Ellison Doesn't Know If Java Is Free

New submitter Emacs.Cmode sends this excerpt from CNet: "Among the highlights emanating from U.S. District Court in San Francisco courtroom 8 today was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's response to a question regarding the status of the Java programming language, which his company acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010. Asked by Google's lead attorney, Robert Van Nest, if the Java language is free, Ellison was slow to respond. Judge William Alsup pushed Ellison to answer with a yes or no. As ZDNet reporter Rachel King observed in the courtroom, Ellison resisted and huffed, 'I don't know.'" Groklaw has a good write-up about what happened during day one of the trial and a briefer summary of what happened on day two.

Comments

Good answer

[Fjandr]

That's probably the best answer he could have given under the circumstances, though I can understand why he was loathe to give it.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The honest answer would have been, "in some ways yes, in some ways definitely not".

Oracle's courtroom slideshow at the bottom was really damning... as was its purpose. It's pretty clear that Java is meant to be a fucking trap.

And there's no way we're going to get away from it any time soon. Fuck you Oracle. Fuck you twice. :(

Re:Good answer

[anshulajain]

I don't if he knows that he's an idiot.

Re:Good answer

[symbolset]

You were warned.

Re:Good answer

[mwvdlee]

Given the ambiguity of the word "free", a simple yes/no answer would most likely be incorrect for everything except public domain.

Re:Good answer

[jd]

Makes it hard for Oracle to make a compelling case that it is non-free if the man ultimately in charge of deciding doesn't know. They may well still make a compelling case, but even if they do, this admission will impact what they can claim in damages. (Google can legitimately claim that if Oracle doesn't know what it owns, Google cannot be wholly responsible for not knowing either.)

Re:Good answer

[musmax]

It pains me to say it, but he's no idiot...

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Warned by who? The only ones warning about the "Java Trap" were the FSF, who clearly stated that it's about not having a 100% Java implementation released as free software, which Sun eventually fixed (dunno if it actually was 100% or 99%, but it covered everything the FSF worried about), and as a consequence the FSF declared the "Java Trap Problem" solved.

Nobody at that time talked about *patents*. It was wholly a copyright story.

Re:Good answer

[Xest]

I've always pondered about yes/no answers in court. I've seen judges demand either a yes or no answer on many occasions, yet to me it seems to conflict with a fundamental principle, at least in the UK justice system.

When you give your oath to the court in the UK it's "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".

I remember being taught in history class of all things that it used to simply be "I promise to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth". The whole truth section was added later to prevent people giving answers that whilst true, only paint half the picture due to missing vital information or context.

So I've often wondered in this context how a judge can push for yes/no, as in many circumstances it betrays this fundamental principle in that either answer only tells a partial truth and not a whole truth. Has this principle ever been tested? To me being forced to give a yes/no answer would mean that I was betraying my vow to tell the whole truth as either answer would only be a partial truth in a more complex situation.

This is one of those circumstances where such an answer would in my opinion, violate such a vow, and as much as I want Oracle to lose I do also sympathise with the difficulty of just answering yes/no to that particular question.

Re:Good answer

[bloodhawk]

I was on a Jury for 6 weeks in a murder trial a few years ago. I was actually pleasantly suprised to find the Judge basically bitch slapped the prosecution or defense any time they tried to make a witness give a yes/no answer when the witness clearly believed it could not be legitimately answered as such and then would proceed to allow the witness to answer how they deemed appropriate.

Re:Good answer

[buchner.johannes]

I've always pondered about yes/no answers in court. I've seen judges demand either a yes or no answer on many occasions, yet to me it seems to conflict with a fundamental principle, at least in the UK justice system.

When you give your oath to the court in the UK it's "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".

I remember being taught in history class of all things that it used to simply be "I promise to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth". The whole truth section was added later to prevent people giving answers that whilst true, only paint half the picture due to missing vital information or context.

So I've often wondered in this context how a judge can push for yes/no, as in many circumstances it betrays this fundamental principle in that either answer only tells a partial truth and not a whole truth. Has this principle ever been tested? To me being forced to give a yes/no answer would mean that I was betraying my vow to tell the whole truth as either answer would only be a partial truth in a more complex situation.

This is one of those circumstances where such an answer would in my opinion, violate such a vow, and as much as I want Oracle to lose I do also sympathise with the difficulty of just answering yes/no to that particular question.

You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No. Also, there are plenty of questions where the answer is between Yes and No.

Re:Good answer

[flyneye]

Someone should tell the man "Nothing is Free, but you can get a bottomless cup of mud for $1.25 down at the diner."

Re:Good answer

[Eraesr]

I guess it's the only answer he could have given.
I thought the forcing a yes/no answer in a courtroom was just something you see in courtroom-action movies from Hollywood, but that happens for real? I find that pretty odd, considering that not a whole lot of questions can be answered with a definitive yes or no, especially not in a courtroom.

Re:Good answer

[JoeMerchant]

I have been successfully avoiding Java for over a decade. It had "trap" written all over it from day one, especially when they were talking about building special-purpose silicon for "fast Java processing", any day now.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you accidentally a word.

Re:Good answer

[heathen_01]

You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No.

Nonsense, Yes and No are the only valid answers to that question. It may not be an appropriate question but that is orthogonal to what answers are valid.

Also, there are plenty of questions where the answer is between Yes and No.

Possibly, but more likely the question is wrong rather than the answer is not yes or no.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol at the modding. A /. mod's insightful is an average person's obvious

Re:Good answer

[tehcyder]

I thought the forcing a yes/no answer in a courtroom was just something you see in courtroom-action movies from Hollywood

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No.

Nonsense, Yes and No are the only valid answers to that question. It may not be an appropriate question but that is orthogonal to what answers are valid.

What the fuck are you smoking? "I have never beat my wife" is also a perfectly valid answer. Many 'yes or no' questions have similarly longer, but equally valid answers.

Re:Good answer

[Oswald]

Warned by who?

Robert A. Heinlein.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

what you're concerned about is the same problem that prompted the foundation of the 5th amendment clause about self-incrimination. the point wasn't to spare guilty people from culpability, it was that lawyers, on both sides of the fence, use the ambiguity of yes/no as part of their toolkit, and when the truth would actually be obscured by brevity, and the court is actively resisting a thorough explanation, then it's a defendant's right to not answer anything at all.

Re:Good answer

[raitchison]

Too bad anybody who was warning us at the time when it could have been avoided was promptly labeled a "Micro$oft Shill"

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No.

You will also get bitch-slapped by the court for even asking such a question, and the attorney on the other side will be creaming his pants as he leaps to his feet with his objection.

