
Oracle seeks $9.3B for Google’s use of Java in Android - Sindisil
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3048814/oracle-seeks-93-billion-for-googles-use-of-java-in-android.html
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gboudrias
Man, Oracle really does not give a shit about its reputation.

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dogma1138
You wouldn't give a shit either if you could get nearly 10bln dollars for it.

Most people would sell their mother for that amount, and it's a bit hard to
come to your investors and say well guys we could've gotten 10bln which would
give you a heck of a dividend but we cared about our reputation too much so we
passed on it.

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crispyambulance
Yeah, but how much have they expended on this legal adventure already? It has
been going on for ~6 years now and there's no end in sight, no clear victory
for anybody. Doesn't Oracle have better things to do?

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dogma1138
Considerably less than 10bln, say even if they spent 100m on legal fees,
that's still about 1% of what they would end up earning that's 1:100 return on
investment no one would in their right mind would pass on that.

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crispyambulance
OK, but it is still a roll of the dice and there are costs beyond legal fees.
1:100 is _highly_ unlikely. Lawsuits are a crappy way to make money for a
software company.

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nxzero
Creating a startup to service the CIA is a pretty crap move too; Oracle's
launch was largely fueled by creating the database for the CIA in the late
1970s.

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dogma1138
You mean like Google(Keyhole/Google Earth) and Facebook which both received
funding from the CIA through their investment company In-Q-Tel?

[https://www.iqt.org/](https://www.iqt.org/)

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nxzero
If you're going down that path, might as well reference that the research done
by Page & Brin that created Google was funded in part by DARPA.

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cm3
What does the API ruling mean for the rest of us?

If I were to write an ISC licensed clean room implementation of Apple UIKit,
would Apple be in the right to bury me?

If Oracle thinks they can ask for 9.3 billion and are likely expecting to get
1 or 2, it sounds scary.

But I hope this will lead to more and more open APIs without a single entity
holding the keys and people being very scared to use closed and copyrighted
APIs. If less people use it, its importance will equally be diminishing.
That's the hope.

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dsp1234
_If I were to write an ISC licensed clean room implementation of Apple UIKit,
would Apple be in the right to bury me?_

"The appeals court reversed the district court on the central issue, holding
that the "structure, sequence and organization" of an API was
copyrightable"[0]

That's pretty clear. Even if you re-implement every function by hand, if you
keep the same API, then it can be a copyright infringement. Note that you may
still have other defenses such as license agreements, or fair use. But this
ruling considers copying API/function declarations the same as actual code.

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc).

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0x0
How did the original PC clones get away with reverse engineering / re-
implementing the IBM BIOS? Or alternatives to MS-DOS like DR-DOS? Is it just
that nobody thought to use this attack?

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debacle
I don't think anyone but Oracle would stoop so low as to use this attack.

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joe563323
What this means to me is do not use Oracle MSSQL use mariadb
[https://mariadb.org/](https://mariadb.org/) instead.

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crpatino
I'd be wary to use the opensource alternative that shares APIs with Oracle's.
Postgress sounds like a safer bet to my ears.

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gtirloni
Does anyone have any insight/source on why Java was a good choice for Android
at the time it was created? I got lost in a sea of garbage while trying to
find anything about that. I would like to understand why Java and not
something else.

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Mikeb85
It's a fast, open source, memory managed language that already had very good
traction.

Google just underestimated the idiocy of the US court system.

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hansjorg
Java was chosen by Android Inc. though, not Google.

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Mikeb85
You're right, but Google released the first Android handsets.

Actually I forgot when the Sun/Oracle sale happened. Android 1.0 was released
before Oracle bought Sun. Though I suppose there was always the possibility of
legal action by Sun.

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joezydeco
Google knew Java was a risk for Android and memos disclosed in the court case
show that Google was trying to figure out possible solutions.

Schmidt (being an ex-Sun executive) reached out to Sun to talk about an
alliance.

[http://icdn4.digitaltrends.com/image/google-
schmidt-610x452....](http://icdn4.digitaltrends.com/image/google-
schmidt-610x452.png)

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codecamper
9.3 billion for doing squat and not improving a damn thing. get real.

