Google Backs Out of JavaOne

snydeq writes "Citing concerns about Oracle's lawsuit against it, Google has backed out of the upcoming JavaOne conference. 'Oracle's recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally,' Google's Joshua Bloch said in a blog post. The move may signal eventual fragmentation for Java, with Google conceivably splintering off the Java-like language it uses for Android."

Comments

Loss of confidence

[Duncan J Murray]

Looks like we're seeing a new loss of confidence in Java, much like the loss of confidence in mono, for which patent concerns stunted its uptake.

So where to next?

And where is my replacement for open office?

Re:Loss of confidence

[The Snowman]

Looks like we're seeing a new loss of confidence in Java, much like the loss of confidence in mono, for which patent concerns stunted its uptake.

No, we are seeing a loss of confidence in Oracle. Unfortunately, Oracle now owns Java. That means its future is a little foggy. Oracle has a serious hard-on for Java, which you can see because it is the only major database I know of that allows you to use Java in place of PL/SQL. Disclaimer: I haven't actually done this, but I did read about it while googling some issues I was having with an Oracle database.

So where to next?

I think there is room for two cross-platform environments such as .NET and Java. Right now, those are the players. I don't see the F/OSS community putting all their eggs in Microsoft's basket, even if people do use Mono to some extent. If Oracle succeeds in making Java their pool boy and effectively neutering OSS implementations of the language and JFC, another environment will need to rise to to the occasion. I think it would be a community effort to some degree, but driven largely by Google. I could see them forking Java and realizing that due to trademark and patent concerns they would need to make large changes, so they would make major changes, add a bunch of stuff, and turn it into one hell of a platform for mobile and network development. That was Java's original goal, but it has since bloated up well beyond that and I do mean bloat, not grow. Why do we need a total of three implementations of core JFC classes to do stuff like "read a JPEG," and two of them either don't work at all or only work if you drink unicorn blood while coding? Why are there two GUI implementations, and the one that makes sense is still a zombie built on top of decaying pieces of the AWT corpse?

Sun had so many opportunities to grow the JFC, add value, etc. but due to their intense fear of breaking backwards compatibility, they just layered more and more band-aids and duct tape on top of each other. At some point you need to do it right with new implementations and say "upgrade to version X, and deprecated crap is being removed. You are now warned."

Also, Java EE needs to be merged into Java SE. There should be two Javas. One for memory-constrained devices (embedded), and one for everywhere else. Java EE has been a pain in my ass for some time. Java doesn't need the extra complexity.

Re:Loss of confidence

[TheRaven64]

Ximian, now Novell, did fork OO.o. You can get their fork at http://www.go-oo.org/. The only reason that Sun maintained control over OO.o was that they provided most of the code. Last statistics I saw for OO.o contributions were around 80% Sun, 15% Novell, 5% everyone else. If Oracle doesn't keep up the contribution rate, then other forks will overtake theirs and be regarded as the main version. A lot of Linux distributions already include the Novell fork, rather than the main branch, as their OpenOffice.org package.

Re:I'm glad

[Billly Gates]

Java's death means .NET and Windows in the server arena. Do you really want that?

Java is the defacto standard for most server apps these days as portals are replacing terminals and Java is used for industrial websites as well. This is truly horrible and no php or perl can not just replace it for mission critical servers. It is not hte language but the 200,000 methods and api's to choose from. Only .NET comes close ... not Mono.

Re:!Good

[tomhudson]

Except that Android doesn't run Java classes - it runs dalvik classes. It's like you taking a .doc file and converting it to pdf so that people don't need the Evil Word.

Java's dying anyway. It's a lot slower than dalvik, and Java simply hasn't lived up to its "write once run anywhere" claims. Just like it hasn't lived up to earlier promises to "reinvent the desktop", or before that, to "change the way we use the Internet with applets - remember them - to add interactivity.

What are they going to do when dalvik is extended to run on regular servers, and all those Java support contracts dry up? Just like is happening right now in the mobile space with the multi-fragmented JavaME?. Pretty bad when your core market tells you that the competition already raided your fridge, ate your breakfast and lunch, and took a dump on your supper.

Re:Can't they technically fork it?

[TheRaven64]

Sun open sourced Java, and you can easily fork it. You can't call it Java unless it still implements the specification correctly, but the license that Sun released the code under means that you are safe from patent problems.

Google's problem is that they did not fork Java, they reimplemented it. This means that they have no copyright problems and do not have to abide by the Java license (GPL + runtime exemption), but they do have potential patent problems. Sun / Oracle has a patent grant that permits the use of their Java-related patents in any complete implementation of the Java spec. Android, however, is not a complete Java implementation. It implements the core language and a number of the java.* classes, but it does not provide the entire java.* class hierarchy. This means that it is not covered by the patent grant.

In summary, open source Java is fine, open source almost-Java is not.