Re:Good answer

[hairyfeet]

I don't understand why he didn't know the answer except maybe he doesn't really know the products that he has acquired. the desktop was always free, the mobile always pay, no different than how many companies have a free consumer version and a non-free business version.

What always amazes me is how completely rampant the hypocrisy is in the tech community as the very same ones who had a living shitfit when MSFT tried to pull the exact same trick with the desktop (which was free) have NO problem when Google does it with mobile which was never free in the first place! you can't have your cake and eat it too, either any corp can do anything they want to a language no matter what the original creator thinks or one must bow to the original creator, pick already!

Because the only difference between this and what MSFT did was Google changed the name. tell me if MSFT had called theirs coffee would you have supported them? probably not, yet you do Google, why? Because Google basically snatched the Linux kernel and then hands it to companies that then lock the bootloader? Kinda sad that the FOSS advocates are so damned desperate for a win they will blindly champion a company that isn't doing them any favors and is gathering so much data on its users it makes every triple letter agency drool. Maybe one should see what RMS has to say about it? If his feelings on Google are like his feelings on Chrome again you may not be doing anybody in favors by cheering Google here.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always pondered about yes/no answers in court. I've seen judges demand either a yes or no answer on many occasions, yet to me it seems to conflict with a fundamental principle, at least in the UK justice system.

When you give your oath to the court in the UK it's "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".

I remember being taught in history class of all things that it used to simply be "I promise to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth". The whole truth section was added later to prevent people giving answers that whilst true, only paint half the picture due to missing vital information or context.

So I've often wondered in this context how a judge can push for yes/no, as in many circumstances it betrays this fundamental principle in that either answer only tells a partial truth and not a whole truth. Has this principle ever been tested? To me being forced to give a yes/no answer would mean that I was betraying my vow to tell the whole truth as either answer would only be a partial truth in a more complex situation.

This is one of those circumstances where such an answer would in my opinion, violate such a vow, and as much as I want Oracle to lose I do also sympathise with the difficulty of just answering yes/no to that particular question.

You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No. Also, there are plenty of questions where the answer is between Yes and No.

The answer is "this presumes facts that are not in evidence "

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

But you were just a troll until you were *RIGHT*.

Good job rubbing it in. They need that because they still attack anyone who could possibly indicate something negative is coming.

Re:Good answer

[Volvogga]

You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No.

Nonsense, Yes and No are the only valid answers to that question. It may not be an appropriate question but that is orthogonal to what answers are valid.

Also, there are plenty of questions where the answer is between Yes and No.

Possibly, but more likely the question is wrong rather than the answer is not yes or no.

Your second statement proves the parent correct. Just because the question is wrong doesn't mean that it won't be asked in hope of the question going through, unchallenged, and becoming part of the record. Because of this, yes and no are not valid answers to the question. Here is how a yes/no answer would sound.

Yes: I did beat my wife, but I stopped doing so.

No: I still beat my wife on a somewhat regular basis.

I don't think that you want to answer the question either way if your defense is that you NEVER beat your wife.

I suppose it is the job of your lawyer to object to the question, but I think it would be easier for the judge to allow answers that are not always yes or no.

Note: IANAL

Re:Good answer

[CSMoran]

You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No.

Nonsense, Yes and No are the only valid answers to that question. It may not be an appropriate question but that is orthogonal to what answers are valid.

I disagree. "Mu" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative) ) is a well-known valid answer to this loaded question.

Re:Good answer

[jrumney]

Imagine the dilemma - committing perjury or admitting that the case you've brought has no merit. No wonder he opted for "How would I know what goes on in my company, I'm just the CEO".

Re:Good answer

[durdur]

It pains me to say it, but he's no idiot...

No, he's not. And I know a lot of technies who have a weak grasp of copyright and licensing, despite the fact that some of them think they know about it. This is why companies have lawyers.

Re:Good answer

[lyapunov]

Questions of this nature are logical fallacies because there is an implicit assumption of guilt in them.

Re:Good answer

[stretch0611]

You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No.

You can always answer with "I never beat my wife."

People are told to answer yes/no in order to have a definitive answer that can not be misconstrued. They want to avoid you sounding like a politician with meaningless words that make it sound like you answered but really didn't. The above answer gives a concise and definitive answer without walking into the obvious trap.

Re:Good answer

[KingMotley]

The answer is simple. No, Java is not free. There can be no other interpretation. It is more free than some things, less than others, but it is not completely free. It is not free of all restrictions (the GPL does have some, even if you agree with them).

Re:Good answer

[Archangel Michael]

You CAN answer the question "have you stopped beating your wife" with a simple "yes" or "no", even if you've never beat your wife. Saying "no" in that situation is perfectly acceptable, because you've never started beating your wife. The problem is the question is assumptive that you started beating your wife at some point, which is a faulty assumption. As a lawyer(IANAL) for someone asked that question, I would object to the question and ask for a rephrase without the assumption.

Re:Good answer

[stuntpope]

Only if said warner was actually a Microsoft proponent, which is a trap of its own.

I was around /. during Java discussions before, during, and after Sun opened it up, and I wouldn't say the push-back from Java proponents was as you claim.

Re:Good answer

[buchner.johannes]

ex falso quodlibet

Re:Good answer

[Glock27]

That's probably the best answer he could have given under the circumstances, though I can understand why he was loathe to give it.

Absolutely not!

At a minimum, he should have requested a clarification first: "Do you mean free as in beer, or free as in freedom?" :-)

Re:Good answer

[phantomfive]

especially when they were talking about building special-purpose silicon for "fast Java processing", any day now.

That already exists, in various degrees. I've seen it popping up in ARM chips on a lot of Android phones. You can 'cat /proc/cpuinfo' on your Android phone to know if yours has it.

Re:Good answer

[phantomfive]

Oracle's courtroom slideshow at the bottom was really damning... as was its purpose.

Wow, you're not kidding. That slideshow looks bad. Google's going to lose this case.

Re:Good answer

[toxonix]

I have the special purpose-built JVM on a chip that was given out at some Java conference a few years ago. I imagine it was just a gimmick, but I've always wanted to see if it works. No idea what its supposed to do, as it has no IO except the conductivity of the ring itself. I think it may just be an empty magic ring.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually did do that at Sun back before the jvm starting compiling java byte code into native cost at runtime. They were special add-on cards for it (pretty much only seen in sparc machines)

Re:Good answer

[Steauengeglase]

"Did you stop beating your wife?"

Funny, every time the question of Java's licensing comes up on Slashdot, inevitably we go down the road of 'ethics of binary questions in court' -> beat your wife question.

