back to article Google ditches JavaOne over Oracle's Android suit

Google has said that due to Oracle's lawsuit against the company over the use of Java in Android, it will not be attending the annual JavaOne developer conference this fall. Following Larry Ellison's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, JavaOne is now run by Oracle. Google says that it has attended JavaOne every year since 2004 …

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  1. Goat Jam
    Pirate

    Boycott?

    Wouldn't it be funny if freetards across the land decided to boycott Kerazy Larry's first ever java party? Now that would be a hoot!

  2. Zobbo
    Grenade

    Google are Freetards

    Google ripped of desktop Java and put it on mobiles, knowing fine well this was a violation of Sun's policy. Thus ripping off Sun and preventing them claiming the only money the poor buggers made - on J2ME licenses.

    But everyone's too busy blindly putting the boot into Oracle. If anyone kills Java it'll be Google - by fragmenting it to death. And Oracle will take all the blame because they had the nerve to enforce standards on their own IP.

    1. slack_artillery
      Black Helicopters

      Same title

      Its pretty much the same as what they're doing with video standards, they're open sourcing VP8 because Google don't want to ever pay for a video codec, in fact it would seem Google don't want to ever pay for anything. Their commitment to open source will end when they've destroyed Oracle, MS etc etc.

      Whilst it delights me that these companies suffer its a shame its at the cost of making Google even stronger.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What is a mobile device these days anyway?

      The distinction between a mobile device and a desktop has been getting more and more blurred for a while now.

      The desktop/mobile distinction has always seemed to me to be much more about processing power than actual portability of the device. Java ME was created because dumbphones and feature phones did not have the power to run Java SE.

      Ultraportable laptops and tablet pcs which run desktop windows or linux have been out for a while now. If java se is OK on those, why not on an android phone with similar processing power? These days I use my smartphone for many things I used to do on a laptop.

      The situation will become even more blurred when laptops & tablets running android reach the market. Does oracle have a cast iron definition of "portable" in terms of form factor, that allows tablets and laptops but excludes phones (e.g any device below a certain screen size, rather than processing power)? If not I foresee a long court case.

    3. SilverWave
      Happy

      Google doesn't use the JVM

      They created their own - so this is just Oracle looking for money for nothing. Hey in 'merica it may even work.

      Oracle have brought in those noted fighters for true justice and the American way.... Boies and crew.

      JC how low can you get :-(

    4. Not That Andrew

      Its a bit more complicated than that

      Its a bit more complicated than that. While Sun were correct to sue Microsoft over their JVM, that was because it introduced incompatible Windows only hooks. The situation with Google is slightly different. It seems to be partly because the aren't using Java ME and partly because they haven't certified their JVM, even though the not inconsiderable cost of certification for Davlik and even Project Harmony would be pocket change for Google. Basically both Oracle and Google are being d*cks

      1. SilverWave
        Grenade

        Project Harmony and Fields of Use.

        IIRC Project Harmony could only be certified for non mobile use?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    There's An Alternative To Morbus Ellison

    It's called Sappeur:

    http://www.sappeur.eu

    BSD-licensed and no patents registered whatsoever.

    Currently, some minor safety assurances (stack size checking, checking for this in destructor) are missing, but will be implemented soon.

    Safe Applets would be implemented with this scheme (page 11 and 12)

    http://www.sappeur.eu/SAPPEUR.pdf

    I am currently also creating a Juce-based Applet GUI library which can be used in NPAPI-browsers like Firefox and Chrome. Other things like safe sockets and safe file access are rather easy to implement.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Bullocks!

      How BSD license can be safer than GPL'd OpenJDK?

      With BSD license, Larry doesn't need to buy anything. Just hire one of people working on that thing and take out patent. And then ha can sue all of the users and make his own proprietary fork to offer people to use in order not to get sued.

      With GPL'd software, he can't do that. He can only sue those who make non-GPL reimplementation like Google did.

  4. Shannon Jacobs
    Megaphone

    Which company is most evil?

