

Oracle v Google: Why? What does Oracle hope to gain? - bensummers
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/08/14/oracle-v-google/

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zmmmmm
A good summary. After several days of thinking about this I can only come to
two conclusions, neither of which I like:

a) Oracle is realizing that mobile is strategic and has decided this is how
they will get in on the action. They think it is much more important than
Java. They will force Google to license Java from them and that way gain not
only royalties, but actual control of Android.

b) This is purely about damaging Android. There is an agreement we know
nothing about yet between Apple and Oracle that if Oracle takes down Android
something will happen in return from Apple. They don't care if they win or
lose, they just want to smash adoption of Android. It could as easily be a
move from MS but it is hard to think past the bitterness and sense of betrayal
expressed by Jobs about Android, or the frequently reported "close friendship"
between Ellison and Jobs.

I wish these were conspiracy theories but I can't account for Oracle's
willingness to detonate what is still an incredibly valuable Java asset any
other way.

~~~
sprout
I have to think that if licensing fees were required for Android Google would
re-tool 3.0 for Python or something. Mobile processors are getting fast enough
that Python wouldn't be a problem

And if they didn't, I suspect device manufacturers would look to the _truly_
free Linux platforms.

~~~
tzs
What is important for a phone platform is what's on top, not what's on bottom.
Android can compete with iPhone because of the high level stuff Google
provided--the Linux at the bottom is pretty much irrelevant.

Most Linux phones, other than Android and WebOS, run crappy top level stuff
written by the device manufacturers. Rarely, a device manufacturer does come
up with something that is not crap to put on top of the kernel, but even then
they can't compete with iPhone because they lack the infrastructure, like app
stores that can attract significant developer interest.

~~~
sprout
By all accounts I've seen, WebOS is a great platform, and failed because of
marketing and hardware, not software.

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recampbell
This is the best analysis I've seen of the suit.

I agree that this is not primarily about money, given the uncertainty of an
outcome. More than anything else though, this is Oracle proving they aren't
going to play softball with infringement Sun's IP.

The whole episode reminds me of Nixon and Kissinger's plan to make the Soviets
think he was nuts:

"Frustrated, Nixon decided to try something new: threaten the Soviet Union
with a massive nuclear strike and make its leaders think he was crazy enough
to go through with it. His hope was that the Soviets would be so frightened of
events spinning out of control that they would strong-arm Hanoi, telling the
North Vietnamese to start making concessions at the negotiating table or risk
losing Soviet military support."

[http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff_nuc...](http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff_nuclearwar?currentPage=all#ixzz0wbWpMqUT)

Larry doesn't care about openness or community -- he holds them in contempt.
What he cares about is winning. And this was his way to prove it.

~~~
sogrady
"Larry doesn't care about openness or community -- he holds them in contempt.
What he cares about is winning. And this was his way to prove it."

That's a better way of putting it than anything I came up with. To give credit
where credit is due, his approach has produced for the firm. And his disdain
for communities like Linux (e.g. Oracle's Linux distribution) and OpenSolaris
(e.g. the leaked memo) has not cost the firm much on the public markets thus
far.

But the same was once true of Microsoft, and now they have felt compelled to
attempt a difficult, long term rehab of their public image. Which makes one
wonder whether a similar effort from Oracle is not an If, but rather a When.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Oracle does not sell consumer software, so the image issue is mostly
irrelevant.

~~~
sogrady
Respectfully disagree. Reputation and image are important if yours is poor
amongst a community that influences buying decisions.

Traditionally, this hasn't really been the case with Oracle, as their products
are still adopted up the food chain from most developers who might be expected
to have a poor image of Oracle.

The question is how long this remains the case, and what impact a poor image
will have on hiring, partnership, investment in the Java ecosystem, and so on.

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avar
It just dawned on me that this is going to be another thing like SCO.

Man years will be spent arguing over this by thousands of self-appointed
Internet Lawyers for years, with the signal to noise ratio approaching zero.

~~~
mbreese
Some have already started calling this SCOracle. So yes, be prepared for a
long protracted legal battle. The upside might be the end to software patents.
The downside is years of legal maneuvering not to mention the death of Java.

~~~
moeffju
I know a number of people who would not call the death of Java a downside.