The collective consciousness of Slashdot is an interesting thing some days.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus the answer is "no", since having never started, one cannot have stopped.

Re:Good answer

[sarysa]

Oracle's courtroom slideshow at the bottom was really damning... as was its purpose.

Wow, you're not kidding. That slideshow looks bad. Google's going to lose this case.

Unless the importance of Android is considered so great that there is outside intervention. See also RIM in 2006 or "too big to fail."

Re:Good answer

[phantomfive]

Do you see that as likely? In that case, RIM ended up paying $600million. I don't think it would count as a victory for Google.

The only way I see out of it for Google is that Sun released the code under the GPL. That would mean that, even though Google copied Sun's Java implementation, Sun gave them the right to do so.

Clearly Google did something with Java that Sun didn't want. But I think the copyright terms of their license when they released it allowed them to do that. My memory is that Sun wanted to prevent fragmentation, but intended to use patents to enforce that, not copyright; and those were the terms when they open sourced Java.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference in response is related to the difference in motivation by Microsoft and Google. Microsoft extended Java for what is believed to be an effort to explicitly make it not cross-compatible with other OSes / JVMs. Google modified Java in order to get it to work efficiently on their OS / mobile devices.

Additionally, Google is essentially barred from making a fully compatible mobile Java for the same reasons that the open source JDK fell apart, the licensing agreements on the certification tests for JDK 7 (and I think 6) forbid it being certified for mobile.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm cheering Google because they promised to Do No Evil. Hey, it may not be much, but at least it's better than Micro$oft's mantra 'Do Evil'.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case the correct answer would be 'no'. "free if and only if" means "not free", unless the condition is "free if and only if you keep it free".

For example, when trapped behind bars, if the spacing between the bars is large enough, some of your limbs may be 'free', up to the point where they are restricted in motion by your trapped body... in that case, too, you (that includes all of your parts), are not free.

Or, the "Buy-One-Get-One" specials in the supermarket. The second item isn't actually free, because its price is conditional on the purchase of another...

Another example; a brand new automobile is 'free' with regards to any warranty service, yet the vehicle is not free.

Re:Good answer

[Tharkkun]

Java was a trap from day one. Unfortunately Sun couldn't enforce it once it became popular because they were bleeding $$$$ as they headed into bankruptcy.

Re:Good answer

[StikyPad]

Interesting. Are you saying it's a JVM on a ring? Can you provide any more details or a link?

Re:Good answer

[Tharkkun]

Makes it hard for Oracle to make a compelling case that it is non-free if the man ultimately in charge of deciding doesn't know. They may well still make a compelling case, but even if they do, this admission will impact what they can claim in damages. (Google can legitimately claim that if Oracle doesn't know what it owns, Google cannot be wholly responsible for not knowing either.)

With all the different product lines over the years from Oracle's acquisitions I don't think any one person can be familiar with everything. There's just too much.

Re:Good answer

[marcosdumay]

Because the only difference between this and what MSFT did was Google changed the name.

Well, at the time Sun sued Microsoft exactly because the later was using the "Java" name in an inapropriate way. Also, the backslash to Microsoft was due to misleadng publicity.

Or, if you insist in that "hypocrisy" hypotesis, where are all the people complaining that .Net is a copy of Java?

Re:Good answer

[spongman]

No: I still beat my wife on a somewhat regular basis.

this is incorrect, "No" implies either:
a) I still beat my wife on a somewhat regular basis, XOR
b) I never beat my wife.

if you didn't start something, then you can't stop it.

it's a stupid question asked by people failing to sound smarter than they are.

Re:Good answer

[sarysa]

A one time payment is preferable to what Oracle's asking.

Interesting perspective, by the way. I read TFPDF after reading your post as well. I thought it was all riding on whether or not Google's deferral of income (indirectly through preinstalled but fundamentally disconnected software [Google Play] instead of typical revenue streams) was an acceptable level of detachment from the "free" software to be considered an unrelated revenue stream, under the eyes of the laws involved anyway. This is related to your comment, but I'll be following this case at the edge of my seat.

Re:Good answer

[Archangel Michael]

Not sure quite how this applies here. The premise isn't false, it is asking for a truthiness of "have you stopped beating your wife". Most people assume that there was a start to the wife beating, but that is not the case in the actual question. If we don't make the assumption that wife beating has started, then the answer is clearly "no". The answer is also "no" if the wife beatings have started and never have stopped. The CONCLUSION of "Well you see, Bill still beats his wife" is a false conclusion based on faulty assumption. In legal terms, the defense point would be "did you ever start beating your wife" would be the rebut, to which the answer would depend on whether or not Bill was still beating his wife or never started in the first place.

"ex falso quodlibet" is about a premise that is not true, there is nothing inherently false about the premise in the question "have you stopped beating your wife" except for an assumption that one had started beating the wife. That assumption is false, not the question based on the unanswered assumption.

In legal terms, the prosecution would have to first prove the wife beatings started before anyone could answer that question. "I object. Your Honor, the prosecution hasn't established any facts about Bill beating his wife", which would eliminate any assumptions.

It is a classic mistake to assume the assumption is correct . Assumptions need to be examined before truthiness of them can be established.

On a completely different note ... ex falso quodlibet kind of reminds me of Schrodinger's Cat. ;)

Re:Good answer

[symbolset]

I was quite find with up, down and sidways moderation of this comment. But funny? This is not fucking funny. This is the fucking opposite of funny.

Re:Good answer

[OhSoLaMeow]

Interesting. Are you saying it's a JVM on a ring? Can you provide any more details or a link?

They passed them out at Java One many years ago. I still have mine somewhere. Details here.

Re:Good answer

[miltonw]

Clearly Google did something with Java that Sun didn't want.

According to the documents Google is showing, Sun was very happy with what Google did with Android. Even immediately after Oracle bought Sun, Oracle made happy-happy noises. It was only later, after Oracle failed to create their own Java-based phone, that Oracle decided to go after Android for money.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The past tense of "loathe" is "loathed"

Re:Good answer

[phantomfive]

True, Sun did seem a bit schizophrenic about Java on Android.

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Mu

Re:Good answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, "no" would be a perfectly acceptable answer.

No one knows for sure anymore.

[Kenja]

With all the legal complications surrounding it, I would be hard pressed to say with certainty one way or the other. As a concept, I would sy its free. As an actual product, I would have to review everything in it before I could say that it is.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Rennt]

Indeed, although one would have thought Oracle reviewed this very question before getting to court.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[msobkow]

Java is a bit of a special animal. Sun conceived and promoted it as a community resource, but with a "branding" committee to ensure compatibility across deployments (one of THE primary goals of the Java ecosystem.)