    Doesn't it seem to you that these days most of the news about tech companies involves squabbling of which company can be most evil? In spite of this tiff with Google, I still regard Oracle as part of the little league of evil. I was beginning to think that Microsoft was trying to get relegated to the same league, but I think that Allen's new and expansive lawsuit should be enough to keep Microsoft a player in the evil big league. Meanwhile Google seems to be playing several games at the same time, and a couple of them show potential for big-time evil. I'm still confused about Apple and Amazon, though not about their general movements towards evil. It's the specific natures of their evil acts and their implications that are confusing... Lots of other companies I could mention, but one has to stop somewhere, eh?

    Actually, I don't blame the companies so much as I blame the rules of the game as encoded into laws. The problem is that the rules are increasingly written at the behest of the largest companies, which have become so large precisely because they are the most greedy companies, with a generous dose of immorality, to boot. Therefore, the best we can say in defense of Google is that they haven't been around long enough to own many politicians?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    no need to wory the paten troll will save the day!

    wait will your "dady" ( Paten troll) come home!

  6. Aaron Guilmette
    Coat

    It's free if you have enough money

    Google's M.O. seems to be to use whatever it wants whatever way it wants, regardless of patent, ownership, or license obligations. A great example is the digitizing of books and making it freely available--copyright holders are left trying to individually sue Google to get their works removed from the Google "Public Domain." And, since Google has enough money to keep the legal proceedings going for generations, only other huge companies (Oracle, Microsoft, etc) can afford to wage this war.

    Mine's the one with the unlicensed cup of joe.

  7. CheesyTheClown
    WTF?

    Why Java?

    From what I understand, Java in the incarnation used by Google is only loosely based on Java as defined by Sun. First of all, it lacks a Java virtual machine. Instead, it uses Java byte code as an intermediate language. The byte code itself is never directly translated to the native architecture's code and the byte code is never directly interpreted/executed. Therefore, the Google devices no-more contain a Java virtual machine than a Apple iPhone does. It does however contain a program capable of translating/compiling Java byte code into an alternative intermediate language which is later compiled by the device. Of course, I can't reasonably see that as being a Java virtual machine as simply a java byte code compiler. It's not even really a JIT and it isn't even theoretically a AOT compiler. Instead it's a compiler in a more classical sense.

    The libraries used by Google, as far as I know (haven't tried myself) are supposedly based on an open source or a clean room implementation of the Java libraries. If they're not, then I'm sure that Google could replace all the libraries of interest in a period of 6 months using a large Indian consulting firm. None of the relevant Java libraries are particularly interesting and could be reimplemented... probably even better by a group of paid students.

    The Java language is still used, but frankly, from what I understand, that's really just optional. The platform may be mostly written in Java, but I'm quite sure that any language capable of producing Java byte code would do just fine. Compilers which compile into Java byte code aren't all that uncommon anymore. In fact, I'm sure it should be quite possible to use C# or something similar for all future development without any major problems. Making a piss poor compiler back end is really quite simple and can be done in most cases by a compiler engineering student in a week. Typically most compilers can be producing code for a new platform (such as Java byte code) with little more than 500 lines of code. That hardest part about making a crappy port of a compiler for a new platform these days is just compiling the compiler itself and altering the make files for the new target type.

    To make a relatively decent compiler shouldn't be that big of a concern since compiling optimal Java byte code for Android is practically a waste since it'll just be re-parsed and compiled by the optimizing compiler afterwards. Not a big deal. And besides, front end optimizations should be good enough at this level anyway.

    So all things considered, why does Google bother calling their platform Java anymore except for marketting? Why not call it "GoogleGlop" or something instead. It would bare similarities to Java, but doesn't actually need to be called it or licensed as it. I bet it would resolve at least a chunk of the licensing issues.

    1. James Hughes 1

      Oracles suit is not about Java

      It's about some underlying algorithms that Google may have used to implement their version of Java.

      It's quite possible that any compiler running in the way you describe will also infringe these patents.

      Or so I am lead to believe.

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