~~~
mcav
The death of _the JVM_ would most definitely be a downside.

~~~
nkassis
Considering that if Oracle gets it's way, making a JVM type VM is going to be
impossible without lawsuit. Those patents seem very broad.

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varjag
Regardless of their goals, that Oracle found it suitable to throw Java into
kamikaze attack on Google, shows how little they really value it.

~~~
zmmmmm
I think they value Java quite a lot. The frightening part is that they must
value something else quite a lot more. For my money, it has to be that they
want a stake in the mobile market - they've decided they can't sit by and let
the future of computing pass them by. This is their way of getting in on the
action.

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bretpiatt
Total speculation but it seems very likely that Google has some database /
data analysis / data processing related patents that Oracle would like to
cross-license and rather than a starting with a soft discussion they throw a
live grenade in the room and make the talks go quickly.

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jared314
Time to swap Dalvik for v8? I saw a presentation on how you could swap out the
Dalvik VM for something else. Has anyone tried it?

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mtkd
1) Brings the issue of software patents to court in a big way

2) Opens a massive opportunity for new enterprise technologies to emerge

First reaction was anger, but after consideration I'm quite glad it's
happened.

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wvenable
I wonder if Google made a mistake including any part of "Java" in Android. In
retrospect, it seems like it would have been better to not only create their
own VM but the whole rest of the stack as well.

It wouldn't have protected them, necessarily, from these patent claims but
Oracle wouldn't even have bothered looking because there wouldn't have been
any Java technology involved.

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10ren
One of Oracle's selling points for their database was independence over
hardware vendors. Java offers the same - although today's hardware is much
less diverse.

Sun in fact did litigate over Java, as the article offhandedly mentions,
though the motivation there was that MS different version was fragmenting the
language, and undermining the compatibility of "write once, run anywhere".

I agree with the article that even a few billion in damages isn't worth it to
Oracle. There must be some strategic advantage, quite possibly in some
negotiations with Google that we haven't heard about (and perhaps will never
hear about).

The point made about the mobile revolution is the right kind of path; another
revolution in progress is the cloud. There is definite overlap between Google
and Oracle in the cloud, with Google's technology expertise, and it being used
by the enterprise - that's probably what Oracle hopes to gain.

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va_coder
I thought a while back that Google's Appengine could eventually compete with
Oracle Database and Oracle Peoplesoft. As more people use Google Apps, Gmail
and build custom apps on Appengine, they may start to compete with Oracle
offerings. Maybe this is Oracle's way of slowing that down.

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nkassis
Why did Google not just buy Sun? I've been saying this since IBM started
talking to Sun.

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curious_man
There is something I don't get yet (my ignorance): how this mess will affect
the other languages that runs on the JVM (like clojure, scala, etc)?

~~~
mhd
Not much. I've seen no steps taken against OpenJDK yet, and even if they did
an OpenSolaris on that, you could always run it with the official JDK. It
would be beyond crazy if the wouldn't make one available anymore.

What probably will happen is that some frustrated developers won't use
anything associated with the JVM. I don't expect to see a lot of this, though.
A lot of the people who use JVM languages already work in an environment where
there's more than enough proprietary enterprise software. And I doubt that it
matters a lot for complete newbies.

Personally, I was on the lookout for new languages to focus upon, after
playing with a lot recently. And after this, Ocaml and Erlang moved to the top
of the stack, past Scala and Clojure.

~~~
curious_man
Thank you for your perspective.

Let me recap the issue as I understand it so far: Oracle filed a lawsuit
against Google regarding patents infringement for their use of Dalvik in
Android. This is a big problem for Google and for every other alternative JVM
(especially open-source) because even for a clean-room implementation you need
to be licensed by Oracle.

But as far as I can see this is not so interesting to general application
developers since, I think, the majority of them targets the official JVM (open
or not) anyway. The same goes for other JVM based languages, since they can
generally run well in the OpenJDK.

However the general consent that I see is that this is a bad move for the
innovation of the JVM platform and a move that will likely reduce the trust of
the industry in this technology.

Maybe new projects will be developed upon another and more open platform, but
the vast majority of application-level projects (such as the myriad of
enterprise webapps) won't be so interested.

What do you think?