I've never heard of anyone being charged for a Java runtime or compiler, so in the sense of beer, it's free.

But in terms of theoretical software freedom ala GPL? No, it's not free -- it's managed by the consortium.

I'm ok with that, even from the theoretical perspective. Because when the primary goal is portability, there has to be a steward of some sort to test compatibility and ensure portability.

That said, Oracle seems to be determined to try to seize the product line back as a proprietary thing, and I don't believe that's going to work. Even if they prove they have the necessary copyright/patent control in court, there are a lot of OTHER companies who contributed THEIR patents and copyrights to the Java framework, such as HP's patents on springs-and-struts layout managers that are used by the GUI framework.

Personally I believe Oracle is pushing the question of copyright on Java as a means of getting it clarified by the courts that languages are not copyrightable, rather than in any actual hope of winning such a claim. Because if they win such a claim, they're immediately subject to the copyrights of the C/C++ like syntax from which Java derives, and would effectively kill Java completely. Oracle and the rest of the consortium members won't want that, so it has to be a case of "we want to make sure no one ever tries to copyright a language again."

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[msobkow]

Just to clarify: Although Java is technically free because it was released under the GPL, it's not free because in practice all the enhancements and changes to the core code and syntax come through the management and control of the consortium. So although you can make your own changes to the GPL code, I don't know of any way to get those changes upstream without going through the feature committees.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[AngryDeuce]

That's what strikes me, not the question itself, but the fact that the lawyers obviously hadn't prepped him for it and coached him on an answer. Well, unless the way he responded was how they coached him to handle it...

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

By that definition is any software free? Is there any project where my changes become part of the upstream code without going through the upstream's maintainers and processes?

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[canajin56]

So the Linux kernel isn't compatible with the GPL, because although technically released under the GPL, I can't get my changes upstream without going through the group in charge of it? OK.

At any rate, the question according to not-tfa (which confuses GPL with public domain), the question wasn't the ambiguous "is java free?" but "anyone can use the JPL (java programming language) without paying royalties, yes?" which he had previously answered "Correct" in the deposition, and on the stand he tried to be evasive.

The problem is that Oracle is saying that although the code is GPL, the API is proprietary, so by writing code while referencing the API Google has violated copyright and needs a license for all of their code. (They also have mostly-invalidated patent claims, to be settled later). Suing over patents and suing over the API mean its a very legit question to ask if ANYBODY can use Java without being sued by Oracle, and Oracle WILL NOT SAY.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[oxdas]

According to Groklaw, Google's lawyer was kind enough to show Mr.Ellison a tape of his deposition where he answered the same questions "That's correct." Alzheimer's perhaps?

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

Being open sourced and accepting changes are too different things. Just because it's open sourced doesn't mean the group managing the projects has to accept outside code. What if people try to put a backdoor code into it for example. Open source simply means that the code is freely available with stipulations depending on what flavor of open source. If you don't like the managing group, you are free to fork it and become the managers of the new fork.

Being free, that depends on what you are talking about; like free for non-commercial use (creative commons NonCommercial as an example), free to distribute but not modify, or free to use but not distribute, or etc.

Java is open sourced at it's base but surrounded by closed sourced things. That basically means, Java as a whole is only partially free depending on what aspects you are looking at. In the end, the correct answer to the question is not to answer though "It's depends on what aspect you are talking about" would have been a much better answer then "I don't know."

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I believe Oracle is pushing the question of copyright on Java as a means of getting it clarified by the courts that languages are not copyrightable, rather than in any actual hope of winning such a claim. Because if they win such a claim, they're immediately subject to the copyrights of the C/C++ like syntax from which Java derives, and would effectively kill Java completely. Oracle and the rest of the consortium members won't want that, so it has to be a case of "we want to make sure no one ever tries to copyright a language again."

There is no way you are correct about that. Oracle is still Oracle and what they do is capture profit at any cost even if it means destroying things they own. Oracle is not known as a friendly company in any sense.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[tobiasly]

Personally I believe Oracle is pushing the question of copyright on Java as a means of getting it clarified by the courts that languages are not copyrightable, rather than in any actual hope of winning such a claim. Because if they win such a claim, they're immediately subject to the copyrights of the C/C++ like syntax from which Java derives, and would effectively kill Java completely. Oracle and the rest of the consortium members won't want that, so it has to be a case of "we want to make sure no one ever tries to copyright a language again."

Uh, what?? Oracle's goal is to lose in court? You're giving them way too much credit; they aren't anywhere near that farsighted. They just want money from Google. This was at first mostly a patent lawsuit, and then when Google's lawyers shot their invalid patents full of holes, they switched strategy to copyright. Groklaw has plenty of history on that if you're interested.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? OpenJDK is GPL {period}. No rationalizations about it being 'managed by the consortium' changes the license.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? A proprietary API for a GPL language? That's one of the most retarded things I've ever heard of.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[metamatic]

The problem is that Oracle is saying that although the code is GPL, the API is proprietary, so by writing code while referencing the API Google has violated copyright and needs a license for all of their code.

The interesting thing is that if Oracle won this argument, one could presumably argue that Oracle's database on Linux is dependent upon the Linux kernel API, and hence must fall under the GPL.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[msobkow]

Actually I am completely serious. The whole argument that Java is under copyright control for the SYNTAX of the language is so asinine that the ONLY reason I can see anyone positing the question to the courts is to get confirmation that it's NOT allowed. The odds of winning such an argument are so astronomically thin and go against history so dramatically that no one in their right mind, from lawyer to CEO, could think they have a chance of winning such a point.

Ergo, it has to be a "devil's advocate" argument.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Raenex]

The problem is that Oracle is saying that although the code is GPL, the API is proprietary

Google didn't release Dalvik (the implementation of their Java-derivative) under the GPL, so this statement isn't accurate. If Google had released it under the GPL, then it would have been a different story and it's likely Oracle wouldn't even have a case.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Tamerlin]

"I've never heard of anyone being charged for a Java runtime or compiler, so in the sense of beer, it's free. "

Sun DID charge a license fee for the VM specs, so the compiler developers had to pay for it. It's not much different from the h.264 thing; someone IS paying for it, even though we don't have to pay for the version running in our browsers.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Tamerlin]

"Although Java is technically free because it was released under the GPL" That's also false. Sun only released ONE VERSION of Java under the GPL, not Java.

Re:No one knows for sure anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

are too different things

"two".

at it's base

"its".

Free?

[Black Parrot]

What, precisely, does it mean if you say a programming language is free?

Re:Free?

[CrimsonAvenger]

What, precisely, does it mean if you say a programming language is free?

