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Oracle Sues Google For Infringing Java Patents
Bruce Perens writes "Oracle has brought a lawsuit against Google claiming that Google has infringed patents on the Java platform in Android. Scribd has a copy of the complaint. But there's a patent grant that should allow Google to use Java royalty-free. Has Google failed to meet the terms of the grant?"
Google should have bought Sun. They had all kinds of interesting projects, people, patents and research happening. Plus they also would have had the SPARC platform (not big iron, but the CMT implementations) that, given enough investment, could have paid off in the long run for their commodity datacenters.
For 7 billion, Sun was worth it. I wonder why they just let it pass.
> maybe it's time to show that each of these patents wasn't new
Ever heard of 1-click?? The review took five years (!) and the end result was that it was upheld and just narrowed. I wonder how much is costs to hire a lawyer for five years... please tell me in 2015 when you've done what you suggest :-)
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The link mentions both patent and copyright infringement. Is that accurate?
I'm far more interested in alleged copyright violations in an open-source ecosystem than patent violations. What does it mean for other players trying to build on Java if you're going to get done for copyright infringement by doing so ?
Your satire is well taken. Here's an example, Rare Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer's, that shows how much can be accomplished when everyone agrees to share and work together. Perhaps this collaboration is not perfect and the outcome not certain, but perhaps it's a start. We accomplish more when we work together.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
So much for all the people who said that Java was open, free, and not patent-encumbered. The Java patent grant set up conditions that you can essentially not meet unless you use Sun/Oracle's version. And the fact that Sun was going to be taken over was obvious for years. I had just hoped it was going to be IBM, who wouldn't have done this sort of thing.
It was Sun who never submitted Java to ISO or ANSI, it was Sun who created a dual-licensed Java, it was Sun who filed hundreds of patents on Java-related technologies, and it was Sun who created the limited patent grant under conditions that nobody could meet.
And it was predictable that Sun would eventually fail and get bought by someone who might start to enforce those patents; in fact, the reason Oracle was willing to outbid everybody else was probably because they realized that these patents hadn't been placed fully into the public domain.
I had been warning about this for years, but all the Java fanboys were arguing that Sun was the good guys, that they would never sue, and that Java was a free and open platform.
Do your homework people: what has happened was predictable, and the evil seeds were sown by Sun itself.
It will be hard to find out whether Oracle planned this kind of aggression when buying Sun, but it can certainly be stated that the free software/open source community hasn't benefited from the acquisition.
There's a number of important questions that Oracle's patent attack raises:
This is a patent dispute with very wide-ranging implications.
and also because Java is licensed under the GPL.
"Java" isn't licensed under the GPL. A single Java implementation, derived from Sun's proprietary source code, is licensed under the GPL. Furthermore, the patent grant applies only if you meet specific compatibility conditions, which no implementation other than Sun's meets.
Google implemented the Java language, not its libraries, and did it by themselves. Android (and Dalvik) are licensed under a mix of Apache and GPL, but that doesn't matter; the license under which a third party implementation is released is not relevant for the patent grant.
Google rolled their own implementation and libraries for good reason: the full Java platform would have been far too obese for Android, and embedded versions of Java aren't free at all.
There is effectively only one Java implementation, the one controlled by Sun/Oracle. Sun killed most of the others early on with legal threats, and the few remaining ones seem to fail to meet the conditions of Sun's public patent grant.
Anybody who writes Java software is pretty much stuck with running it on Sun/Oracle's proprietary implementation or its nominally GPL derivative. You're joined at the hip with Oracle, in the bending over kind of sense.
Just for the record: What Sun said (now Oracle still says) about reading Oracle Java source code and creating a clean room implementation: JAVA RESEARCH LICENSE FAQ Question 18
18. Does the JRL prevent me from being able to create an independent open source implementation of the licensed technology?
The JRL is not a tainting license and includes an express "residual knowledge" clause which says you're not contaminated by things you happen to remember after examining the licensed technology. The JRL allows you to use the source code for the purpose of JRL-related activities but does not prohibit you from working on an independent implementation of the technology afterwards. Obviously, if your intention is to create an "independent" implementation of the technology then it is inappropriate to actively study JRL source while working on such an implementation. It is appropriate, however, to allow some decent interval of time (e.g. two weeks) to elapse between working on a project that involves looking at some JRL source code and working on a project that involves creating an independent implementation of the same technology
Android has its own VM called Dalvik. You use Java tools to compile to JVM bytecode and then there's a translater to Dalvik bytecode.
Maybe Oracle believe Dalvik implements their patented techniques.
Most are saying that they are going after google's jme which is quite interesting since google built (Dalvik) themselves to get around these licensing issues, although if they did use ip from Sun for Dalvik then maybe they have a case, although only the code will tell. Here are also some interesting reads on the matter besides those in the summary:
http://www.itworld.com/071116googlesun
http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/110/
Miguel de Icaza gives a pretty good guess about what's happened.