Disclosure: I'm interested in alternative JVM languages because in my company
(who is J[ava/VM] centric) we're evaluating technologies to rewrite one of our
products from scratch. Aside from my personal interest in new languages
obviously.

~~~
mhd
It's too soon to say what the general consent on that issue is. The next few
days will be very interesting in that respect. I wonder what IBM will say. If
I'm not mistaken, their current java products (they've got their own branch of
the JDK) are covered by license agreements, probably made in the Sun era. So
it's unlikely that they're in immediate legal danger. Still, they might hedge
their bets differently for the long term. I wouldn't really count on it,
though, considering that there's no decent alternative right now, and
generally IBM takes a long while to wake up.

Most of the industry doesn't exactly mess with the JVM, so they don't really
care whether it's free-as-in-beer, free-as-in-speech or something in between.
I think that this includes academia (where Scala is from) and consulting
agencies (where Clojure is from). There's no real hard-core GNU free software
crowd behind them.

I hope that I'm wrong, but I think apart from a small flock of hackers, nobody
will care too much. I do think that the efforts to port both Scala and Clojure
to other platforms (CLR / LLVM) will increase a bit.

A lot also depends on what Google will do. If they throw down the gauntlet and
put lots of effort and money into a migration towards a different language,
then the whole IT market will look quite different. But I think that's too
much money wasted, to there'll be some underhanded deals and Google and Oracle
will become fast friends again. If Google doesn't want to loose face by
settling de jure, Oracle might drop the case and there'll be a de facto
settlement.

So to summarize: From my limited knowledge right now, I don't see big
practical reasons to avoid JVM-based languages. People were quite content
using Java, even before Sun made their Open Source initiative. We'll just
regress to that state.

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cwp
> Apple and Microsoft will be thrilled by this development.

No kidding! Apple, especially. To the extent that Apple has suffered from
developer frustration with it's App Store policies, this is a mitigating
factor. Apple is fickle about approving apps, but who knows what will happen
with Dalvik.

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stanleydrew
> What Dalvik never did – never could have done – was protect Google from
> patent litigation.

This comment is a little silly considering that creation of Dalvik is what
incented this lawsuit in the first place.

~~~
sogrady
With the disclaimer that I'm the author of the linked piece, I'm not sure why
the comment is silly. Dalvik is indeed at the heart of Oracle's claims, but
many casual followers of its development are operating under the assumption
that Google's cleanroom reimplementation shields it from patent claims.

An interpretation that is obviously false, as Dalvik was intended to
circumvent copyright and - perhaps - trade secrets, not patents. But it's
something you hear with some frequency, so spelling it out in clear terms
seemed worthwhile.

No?

~~~
wvenable
> Dalvik was intended to circumvent copyright and - perhaps - trade secrets,
> not patents.

I disagree. There is no reason that Google couldn't have built their own
clean-room implementation of the JVM and called in Android. If they used no
Sun code and no Sun trademarks, there were would be copyright or trademark
infringement. Outside of some technical advantage, the only other reason to
completely change the design of the VM would be to get around JVM related
patents.

It's quite possible that Dalvik allows Google to avoid most of Sun's patents
on Java technology. The patents included the suit would seem to be violated by
most VM technologies, including Microsoft's .NET CLR.

~~~
webmink
Going further than that, given Google hired a number of staff that had worked
on the Java implementation at Sun, and given that the head of Google was
present at Sun as the Java patent-and-copyright trap was being constructed, it
seems inconceivable to me that Dalvik would have been permitted to violate
Sun's patents.

~~~
sogrady
In a rational world and under a reasonable patent system, I might agree. But
you know as well as I do, Simon, probably better, that under the current
process it's difficult to guarantee that you're not violating anyone's
patents. Particularly when you're reimplementing an existing system.

Is it possible that Oracle's patents don't read on Dalvik? Certainly. Did
Google take care to minimize the risk of such? I'm sure they did.

But however careful the execution, the system at present is would be actively
working against them.

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binaryfinery
Please oh please let it be a Java-based iOS SDK instead of the archaic shit we
have to use now.

~~~
binaryfinery
Why the markdown? Objective-C is shitty with shitty tools. Ellison is Jobs'
friend. Ellison owns Java. Android is iPhone's rival.

~~~
Synaesthesia
You don't _have to_ use it. Your opinion on objective-c is irrelevant, and
Apple aren't gonna switch to Java.