Well, in context:

Google: The Java Programming Language (JPL) -- nobody owns the Java Programming Language, right?

Ellison: I am not sure.

Google: Anyone can use the JPL without paying royalties, yes?

Ellison: Not sure.

This is apparently significant because in his deposition, he answered those questions with "That's correct"....

Re:Free?

[eggfoolr]

How the hell would Larry know? This is a question for Oracle. He should be allowed to refer the question to advisors if he can't remember or be certain, even if he has answered it before. Oddly enough he's only human (although he may not think of himself that way).

Re:Free?

[geekmux]

What, precisely, does it mean if you say a programming language is free?

as in beer

Is there really any other definition? I understand beer. Don't ask me to understand a EULA. Don't ask my lawyer to either. And we wrote judges off from understanding anything more technical than a pocket calculator instruction book back in 1968.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bunch of bullcrap. Oracle is not a person. The person who started the lawsuit should testify. That would be ... Larry Ellison. Yes, that is why he is testifying. If he doesn't know, he should not have sued.

Re:Free?

[mariasama16]

What a bunch of bullcrap. Oracle is not a person. The person who started the lawsuit should testify. That would be ... Larry Ellison. Yes, that is why he is testifying. If he doesn't know, he should not have sued.

On top of that, he IS the CEO of the company. He should have been prepped prior to testifying to expect this question, especially since it appeared in deposition (aka, Google's interested in making sure the answer is in the court records).

Re:Free?

[Dahamma]

As the chief executive officer, chairman of the board, and largest voting shareholder he most definitely filed the lawsuit. No one at Oracle would wipe their ass unless he approved.

Re:Free?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Google: Anyone can use the JPL without paying royalties, yes?

Ellison: Not sure.

The correct answer is, "of course they can, it was released under the GPLv2 which says, in part:

7. ... If you cannot
distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you
may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent
license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

But ... and I think this is the rub of the case - even though anybody can use Java freely through the GPL, it's not known that Google went that route, probably to avoid having to make Android redistributable (even though it often is anyway). At least I haven't seen Google claim that Davlik etc. are derivavtive works of the GPLv2 release of Java.

So, the ability to keep Android closed when they want to must be worth more to Google than whatever they might eventually have to pay to Oracle.

Re:Free?

[sjames]

Isn't he supposed to know? Isn't that supposedly the reason CEOs get paid the big bucks?

Perhaps more to the point, if he is the CEO of Oracle, and even knowing he will be going to court to testify on an issue of Java licensing but he doesn't know what is licensed, isn't that a really strong argument that a 2nd party's infringement (if any) was unintentional? Is Google (or anyone else) really supposed to understand the Java licensing better than the CEO of Oracle?

In fact, I suspect he didn't want to say it was free because that sounded a bit damning for Oracle's claims, but didn't want to say it's non-free since he couldn't back tyhat up and it would be damning for Oracle's efforts to get Java everywhere and in everything, so he went with a variant on the Steve Martin defense.

Re:Free?

[ChunderDownunder]

Java as GPL was unvailable at the time Google developed dalvik. Sun freed the code later.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the JPL, that's the JDK and JRE. Not the same, hence Google's prodding about the language itself, not any particular implementation.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that why CEOs get such massively bloated compensation? Because they are supposed to be in charge of everything? I could've said "I don't know" too and I'll be happy to say it for only 10% of what Larry gets.

I bet if one of his underlings said that to him he'd drive his boot up his ass and show him the door.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

He needs to be prepped on whether one of his company's biggest assets is free or not?

Re:Free?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Yeah, I'm sure Ellison's company didn't do any due diligence at all regarding Java rights and ownership before buying Sun. Suuuuuure.

Re:Free?

[Dahamma]

10% of what he gets would be $0.10 a year, since he's paid $1 :)

He doesn't give a crap about salary any more, he owns almost 25% of Oracle's stock. He makes over $1B for every $1 the stock goes up. ORCL was up $0.65 today. Cha-ching, that's $700M for Larry. Kind of depressing, really...

Re:Free?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Java as GPL was unvailable at the time Google developed dalvik. Sun freed the code later.

That's true as of 2005, but they could have forked and merged any time after Nov. 2006, even if they didn't keep a tremendous amount of the original OpenJDK code (IIRC having some of the headers is part of the current argument).

They'd just have to re-license the Android, Inc. code under GPL and then merge it.

I suppose Oracle could have still gone after them for pre-2006 'violations' but I think it would be hard to prove much in the way of damages from that time period.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

As the chief executive officer, chairman of the board, and largest voting shareholder he most definitely filed the lawsuit.

Wrong again, it was filed by Oracle, not by one person, you don't seem to understand the difference between a person and a company. Thus he is not expected to know everything pertaining to the case because he is not Oracle, he is only one part of Oracle.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

But beer isn't free. I don't understand..

Re:Free?

[AHuxley]

Think of it as the free (educational) gateway drug that opens you to the long term harder addiction: TCK (Technology Compatibility Kit).

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I gather this is Oracle's beef:
If you want to call your runtime virtual machine that you wrote 'Java' you must pass the TCK and purchase a Java commercial license. Ellison is pissed because Google didn't do that. Google wrote their own runtime virtual machine and they didn't call it Java so they wouldn't need the license to use the trademark 'Java'. Google can thumb their noses at Oracle because there are no restrictions on using the Java programming language and compilers, there are only restrictions on the runtime envirnoment.
At this point, what can Oracle do to extract money from Google? Well it appears they are trying to put restrictions on realistic uses of the Java programming language by claiming that you can't use the Java APIs without Oracle's permission because they are copyrighted. Now, historically the courts have ruled that APIs are not copyrightable so Oracle is tapdancing around with the arrangement and grouping of APIs being special. It also looks like Oracle is going to try to go after Google for the comments in the header files as infringing on Oracle's copywritten Java specifications.
Oracle has a really weak hand and they know it, but they also have good lawyers. It'll be interesting to see of they can confuse the Java Language, APIs and specifications in the minds of the jurors and convince them that Google did something wrong.

Re:Free?

[jd]

There were, however, clean-room Java implementations prior to 2005. Google may well have used one of those at that time. And, except where there is definitive proof that they're using Oracle Java now, they might well be using clean-room implementations today. We know very little about what Google are actually doing (and Google clearly wants to keep it that way).

Re:Free?

[Serpents]

You don't seem to understand that companies don make decisions by themselves. There are people running them, they call the shots and they should be held responsible for results of their own actions. The entire "corporate personhood" idea is just a way for them to wriggle out of that responsibility.

Re:Free?