The gist is that Sun very carefully licensed Java under the GPL with an agreement that anyone who implements Java 100%, without supersetting, would get access to the patents. Apparently Sun's embedded implementations have some special functionality not included in the GPLed version. This is where the "very carefully" bit comes in -- it means others can't implement their own embedded versions (adding that special functionality would be supersetting), and would have to license Sun's version. Their embedded implementation generates the bulk of the cash for them, and they wanted to protect that.
Google wanted to use Java but didn't want everyone to need to license the embedded version. So they implemented their own. To get around the supersetting issue, they changed their implementation (Dalvik) to not infringe on Sun's patents -- even going so far as to change the bytecode format and implementing a Java->Dalvik bytecode translator.
Now Sun sees everyone hopping on the Android train for all sorts of devices, and no licensing fees coming in from any of them. And they're suing.
It sounds plausible to me but Miguel is the author of Mono, so take this with a grain of salt. He's usually the one having an argument against someone saying how everyone should use Java because Microsoft will pull the same type of stunt against Mono some day, so this must be a humorous day for him.
Maybe, just maybe, Oracle hates open source projects. Buy the leading open source database.. check. Buy the company that created and owns the encumbered patents to one of the most popular open source programming languages.. check. Attack any company of any reasonable size producing commercial products with open source technology.. say.. Google.. a win would cement a victory against any company they might want to challenge.. so check.
Oracle's products are pretty terrible with the one exception of the DB. And that's pretty ugly too, it just happens to work pretty well, not that its configuration is simple, intuitive, or quick, nor that its logging capabilities really tell you anything. I've never looked at Oracle as an example of how to write software or as a token example of a what a good, successful software company should look like. But it seems like Oracle is scared of the new kid in town and wants to kick his ass to demonstrate Oracle's badassness. I hope Oracle loses, and big. More rulings against software patents. And when you buy a company just to get the patents it owns to troll bigger fish, you've entered a new realm of "patent trolling." Oracle seriously lost any amount of respect I might've ever given them with this move. Just another patent troll. Just another big software company that can't win any way but fighting dirty. Let's hope the judicial system actually works properly for once -- retroactively kill all software patents and stop the issuance of any future ones, and possibly reverse the purchase of Sun by Oracle. It was clearly not about growth, but about obtaining a new weapon to run around shooting at people. Why this was allowed in the first place, I can't possibly imagine... oh wait, yeah I can. It looks something like this: $$$$$.
It wasn't the exact same thing. Microsoft was passing off a bastardized version of Java as Java so they were sued for trademark infringement and related matters.
Google doesn't claim their platform is Java and never has. Oracle can't sue them for the same reasons so they've pulled some generic patents out of their ass and are suing them for those. Google will probably pull a bunch of generic web patents out its ass and countersue. After a big noise both sides will settle.
OpenOffice.org does not implement the JVM and java compilers and libraries.
That is incorrect. Use of the JVM in OpenOffice.org is entirely optional at this point in time which is why a lot of people recommend disabling it to improve performance. A few years ago, OpenOffice was starting to rely heavily on Java with a lot of new features (such as wizards and templates), threatening to make the JVM a requirement. This is why Stallman suggested that the project be forked so people could strip Java out of the program. This was a brilliant move because it essentially prompted Sun to license Java under the GPL.
What Google has done, they created a coffee cup without lid, small handle and they want to call it Java, but it's not by definition.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe Droid was marketed as being based on the Java language as opposed to being an implementation of the Java spec. Whereas Microsoft took Java and poisoned the well by making platform specific additions to the language (thus negating, write once, run everywhere), I believe the makers of Droid built a Java like language from the ground up. To my knowledge, there have been no claims that standard Java programs can run on Droid. In fact, I believe a lot of standard classes in Java aren't even present on Droid. Again, I haven't developed on the platform so I don't know.
Everyone should have seen this coming when Google decided to make an incompatible version of the Java language since this is the Sun versus Microsoft lawsuit all over again.
Apparently some did see it coming. I don't remember it being reported at the time but here's what the Trolltech CTO said back in 2007 :
"They are using Java, but they aren't implementing any well-known Java framework, and really that just creates another standard to support. The risk they take here is that they might fragment the market further," Benoit Schillings, Trolltech chief technology officer [said]." ("Google's Android parts ways with Java industry group")
Of course Google was, and still is, the tech darling that could do no wrong and nothing seemed to come of it for a couple of years. Unfortunately for Google it seems that Oracle is very much a business company first and a tech company second. One with very deep pockets no less. This could get interesting, if someone could give Google a run for their money it'd be Oracle. Oracle might even see it as a preemptive strike against a company that wants to move data out of the datacenter and into their cloud.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Or at least, fully support native binary apps right now, at the same time as trying to clear up Dalvik's legal situation. Java is actually an idiotic choice for mobile devices. Running on an interpreter means it uses many times the battery power to get things done compared to native apps. Just expose a native app loader so folks who want to build native apps don't have to jump through demented JNI hoops.
Java may have its advantages - mainly, a garbage collector, which is also a disadvantage - but C++ apps run way faster, even if Java is JITted. And a JIT sucks battery life too, as well as introducing annoying, user-visible startup latency and imposing a huge memory footprint. Just take a deep breath and go native, it's the best solution for everybody.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?