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carterehsmith
For the record, it was not Oracle that was "doing squat". Oracles's JDK keeps
improving, and btw Oracle is paying for most of it. Since Android "fork",
Oracle added generics and lambdas and G1 and bazillion other improvements.

The company that was "doing squat" was Google. Their shitty (and incompatible)
Java implementation is where Oracle's was 6 years ago.

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bipin_nag
I am afraid you are digressing. Oracle maintains and has rights for the
language Java and Oracle JVM. Google has power over Android. codecamper isnt
talking about what improvements current Java has or how how shitty the Android
java is. IT is about Android itself. Google contributed most to Android,
Oracle did not.

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carterehsmith
That is not what "digressing" means. When someone talks on topic, that is not
"digressing". Why not check an online dictionary, they are free and super
helpful.

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vatotemking
Im afraid you are digressing from the points given by bipin_nag. :-)

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chris_wot
What was the reason that the appeals court overturned the ruling on APIs?

For $9.3 billion - surely it is is economically viable for Google to spend 10
million on a coordinated and public campaign to lobby lawmakers to change the
law? If they did it publicly then they'd have huge support.

Heck, Google could even openly label Oracke as greedy, conniving bastards and
almost certainly no amount of protest from Oracle would be convincing! All
Google need to point out is that Oracle are screwing a majority of Android
users.

A side note: they must truly be regretting choosing Java.

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justincormack
Changing the law would not be retrospective though.

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Laaw
Unless they made it retrospective.

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chris_wot
Or the Supreme Court did their job and agreed to listen to Google's arguments.

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nxzero
Never understood why Google didn't acquire Java from Sun.

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dlandis
> "In the first trial, a jury found Google had infringed Oracle’s copyright by
> copying into Android the "structure, sequence and organization" of 37 Java
> application programming interfaces"

I don't think these trials have been about technically using Java as a whole
have they? They are about specifically copy/pasting those 37 classes into the
Android code base. If I remember correctly, all other part of Android were
basically a clean room implementation that did not even allegedly infringe on
anything. They just screwed up in those few places.

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pfg
IIRC the appeals court ruled that the "'structure, sequence and organization'
of an API was copyrightable". So even if they hadn't copied a small number of
classes¹, they'd still be liable if that decision holds.

¹ Or accidentally implemented them using the exact same code, which is quite
possible given how trivial the code in question was - see rangeCheck

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ledriveby
Could CPU instruction sets be copyrighted? Could emulation become a crime?

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USANEEDSHELP
This may be one of the reasons Google invented Go (language). I wouldn't be
surprised to see if future versions of their platforms are Go-lang only. Make
Java obsolete

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rubber_duck
Go is entirely pointless as a GUI language - it has a niche it tries to fit
well.

Dart is much much better as a Java replacement and efforts like flutter are
really promising for cross language dev - IPC architecture behind it and
chrome (Mojo) is how Android should have been implemented, then it doesn't
matter what languages you use they are trivial to swap because IDL defined
interfaces can be reimplemented transparently and client API can be generated
automatically. Instead you are locked in to their JVM

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awinter-py
interesting to see that the highly-supported VM platforms are spawning
ecosystems of languages that target other languages. javascript is the best
example but JVM is a close second (clojure, scala, kotlin).

the trade-off here is accepting build slowness & complexity in exchange for
escaping the negatives of the default language for your platform.

I think we won't get off this trend until we figure out a bytecode format that
balances sandboxing and portability. WASM?

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rubber_duck
I agree but I don't understand how that relates to Dart (has a standalone VM
of decent quality) or Mojo (IPC API language - basically abstracts stuff on a
OS process level - cross language/VM/process interop being transparent)

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awinter-py
Both great products with great technology but neither is ubiquitous. JVM &
javascript have pentrated their target audience enough that 'building on top'
saves your users some installation work.

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jincheker
I hate Java because I hate the company behind it

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nxnfufunezn
Expected from Oracle.