[Xtifr]

The language was not released under the GPL--a particular implementation of the compiler and VM was released under the GPL. The language is an abstract thing that happens to have multiple implementations of varying quality (Kaffe, gcj, etc., etc.). Sun's implementation is the only one that can use the trademarked name "java" (so far), but it's not the only implementation of the language.

Note that Oracle has been trying to confuse the distinction between Java-the-abstract-language and Java-the-virtual-machine since they started this case. This reminds me of the way that SCO tried to confuse the distinction between UNIX, SYSV and Unixware in their case. Of course, the fact that Oracle is using the same lawyers as SCO did may be related....

Re:Free?

[Chrisq]

But beer isn't free. I don't understand..

Surely its what they serve with your free lunch?

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assure you that I wipe my ass frequently without Larry's approval.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies are people, not a person. Ellison failing to have an answer offhand to a technical question is not a failing.

If it really was just him, then he's stupid for having anybody else on payroll. It's people's jobs to handle some things because one guy can't know everything. As CEO, he's responsible for the company's actions, which is not the same thing as being a repository of all relevant knowledge.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen the arguments on slashdot on whether something's free?

Free is an ambiguous term. And as much as what the meaning of "is" is, is kind of an old joke, how free Java is has changed between the timespan relevant to the case and now.

Re:Free?

[tobiah]

On the other hand, if Oracle is a person, it should have to testify.

Re:Free?

[Savage-Rabbit]

What a bunch of bullcrap. Oracle is not a person.

Corporations are people my friend...
  -- Mitt Romney

Re:Free?

[tftp]

Isn't he supposed to know? Isn't that supposedly the reason CEOs get paid the big bucks?

Knowledge of every little detail - even if that detail is a free/nonfree status of a language - is not required for a CEO. Otherwise all CEOs would be walking encyclopedias.

A CEO is expected to lead the company. This requires making decisions. Decisions are made with input data and with analysis of possibilities. This requires time and resources. You can't put a person on a witness stand and ask a philosophical question. Especially when "free" means so many different things to so many people.

Re:Free?

[icebraining]

It's not a "little detail". It's a fundamental characteristic of Java, which "was a major reason why Oracle acquired Sun" [sic].

If he didn't know that before spending $5.6 billion to acquire it, he's nothing short of incompetent. Of course, we all know he far from that.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does almost everybody on Slashdot refer to Dalvik as Davlik?

Re:Free?

[philip.paradis]

You've got it all wrong. Larry has been perfectly aware of every instance of ass wiping you've ever engaged in. He has approved of your technique thus far, and so you have been safe. Should you wipe your ass in a manner which displeases Larry, several drones will be dispatched from his yacht to mitigate the situation. Unfortunately, those drones are carrying things that go boom.

Wipe carefully, my friend.

Re:Free?

[tyrione]

The language was not released under the GPL--a particular implementation of the compiler and VM was released under the GPL. The language is an abstract thing that happens to have multiple implementations of varying quality (Kaffe, gcj, etc., etc.). Sun's implementation is the only one that can use the trademarked name "java" (so far), but it's not the only implementation of the language.

Note that Oracle has been trying to confuse the distinction between Java-the-abstract-language and Java-the-virtual-machine since they started this case. This reminds me of the way that SCO tried to confuse the distinction between UNIX, SYSV and Unixware in their case. Of course, the fact that Oracle is using the same lawyers as SCO did may be related....

However SUN released the licensing for Java no longer matters. How Oracle releases a new licensing structure is what matters; and it's clear Google has no interest in adjusting the terms to meet Oracle's new terms.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the GPL contains an important little word: irrevocable

Think about it.

Re:Free?

[loufoque]

The correct answer is, "of course they can, it was released under the GPLv2 [slashdot.org] which says, in part:

You're talking about some software, a given implementation of the Java programming language.

The Java programming language is not software, it's a syntax and semantics.

Re:Free?

[loufoque]

The language is an abstract thing

Note that while a language cannot be subject to copyright, it can be subject to patents.

Re:Free?

[loufoque]

Because English native speakers are not very good with Icelandic names.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say he wanted 10% of Larry's salary; 10% of what he gets. I'd like 10% of what Romney gets, and he doesn't get paid a dime. Still, he manages to live like a king. Quit thinking that earned income is the only measure of compensation.

Re:Free?

[Wootery]

Sun's implementation is the only one that can use the trademarked name "java" (so far), but it's not the only implementation of the language.

False. IBM's 'J9' is certified, and can safely be called a JVM. There may be others, I'm not sure.

I imagine there are are number of different certified JVMs for mobile devices.

Re:Free?

[ZeroSumHappiness]

"Corporations are a person my friend..." -- Misunderstanding of Mitt Romney.

Anyone who bothered to look into the context of his statement would understand he clearly meant that corporations are made up of many persons (sometimes referred to as "people") and that each individual in the corporation is taxed on his own.

Re:Free?

[MichaelSmith]

IIRC there was a story a few years back that Larry had bought a new, smaller boat because it was too difficult to find places to park the old one in some countries.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't. You probably just notice the misspellings more.

Re:Free?

[Ash-Fox]

Surely its what they serve with your free lunch?

But lunch isn't free. I don't understand.

Re:Free?

[Black Parrot]

IIRC there was a story a few years back that Larry had bought a new, smaller boat because it was too difficult to find places to park the old one in some countries.

Well, he should just buy bigger countries.

Re:Free?

[Ash-Fox]

Google: Anyone can use the JPL without paying royalties, yes?

Ellison: Not sure.

The correct answer is, "of course they can, it was released under the GPLv2 which says

Wrong, the correct answer is, "It's a trap!"

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know Ellison probably should have been prepped on those questions, but I don't think it is too strange for a CEO to be unable to answer a question like that off the cuff. That's a question that requires the review of the licenses and contracts involved, and really probably could be the subject of a court case itself. Its a line of questioning that would demand the following on cross-examination:

Respondent counsel: Mr. Ellison, you were asked to state whether the JPL was free or not, but you seemed uncertain about your response. Why would you be unsure?

Ellison: I'm CEO of a large corporation and Java is only one piece of the puzzle. I have not reviewed the licenses at the level needed to state unequivocally under oath whether a particular product is free or not. Oracle takes the time to do its research on questions like these and I usually demand that my people don't start talking without the facts on-hand. I am not going to start doing that now.

Re:Free?

