

Google's Opening Statement - Language is free - hluska
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/google-opening-argument/

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ajross
First off, I am clearly in complete agreement with the argument presented.

That said, now that this case is live and in the media, it should be noted
that there's a certain deep irony in it. Andy Rubin directed all GPL code (all
that was practical, anyway) to be removed from the Android userspace out of
fear of IP purity concerns. And in the process of all that forking he did deep
harm to the open source community. Not just code was forked, but
infrastructure was abandoned: compare the level of robustness and transparency
of Fedora/Debian/Ubuntu/OpenSUSE packaging to that of the "I cooked a ROM,
download it here!" culture in the android world.

Yet Rubin allowed the use of the developer tools of a clearly proprietary
product from another company without batting an eyelash. And no one called him
on it. And now they have to have this ridiculous fight. So what was the point
of forking Linux again?

~~~
cdibona
I fundamentally disagree that Android did deep harm to open source. That's
just absurd.

~~~
ajross
I said it hurt the community. Your code is open. And much of it is great. But
it's not something that can be meaningfully shared.

Again: compare the community work available at Launchpad or rpmfusion or
build.opensuse.org (compatible, signed, versioned packages with automated
dependency tracking) to "I cooked a ROM doodz!". The far and away _best_
example of community work in the Android world (Cyanogen) is, what, five
_months_ behind the core team at even shipping the software that's already in
the field? It's depressing.

And what's absolutely infuriating to me (and the point of this rant) is that
you _started_ with all that good stuff and threw it out the window chasing
some ridiculous notion of IP purity that -- surprise! -- was basically
worthless as you're being sued over IP anyway.

~~~
cdibona
Do you really think the legal picture would be any different if Android were
under copyleft?

~~~
ajross
Of course not, that wasn't my point at all. I think the _community_ picture
would be very different if Android had inherited the infrastructure and
community of desktop linux instead of charging ahead with needless and
inferior reimplementations of glibc, udev, init/upstart/systemd, rpm/dpkg,
etc... in a way that cut them off from the rest of the linux community.

Ubuntu and Fedora users can package stuff for others in a robust way,
including modifications to the system libraries. How nice would it be to fix
the awful accelerometer polling on the Galaxy Nexus and point users to a RPM
repo? Try out some new gesture tuning? See the point? That kind of work
exists, sort of, in the Android world, _but it sucks rocks_.

And the reason for all this breakage was, ostensibly, "IP purity" and the
desire to avoid law suits and ambiguity about the software licensing. Which,
as it happens, was a fools errand anyway as the platform is being sued
regardless.

Is it clear now what I'm saying?

------
trentmb
There was a tribe in Chile that tried to sue Microsoft for supporting their
language, not sure what came of it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapuche_language#Microsoft_laws...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapuche_language#Microsoft_lawsuit)

------
mattiask
Are they arguing that _all_ languages are free or that the Java language
specifically was free? If it's the former it seems a little strange. If I
tomorrow invented some programming language that for instance described some
novel way to handle concurrency, why wouldn't that be protectable? I'm not
pro-patents but languages being public domain per default doesn't seem right
either

~~~
obtu
If you are arguing for monopolies on ideas, that makes you pro-patent.

~~~
mattiask
Aren't all patents ideas? Surely the difference between a patent or not can't
be whether the ideas is a physical object or not.

If all patents were abolished tomorrow I wouldn't mind, but as so long as they
aren't it seems silly that some things that really demand a high degree of
creativity and innovation isn't protected. That kinda seems to be the point of
patents, not like coming up with the idea of buying something with 1-click

~~~
obtu
Creativity and innovation have been happening for much of human history.
Perceived unfairness that the progress of technology doesn't delineate
individual's contributions isn't really something that has held back society.

On the other hand, the patent litigation game is negative sum (it destroys
wealth) and mostly enriches lawyers:
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1930272>
<http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/terrible-cost-patents/>

In addition to the litigation costs, the prohibition to build incrementally or
to reuse or rediscover ideas makes R&D more expensive for lesser results.

So making ideas exclusive has not rewarded R&D and has made society poorer
overall, despite rhetoric about incentives, propriety, and fairness.

~~~
mattiask
I'm not arguing for patents, only that a programming language should probably
be patentable if other similar creative efforts are, I don't see why they
should be exempt. I agree with you that patents are bad overall (if that's
your stance) and should be revamped or abolished.

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robomartin
Isn't this about the implementation of the virtual machine rather than the
language itself?

Funny enough, thinking about a project over the last few weeks I found myself
wondering if there were any legal restrictions to implementing your own JVM
with commercial purposes. I couldn't find any guidance on this at the Oracle
site. Maybe the answer to this question will be borne out of this trial?

~~~
hartror
I _believe_ all the implementation patents have been dismissed by the USPTO
bar 1/2 of one which is still undergoing review. What is left is Oracle's
claim of language copyright which will hopefully get the ruling it deserves.

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recoiledsnake
If that is true, does that mean anyone will be free to implement any
programming language developed by anyone, regardless of the designers' wishes?

Looks like there be will no monetary incentive in inventing a very innovative
languages when the big guys can just come in and re-implement it and not pay a
cent.

~~~
nknight
Ignoring the first-to-market incentive (which is substantial), is there any
monetary incentive now? Has anyone else ever tried to make a business out of
somehow "licensing" a general-purpose programming language minus
implementation?

The concept doesn't even make sense. Do you pay someone to let you speak
English? Why would you pay someone to let you "speak" any other language?

~~~
arihant
What if I ship a language with implementation but would like to prevent others
from implementing it?

Sometimes language implementations are the product - things like R, Matlab and
Mathematica are close examples. What if I figured out a much better
programming language for Finance software and would like to prevent every
other company from implementing it?

This debate is far more complex than what people think.

~~~
orangecat
The value of Mathematica is not that "Integrate[Sin[x^2], x]" is especially
brilliant syntax.

~~~
fluidcruft
Wolfram Research is infamous for claiming copyright to the language of
Mathematica threatening to sue the University of California. They have also
have a long history of causing automatic translators and shims for converting
Mathematica syntax code into other systems to disappear (supposedly based on
the language copyright).

~~~
nknight
Do you have any meaningful citation for these events?

The only mention I can find of the incident you seem to be alluding to is a
brief, vague, and un-sourced mention in a text file dating to 1991[1]. I'd be
entirely unsurprised to learn that there is far more nuance to the story than
what you and said file state, or that the incident was largely the result of a
game of telephone.

[1] [http://progfree.org/Copyright/against-user-interface-
copyrig...](http://progfree.org/Copyright/against-user-interface-
copyright.txt)

