Java. This even
effected Eclipses startup code.

~~~
rue
This is probably because Sun no longer exists.

------
obluda
goodbye java ?

------
c00p3r
That is good for Android community and not so good for Java community.

First of all, we should praise Google for making so good decisions, to re-use
wast community of Java developers and Eclipse (without which they cannot
program ^_^) and avoid bloated and corporative-centered JVM or Java ME, that
it resulted in such ridiculous lawsuit about .jar files. ^_^

They also got a lot of buzz and the reputation of not doing evil and even
being a victim of a corporate monster and patent trolls.

btw, it looks a lot like an Apples decision about dropping Flash (yet another
outdated artificial tumor) just because it simply does not work. Google'd
rewrote VM, while Apple invested in LLVM.

So, it is a good news.

------
binaryfinery
And needless to say, at least patent 6,125,447 has prior art.

------
korch
Google choosing Java:

<nelson> Ha-Ha! </nelson>

------
dangrossman
Sun released the majority of Java under the GPL. How can you claim that
someone you licensed the code to is infringing both its copyright and its
patent? I'm looking forward to some more detail when Google publishes a
response.

~~~
patrickaljord
But Google's android does not use Sun's GPLed Java, it uses their own Java
called "Dalvik" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)>

~~~
jbarham
Note that Dalvik is essentially just an alternate stack-based virtual machine
for bytecode that's been converted from the standard stack-based JVM bytecode.
You still need a standard Java SDK to develop Android applications in order to
compile the Java source code to JVM bytecode.

So far Google has been able to get the best of both worlds by leveraging the
vast Java tools ecosystem but then in the final step they convert the standard
JVM bytecode to run on their own Dalvik VM which means they don't have to pay
license fees for the standard Java runtime. IMO this is what is really
annoying Oracle. (To be fair there are also good technical reasons why they
created Dalvik.)

I can understand where Oracle is coming from legally, but business-wise I
think this lawsuit is bound to backfire. Google has the resources to defend
themselves and move away from Java in the long term, but in the meantime
Oracle has created serious uncertainty about the openness of the Java platform
which will scare technically innovative players away from Java that don't have
the financial and legal resources that Google does. So Oracle turns Java into
the new COBOL, a technically moribund backwater that is only kept alive for
legacy purposes.

~~~
artsrc
I don't know why Dalvik exists.

The JVM is GPL'd, you don't have to pay license fees to use.

There are other Apache licensed JVM's (<http://harmony.apache.org/>).

If this lawsuit drives people towards the Newspeak and V8 VM that would be a
good thing.

------
RexRollman
If I didn't detest software patent suits so much, I would say this is karma
for Google's recent actions regarding network neutrality and wireless
broadband.