[Black Parrot]

What, precisely, does it mean if you say a programming language is free?

as in beer

Is there really any other definition?

a) You can use programs written in the language without anyone expecting you to pay them.

b) You can write programs in the language without anyone expecting you to pay them.

c) You can write a compiler for the language without anyone expecting you to pay them.

d) You can use the source code for someone else's compiler without anyone expecting you to pay them.

e) You can modify the language definition without anyone expecting you to pay them.

f) You can use the name of the language without anyone expecting you to pay them.

g) You can make conformance/compatibility claims about your compiler for the language without anyone expecting you to pay them.

[...]

z) Some combination of the above.

Re:Free?

[silanea]

[...] Ellison failing to have an answer offhand to a technical question is not a failing. [...]

It is when the whole bloody lawsuit - or what is left of it - rests on just this one question.

Re:Free?

[Pope]

He might have known a hell of a lot at the time leading up to the acquisition, but it's been a few years. I'm sure other things have been occupying his time between then and now. No one can possibly remember every detail forever.

Re:Free?

[tehcyder]

He doesn't "get" $1 a year to live on. When you're that rich, your salary is irrelevant. Paying yourself $1 a year salary is just a PR stunt.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bunch of bullcrap. Oracle is not a person. The person who started the lawsuit should testify. That would be ... Larry Ellison. Yes, that is why he is testifying. If he doesn't know, he should not have sued.

To the contrary. Citizen's United established that Oracle is a "person". Along with the newly updated "One Dollar, One Vote" concept of democracy, a la John Galt.

However, I think that if Larry was really honest, he'd have said, "well, I don't want it to be free. I want to monetize the living **** out of it, just like everything else I touch".

Of course, if he did, he'd launch a ****storm of meetings all over the planet where Java users debated what to do and whether to jump the Java ship.

Re:Free?

[VisceralLogic]

I don't know, I think "Dalvik" is more compatible with typical English words than "Davlik".

Re:Free?

[bill_mcgonigle]

You're talking about some software, a given implementation of the Java programming language.

yes, and if you're using this implementation or any GPLv2 compliant derivative of it you have a license to use the language, as that is the 'USE' of the implementation.

I realize that Google is making an argument for free use of the language without license - my only point is that they could have avoided the issue if they were willing to be open, and that most developers don't have to worry about this (unless they want to remain proprietary).

Re:Free?

[CrimsonAvenger]

He might have known a hell of a lot at the time leading up to the acquisition, but it's been a few years. I'm sure other things have been occupying his time between then and now. No one can possibly remember every detail forever.

This trial hasn't been a secret. He's known it was coming, and he's known he had to testify at it.

Don't you think he'd bother to brush up on little details that might make his lawsuit look a little bit less like patent-trolling?

Re:Free?

[loufoque]

if you're using this implementation or any GPLv2 compliant derivative of it you have a license to use the language

You have a license to use the software.

The language itself isn't even subject to copyright. It can be subject to patents though, and having the license for a particular implementation doesn't mean you can use it without patent infringement.

Re:Free?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Wrong, the correct answer is, "It's a trap! [skife.org]"

GPLv2 does contain an implicit patent grant. v3 makes it explicit.

The article could be correct, but it's predicting the outcome of a court case (one that would have to invalidate the implicit patent grant in v2) that hasn't been brought yet.

The TCK tests would be a separate problem.

Re:Free?

[bill_mcgonigle]

You have a license to use the software.

Yes, and the use of the software is to compile and run the language. If you can't use the language then you can't use the software, which would be contrary to the GPL grant of use.

having the license for a particular implementation doesn't mean you can use it without patent infringement.

GPLv2 has an implicit patent grant. That was the part I blockquoted above.

Re:Free?

[gtall]

You misunderstand Uncle Larry and His Amazing Self-Pumping Ego. Uncle Larry didn't think he needed to be prepped or because he wanted to be able to say he believed something that ultimately turned out to be false but believing something that is false without knowing that it is false is not lying. Uncle Larry is sleaze on a stick, he makes Gates look like a boy scout.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that while a language cannot be subject to copyright, it can be subject to patents.

Software patents, which isn't the same thing to me.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is more to it than that. The TCK license does not permit certification for mobile. I believe this is the reason many members left the JCP and the collapse of the Apache Harmony project. Essentially, you have to certify you Java release with the TCK to be in the clear to use it, but they managed to slip in licensing restrictions on the TCK for Java 7 making it impossible to do so.

Re:Free?

[Raenex]

The question is too broad and subject to interpretation. If they want the real answer they should ask the people who know the specific details and in what scenarios Java is "free" and what the limitations are. This line of questioning is courtroom theater, not justice.

Re:Free?

[Dahamma]

Did you even read my comment? Duh.

Re:Free?

[Dahamma]

He doesn't "get" $1 a year to live on. When you're that rich, your salary is irrelevant.

Isn't that exactly what I said? Jeez, it was only a 2 sentence comment, and no one who replied to it even read it...

Re:Free?

[Dahamma]

And by all accounts Ellison loves the courtroom theater, so if he managed to make himself look bad and hurt Oracle's case, that's his own fault...

Re:Free?

[Tharkkun]

He receives $1 and a handful of paper each year.

Re:Free?

[Xtifr]

However SUN released the licensing for Java no longer matters.

How* Sun released the licensing for Java never did matter, because the license only applied to the implementation, not the language. The Sun Technology Certification Kit (TCK), which was required to use the name Java, did come with field-of-use restrictions, but Apache and Google didn't use the TCK or the name for just that reason. Android is based on Apache Harmony, not code from Sun, and there are no field-of-use restrictions on Harmony.

How Oracle releases a new licensing structure is what matters; and it's clear Google has no interest in adjusting the terms to meet Oracle's new terms.

Ignoring the fact that the GPL is non-revokable, which would make your point false even if it were relevant, the GPL only applies to Oracle's code, which Apache and Google aren't using. The only thing they're really using is the names in the API, and all precedent (and a ruling from this judge) says that such names aren't copyrightable. Oracle is trying to hang their infringement claims on some vague notions of "specification and arrangement". Of a handful of names.

* not "However". Please learn English.

Re:Free?

[Hognoxious]

Companies are people, not a person. Ellison failing to have an answer offhand to a technical question is not a failing.

Failing is not failing? How very Zen. Treat yourself to a double fapperwankalatte and a colored cigarette.

Where were we? Oh, yes. If he'd been cold called with this question at 3 a.m. six months ago you might have a point. But going into a courtroom unprepared and unbriefed is just retarded.

Re:Free?

[Xtifr]

Note that while a language cannot be subject to copyright, it can be subject to patents.

Perhaps, though I have a hard time imagining how. Oracle has several patents in their VM, but I don't know of any that apply to the language itself. Gnu gcj implements the language, but doesn't use a VM; it's a native compiler. To the best of my knowledge, gcj does not infringe any of Oracle's patents, most of which involve the JIT component of the VM, which, of course, isn't present in a native compiler.

