Oracle has the law on its side

[ZDroid1]

=== excerpt ===

An obvious question is how Oracle can sue Google for using intellectual property that was ostensibly made available under royalty-free terms when Sun opened the Java source code. Our investigation of the licensing issues suggests that Oracle does, in fact, have the law on its side

 

[mrspeedmaster]

Good article for the layman. Google needs to pony up and pay. The fact that they had the $10 million Android bounty to bribe Java developers to develop for Android totally goes against their "Do no evil" tenant.

 

[IOWA]

Good article for the layman. Google needs to pony up and pay. The fact that they had the $10 million Android bounty to bribe Java developers to develop for Android totally goes against their "Do no evil" tenant.

Pay for what, exactly? Google did nothing wrong.

Once a project is open-source, it's perfectly legal to "fork" it for your own uses. That's exactly what Google did.

 

[VIO]

Pay for what, exactly? Google did nothing wrong.

Once a project is open-source, it's perfectly legal to "fork" it for your own uses. That's exactly what Google did.

Hell thats like the major advantage to open source

also what? The bounty was for apps no?

 

[Fezzik77]

They didn't build a mobile runtime off of J2ME they built it off of Java Runtime. Assuming they didn't borrow techniques from J2ME they in-fact just did what you do tweak an open software program for your own purposes. It may be bad timing for Oracle. The recent Library of congress rulings seem to lean away from software patents in most situations. It would have to not be obvious how they made a mobile environment like it would have to be basically not just any developer could take the JRE and mobilize it for the patent to really be enforceable and Google would have had to have done it the same way or at least using the same technical ideas. If they developed their own way of doing it from JRE then it will be difficult for Oracle to really succeed. However, that is using reason which these things very rarely do. More than likely it will be settled out of court for some undisclosed terms which will likely give Oracle a stake in Android which is what they really want anyway.

 

[storm14k]

They didn't build a mobile runtime off of J2ME they built it off of Java Runtime.

Thats one place where the case falls apart. They implemented their own VM and convert the Apache Harmony libraries (and open source clean room implementation of the JDK) to their own bytecode and run it. Its not like they too JavaME or even JavaSE without a license and used it without license. All that JavaME discussion is really about is whether they are excused from the patents in question. The real case is whether the patents actually stand up and so far they are being cut down.

Headius: My Thoughts on Oracle v Google

Its long but its worth the read if you want more insight into the matter from somebody that worked for Sun.

 

[woofermazing]

The only harm I can see coming out of this is a slow down on android releases, as developers are distracted from doing what they were hired to do.

 

[ZDroid1]

Does C# have the same status as Java?

 

[storm14k]

Does C# have the same status as Java?

Actually this Oracle case illustrates the problem with C# that the anti-Mono people have been railing about. Microsoft does not distribute a runtime for any other platform than Windows. Mono was developed by Novell to port C# and .Net to *nix. But they have a licensing agreement with MS to use it. Whenever they are asked if this license extends to use beyond Novell's SuSE Linux they clam up. But two seconds later they are back to trying to push everybody to use it. And they are EXTREMELY pushy about trying to spread it everywhere and argue that its better than everything else. I just read an argument the other day where the leader of the project was trying to argue that Google should have used Mono for Android for better performance. The whole thing smells like a setup for MS to do exactly what Oracle has done as soon as Mono has infected enough of the *nix world.

 

[ZDroid1]

Prior to this, I had always hated Objective-C (used to develop apps for the iPhone). Turns out Apple was smart enough to avoid this kind of BS.

I mean if a programming language is owned by an entity, it should just be avoided, and the 'owner' should be told to take their language and shove it.

 

[shawn1224]

Thats one place where the case falls apart. They implemented their own VM and convert the Apache Harmony libraries (and open source clean room implementation of the JDK) to their own bytecode and run it. Its not like they too JavaME or even JavaSE without a license and used it without license. All that JavaME discussion is really about is whether they are excused from the patents in question. The real case is whether the patents actually stand up and so far they are being cut down.

Headius: My Thoughts on Oracle v Google

Its long but its worth the read if you want more insight into the matter from somebody that worked for Sun.

Thanks 4 the article, it was a great read

This quote was classic

The collection of patents specified by the suit seems pretty laughable to me. If I were Google, I wouldn't be particularly worried about showing prior art for the patents in question or demonstrating how Android/Dalvik don't actually violate them. Some, like the "mixed mode" patent, don't actually seem to apply at all. It feels very much like a bunch of Sun engineers got together in a room with a bunch of lawyers and started digging for patents that Google might have violated without actually knowing much about Android or Dalvik to begin with