Re:I'm glad

[TheRaven64]

The similarity of android's dev language with Java is only superficial

You mean, aside from the fact that they are exactly the same language and both provide a large number of the same classes in the java.* namespace, they are completely different?

Re:Can't they technically fork it?

[Anonymous Coward]

> In summary, open source Java is fine, open source almost-Java is not.

Where is the difference? Isn't that legal newspeak of corporate lawyers... and why we have a free software movement? I can't see how this sentence makes any sense to an open source developer.

Re:!Good

[MaggieL]

you can't even consider using some algorithms that c programmers use all the time

Like buffer overruns.

Re:!Good

[Local ID10T]

... anybody wanting to write truly high performance software had really better get used to writing in lower-level languages, or at the very least, understanding their stack right down to the hardware level.

This has always been the case.

Re:!Good

[kevinNCSU]

Ah yes, C is good for domain-specific solutions but it doesn't adequately address the issue of multiple inheritance out of the box. (reference)

Re:Lose-lose situation

[tmmagee]

Having a good reputation among the slashdot crowd may be more important than you think. Oracle's name is quickly becoming mud in the minds of of a lot of developers, and while in the short term that may mean little to them, it will probably bite them in the ass down the road. Developers may not make purchasing decisions for the kinds of large companies that purchase Oracle's products, but they make do make technical ones, and they also advise the people who make those purchasing decisions.

Re:Lose-lose situation

[Rockoon]

Having a good reputation among the slashdot crowd may be more important than you think. Oracle's name is quickly becoming mud in the minds of of a lot of developers, and while in the short term that may mean little to them, it will probably bite them in the ass down the road.

Developers dont make decisions about the use of Oracle's money stream products, of which Java is not among them.

Its the IT guys that make those decisions, and they pick Oracle because Oracles solutions are some of the best in the business. Oracle's revenue stream is in the same league as Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Cisco, etc.. not a household name like some of them, but their revenue stream is testimonial to the quality of their products and the loyalty of those who do make purchasing decisions relevant to Oracle.

Oracle did not buy Sun for Java. Java was just a bonus. Sun was a direct competitor with some unique IP in the storage solutions space that Oracle was and will continue to be the #1 player in. You see Sun Server prominent on that products/services page, while Java is relegated to only footnote status in the "Related Technologies" section.

Java is a fine language for what its primarily used for, and Oracle certainly uses a lot of Java code, but they barely marketing Java itself. They couldn't give a rats ass as to what developers feel about Java. They sell solutions, not platforms.

Re:Java won't die anytime soon.

[DragonWriter]

Php became the #1 web server language in 2002 [lwn.net] - and that hasn't changed since, and isn't likely to.

The article you link says it became the number one server side scripting language in 2002. While there isn't a really clear boundary of what is and isn't a "scripting" language, Java isn't included in any of the definitions generally used for that category, so in a discussion of Java, PHP's position among "scripting" languages -- server side or otherwise -- is pretty much irrelevant.

Re:Lose-lose situation

[bill_mcgonigle]

Am I missing some great strategic outcome Oracle is hoping for?

Yes, they need Google patents for their database product to not become obsolete in the next few years. Buying Sun got them two things - a) hardware fast enough to get them over the gap b) leverage for patent cross-licensing agreements.

This is a [software] patent (government) problem.

Re:!Good

[greenbird]

It's not that hard - just do like your mother taught you - put things back when you're finished with them.

Two things. First it is hard. It takes an almost anal level of attention to detail especially in a multi-threaded environment. That's something woefully missing in your run of the mill programmer. Second, the bugs introduced can be EXTREMELY subtle and VERY difficult to find especially in a multi-threaded environment.

Anecdote: I was working on a multi-threaded realtime system that involved message queues between objects interacting with hardware. The queuing system was developed by someone else and had gone through extensive testing. I was tasked with adding network communications to the messaging system. With the network communications module added it was core dumping at random times and places generally after days of running. I spent over a month trying to find the problem in my code. All the while, the people who had developed the messaging system insisted the problem couldn't be there and showed me the months of tests result on the messaging system. After over a month, including line by line review of my code, I started looking over the messaging system code I found one place where they were releasing a mutex then freeing some memory. 2 lines of code that were reversed amongst 1000's of lines of code. Their testing didn't reveal it because on their test runs there was almost no random variance in the execution. Everything responded at fixed intervals and the pattern never including something getting a pointer to that memory after the mutex was released and before it was freed. The network communications added randomness which disrupted the pattern and this happened periodically.

Google built VM allegedly infring'g Oracle patents

[mmacdona86]

That's the whole case. There's no Java license or trademark involved.

Two enormous differences with the Sun/Microsoft case: 1-- Everything Google built for Android is open-sourced; 2-- No Java license is involved

Google built a VM called Dalvik. Like the Java and .Net VM's, it can run code written in a number of languages, including the Java language. That patents at issue are not related specifically to the Java language, but they do cover common techniques in VM implementation, and if upheld could threaten other VM implementations.