(There's also the fact that Oracle's patents in the Java VM are rapidly being thrown out on re-examination by the PTO. They've already had to discard most of their original patent claims against Google, since the patents are no longer valid. This is one of the reasons they've been in such a big rush to get the trial started--half of the patents they have left are still pending PTO review.)

Re:Free?

[Xtifr]

Fair enough, but pretty much irrelevant to my point. Thanks for the info, though.

Re:Free?

[loufoque]

Copyright, patents, and trademarks all work independently of each other.

Re:Free?

[loufoque]

Well, strictly speaking, you cannot patent a programming language (at least not in Europe), since it's a fully descriptive entity, but you can patent general methodologies in which to evaluate constructs in a language with certain properties, for example by the use of a just-in-time compilation techniques.

While not patenting the language per-se, it is as close as it gets.

gcj does not infringe any of Oracle's patents

They probably don't care enough about gcj to consider suing them, I'm sure they can find some relevant material in their huge patent portfolio.

Re:Free?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Copyright, patents, and trademarks all work independently of each other.

Unless a contract ties use of one to the use of another. Such as a license. Such as the GPL.

Are you making the claim that Section 7 of GPLv2 isn't an implicit patent license?

Re:Free?

[Flere Imsaho]

What a bunch of bullcrap. Oracle is not a person.

I always though it was just an acronym for One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

Re:Free?

[wrook]

At least I haven't seen Google claim that Davlik etc. are derivavtive works of the GPLv2 release of Java.

Actually, this is the most insightful comment I've seen on this topic. Dalvik is indeed not (intended to be) a derivative work of the GPLv2 release of Java. It is licensed under the Apache license. You are allowed to make a derivative work under the GPL, but there is nothing allowing you to make a derivative work under a different license.

The key at this point is whether or not a re-implementation of the API is considered a derived work. If it is, then Dalvik is infringing since it is not licensed under the GPL.

I can tell you my preference with regard to whether implementation of an API is a derived work, but I have no idea what a ruling would be on it. The question put to Ellison is asking if the Java programming language is free. It is not asking whether or not the GPL implementation is free (which is obviously is). As much as I really hate to say it, I don't think he *can* know. This is what this trial is going to determine. Scary.

Re:Free?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I can tell you my preference with regard to whether implementation of an API is a derived work, but I have no idea what a ruling would be on it.... I don't think he *can* know. This is what this trial is going to determine. Scary.

There could be a silver lining - if the courts rule against what we'd consider the 'progress of science and the useful arts' at least our next set of licenses will account for this 'trap' and people will be forever leery of any language product license that doesn't offer such a grant. Perhaps it's even time to be proactive about it, to protect people in all jurisdictions.

Re:Free?

[Rich0]

I'm surprised he doesn't just leave the mother ship out at anchor and fly a helicopter to shore.

Not surprised

[drew_92123]

Just another rich out of touch moron who doesn't know anything about his company...

Re:Not surprised

[geekmux]

Just another rich out of touch moron who doesn't know anything about his company...

Not that I necessarily disagree with you, but I challenge you to answer the question accurately and while under oath. Remember we're looking for a "Yes" or "No" answer here...because all software licenses/patents/agreements are that black and white of course...

Oracles own lawyers would have likely given this answer. Only difference is they've had years of practice saying it in various ways, all of which don't sound near as stupid as "I don't know".

Re:Not surprised

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

OR a CEO on the stand being asked a question that's difficult to answer based on *purely* legal matters.

Is Java "open"? I don't even know if Oracle's lawyers know the specific answer to that question, because what is open? In a PURELY legal stand point, is open about source distribution? Is open about the licensing? Is it about the JDK APIs? What IS open?

that's a question Larry Ellison would've also tanked on too, I'd bet.

Re:Not surprised

[Volante3192]

Ellison was not exactly blindsided by this lawsuit. Nor was he blindsided by his day in court. I would expect him, as the Big Cheese, to be briefed on this ahead of time because, well, he's the goddamn Big Cheese.

So, under normal circumstances, if you pulled Ellison off the street and asked "Is the JPL free?" I would expect an "I don't know."

However, when your calendar says, "Lay smack down on Google in court today!!" I'd expect you to have crammed the weeks prior.

Also, we're not looking for a yes/no answer. That only came up after he started hemming and hawing. Something that would not have happened if he was familiar with the licence agreement ahead of time.

Re:Not surprised

[Hatta]

Java is GPLd. It's free. There is no ambiguity.

Re:Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

"because what is open"

In which you could simply rephrase the question to scope "open"... and ask other "open" questions afterwards.

It isn't like this is the door that lies vs the door that tells the truth. You may ask more than one question.

Re:Not surprised

[Ash-Fox]

Java is GPLd. It's free. There is no ambiguity.

Can you explain the ambiguity of the TCK away please.

Re:Not surprised

[walterbyrd]

Or, maybe Larry is lying because he does not want to admit that the lawsuit is just a scam, very much like the scox-scam.

Re:Not surprised

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I retract my previous statement. In Ellison's own words, Java is open and free for use WITH OUT ROYALTIES.

I expect Google to take this in a walk.

Re:Not surprised

[CrimsonAvenger]

Is Java "open"? I don't even know if Oracle's lawyers know the specific answer to that question, because what is open? In a PURELY legal stand point, is open about source distribution? Is open about the licensing? Is it about the JDK APIs? What IS open?

Well, if he didn't know the answer, he shouldn't have sued Google for billions of dollars until he learned the answer.

Re:Not surprised

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The discussion here isn't whether or not the lawsuit was a bad idea, the discussion is whether or not the question itself was loaded and potentially out of line.

In light with his previous statements in the slides that showed up on Google's side, on the record I might add, it's clear he's a moron. However, his answer might have been *legally* a good idea at this phase in the game.

It's like a car wreck, really. I mean, maybe he shouldn't have metaphorically had run into the light pole but now that the damage is done, when the cop's asking him what happened, saying, "I don't know" sure beats getting an instant ticket.

Yah You Know, CEOs

[Greyfox]

They pay them billions of dollars to look pretty and play golf. Ellison's the prettiest. And he smells like pie. If they really wanted to know anything about Java, they should have asked an Oracle employee who makes a immeasurably miniscule fraction of Ellison's salary.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[smileygladhands]

They pay them billions of dollars to look pretty and play golf. Ellison's the prettiest. And he smells like pie. If they really wanted to know anything about Java, they should have asked an Oracle employee who makes a immeasurably miniscule fraction of Ellison's salary.

Actually, