
How Oracle might kill Google’s Android and software patents all at once - raganwald
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/08/14/how-oracle-might-kill-googles-android-and-software-patents-all-at-once/
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russell_h
This whole article is absolutely bizarre, from the title onward.

A few of my favorites:

"Oracle might kill Google's Android"

"the tech-liberal... are being deluded into thinking that Google is the open
side of this new conflict, and that Oracle is the big, old and closed company"

"Oracle likes Linux so much that it funds Btrfs, a GPL licensed, futuristic
and advanced new file system that supports pooling, snapshots, checksums, and
other features that sound a lot like Sun’s ZFS, which Oracle now also owns.
The difference is that Oracle didn’t mire Btrfs in legal quandary the way Sun
did with ZFS before Oracle bought them.

That fact not only highlights that Oracle is just as “open source friendly” as
Google, but that it’s also more responsible in developing open source software
in such a way that it doesn’t recklessly expose itself to being sued the way
Sun did, or the way Google did."

"Google doesn’t even have any experience in creating software platforms"

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drats
A lot of negative comments here. They are totally justified however; this guy
is off the planet.

Edit: Three points.

* He has a series of whiny/smug youtube videos defending the ipad's flaws <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wpjK60io0E>

* He has a book on OS X that he makes money off.

* He also mentions in another video that he owns Apple shares.

~~~
raganwald
Your comment is known as "Playing the man and not the ball." Do I have to link
to "How to disagree" to underscore my point?

~~~
drats
Sorry, read the section on Google in the article which finishes with "Google
is nothing but a series of infringements snowballed together", and tell me
again that this demands a serious response.

If you post an inept trolling article you are likely to get an antagonistic
response.

"<http://www.timecube.com> play the ball not the man please", really?

~~~
raganwald
If it doesn't demand a "serious response," why respond at all? If it is a poor
example of Hacker News, ignore it. If it isn't Hacker News, the flag link is
right up there. Posting ad hominems and then complaining about the article's
content is a little like telling me, "Dad, she started it!"

I know for a fact that you are capable of better, and so is everyone else that
chooses Hacker News over Reddit.

~~~
statictype
Leaving this specific example aside, don't you think it's insightful to get a
background of the author when reading one of his articles? Especially parts of
the background that pertain to the subject being written about?

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kprobst
If this guy had his head any further up Steve Job's rectum he could tell us
what Stevie had for breakfast yesterday.

I can't believe I'm seeing something as trashy and useless as this promoted to
HN, unless it's intended as a general statement on irony.

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pvg
This probably will win some sort of award for 'most apt domain name'.

------
po
I still don't get how this lawsuit is supposed to bring down software patents.
Dilger states:

"It might also result in a concerted effort by Google to join Oracle and other
tech giants to decommission the nuclear threat of software patent
proliferation in the future."

The problem is that Oracle will change their tune and be pro-software-patents
if they have Google on the ropes. I doubt they'll be loyal to the cause. They
will just say "Yeah, we were wrong about that."

------
dublinclontarf
>Google is nothing but a series of infringements snowballed together.

From the tone of the article, it seems that no one is able to build anything
without infringing on someone elses patents.

~~~
ulrich
That's the whole trouble about software patents, isn't it?

~~~
dublinclontarf
Yes it is, I'm just not sure that that is the point the article is trying to
make or if it does so by accident.

------
barrkel
This article reads like it was written by a deluded madman. Hard to take
seriously.

------
YuriNiyazov
Considering Oracle just killed OpenSolaris this week, it is very difficult to
view Oracle as "open source friendly"

~~~
igravious
I remember when Linux was trying to get validation in the enterprise space and
Oracle porting their DB wares to Linux accomplished this almost single-
handedly over night. (This was circa '99, 2000, don't remember exactly.) I
want to stress that the geeks had already known that Linux was ready on the
server-side by this time but now we had a nice talking to convince the suits,
"Oracle takes Linux seriously". I have always thought that Oracle has not been
antagonistic to Linux because Oracle is not an OS shop whereas, for instance,
Microsoft _is_ so Oracle's core business has not been in danger. IBM made sure
to differentiate AIX away from Linux and definitely grokked Linux before
Oracle. SUN never could give up on Solaris and now we have Oracle Solaris so
we'll have to see how that fares.

I wouldn't say that Oracle has been open source unfriendly, witness as
somebody else has said BTRFS. It would be sanguine to say that Oracle like
other large corps behaves hot and cold towards free and open source software
depending on who in the company is doing the talking.

Also as others have pointed out, Oracle seems to have had (up until this point
at least) an admirable stance on software patents as far as I can tell,
issuing public statements on patent reform.

 _However_ Google (rightly or wrongly) is seen as very open source friendly.
This is doubtless due to Chris Di Bona and their summer of code thing and
noticeably employing a lot of people to work on Linux and open source stuff.
Android is way freer than Apple's IOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 and
RIM's offerings. (Nokia has opened Symbian and Meego is open but they are not
considered relevant at the moment.) So Oracle suing Google over Android is
going to be seen as open source unfriendly regardless of the legality of the
patent lawsuit. Surely, all this could be cleared up without recourse to
lawsuits?

I think taking sides in this is silly. The law (however crappy) is the law.
Yes, software patents need reform but until then it'd be nice if we could get
on with the business of coding without worrying about litigation. The
article's author, this Daniel guy, is obviously an Apple partisan and (thus?)
a Google hater and seems to have a very bizarre recollection of computing
history.

~~~
dododo
people keep citing btrfs. oracle could still kill this: it conflicts with ZFS
and presumably oracle now owns patents in this domain too.

------
jsz0
I don't think we should discount this as purely a financial move by Oracle.
They're a very rich company but who doesn't want to be even richer? Imagine if
someone had cashed in on a small license fee for every copy of Windows circa
1992? The SmartPhone market is even bigger and upgrade cycles are shorter.
That's an awful lot of money to leave on the table.

------
illumin8
There are a few good points but this guy goes into lala land with his extreme
Apple fanboyism. This guy drank some serious kool aid.

~~~
raganwald
> There are a few good points

Precisely: [http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/how-to-use-blunt-
instrum...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/how-to-use-blunt-instrument-
to-sharpen.html)

------
ck2
The one thing I don't see anyone mentioning, if there's anyone that can afford
to defend themselves, it's Google.

Oracle kinda picked on the wrong company if Google decides they want to fight.

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lhnz
How was this allowed on HN?

~~~
sprout
Posted late on a Saturday night when everyone's out doing stuff or home
asleep, artificially upvoted to 8 or so at which point everyone assumes it's
not a load of crock. Also, people upvoting without reading; wishful thinking
on seeing the title (though I do think that the Google/Oracle showdown does
have some capacity to knock down software patents depending.)

Flagged.

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nitfol
Compare this article to the recent Groklaw article. While my view is closer to
Groklaw, both articles seem to offend me. They both worship a leader (Jobs or
RMS) and seem to call for hate of their enemies (Google, Microsoft, Mono). But
if you snip the objectionable parts from each essay, I think each brings
something to the discussion. And I really wasn't expecting an Apple fan to
share Groklaw's fantasy of an end to patents.

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raganwald
I posted this without agreeing with the author. I thought it was interesting
to contemplate without actually needing to agree with its premises.

But anyways, I came on here to express some surprise at the tone of some of
the responses. Can we take a wide detour around the ad hominems? The most
valuable comments are the ones that dispute the words themselves rather than
speculating about the author.

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gubatron
Resented Apple Fanboy, nothing to read here.

