Goracle latest: Page testifies, jury goes home Google CEO Larry Page took the stand Thursday in the latest edition of the Chocolate Factory's long-running legal case against Oracle. The Google cofounder was questioned by attorneys from both sides, reiterating his company's argument that the Java APIs developed by Sun and later acquired by Oracle were open tools that Google …
Right, and so we can add another item to the long list of reasons not to use java. If oracle wins this, what does that mean for all the floss java clones out there? End-of-story?
Luckily there is C# these days, with Microsoft actually moving to get as many devs on board as possible, instead of alienating them by saying 'hey that API is ours, and you have to pay if you adhere to it!'. And it's a much nicer language too!
I know microsoft does not have the best track record either, and their current friendliness may turn into the same Oracle-like hostility within milliseconds of course.. But still..
C# itself is a Java clone made after Microsoft lost its litigation with Sun. Just MS did it different enough to avoid further litigation, and made its whole tooling stack on its own.
Google instead wanted to use the whole existing tooling stack to support Android development without investing too much, thereby it needed a 1:1 replacement of Java.
EFF is on Google side because till now they've been the underdog against the MS behemoth. When Microsoft will start to fully clone GPL product APIs inside its products, I'm sure EFF will start to cry out loud "MS can't rob us of ours APIs!!!!"
C# itself is a Java clone made after Microsoft lost its litigation with Sun. Just MS did it different enough to avoid further litigation, and made its whole tooling stack on its own.
The Sun/MS case was different.
Sun's complaint was not that Microsoft was using the Java APIs without a licence -- Sun were quite happy for Microsoft to use the APIs and to produce their own version of standard Java -- it was that Microsoft had extended Java in such a way that would encourage Windows Java programmers to write MS-Java code that couldn't be compiled on a standard Java compiler or run on a non-Windows platform. Sun's goal with Java was portable code that could be run anywhere and Microsoft's extensions would have restricted Java code (that used the extensions) to Windows platforms. It would have been easy for a developer to write an application in MS Java thinking that as it was Java it would run anywhere, and only to discover that that was not the case when the time came to port the application to another platform.
Yes, C# is different from Java ... the most significant difference, from Sun's PoV is probably that it has a different name. Nobody is going to write a C# program thinking it will run on a standard JVM.
Google instead wanted to use the whole existing tooling stack to support Android development without investing too much, thereby it needed a 1:1 replacement of Java.
Methinks that that is in keeping with Sun's original goals for Java. The Java language isn't being changed or extended by anything that Google are doing, and any Java code written for Android that doesn't directly use Android APIs will be usable in Java apps on other platforms.
This is all in Java's -- and so in Oracle's -- best interest, but they're getting greedy. I hope they get slapped down.
"...When Microsoft will start to fully clone GPL product APIs inside its products, I'm sure EFF will start to cry out loud "MS can't rob us of ours APIs!!!!""
Then another non-sense API war will start. Are programmers going to follow FOSS or MS derives? On MS providing the monetary stimulus that FOSS doesn't, it's probable that they 'steal' some 'naive' mind share. If derive take both sides too far apart, then Communities will suffer Diasporas.
But as Trevor Pot has explained at nausea, Microsoft up until now has exerted absolute incompetence as Health Care Guardians of People Minds [Downstream to Users themselves].
Sovereign Stupids those go on a Microsoft Only PathWay. Same goes for every XYZ Only PathWay.
Neither saying that Microsoft is the only one causing Mental Havoc.
...Everyone should keep a healthy, professional detachment and optionality from all technologies and their respective providers.
Trevor could be a happier human, if detached.
This is a classic tale of not doing proper due diligence in an acquisition. When they acquired Android (and they did - it is not an in-house development) the fact that it violates the Java license (the idiotic mobile clause) should have come up as a gigantic red flag.
However, such things which are _ALWAYS_ considered outside the Silly Valley are usually omitted during the process of Joyous Californication.
They could have fixed it then by ditching java, using the same principles (uid per developer) for app management with a different bytecode language (python, ruby - you name it). They did not. Are they right or wrong legally is a different story. They are definitely wrong from a business and acquisition due diligence and "fix this before we ship" perspective. In fact, wrong is not the word. This is classic M&A incompetence of the Californicating variety. Too late to fix that now though.
Just a couple of points
1) When Google acquired Android the went to the then owners of Java, Sun, and asked if they could use the interfaces. Sun's reply, which is recorded under testimony from then Sun's CEO boils down to, 'sure. go for it.'
2) The only company / organisation / IT Guru who thinks interfaces are copyrightable is Oracle
Oracle bought Sun after Sun had given permission to Google. If anyone is guilty of not doing due diligence it's Oracle.
The only company / organisation / IT Guru who thinks interfaces are copyrightable is Oracle
Unfortunately, the courts agree with them, which is why this is rumbling on.
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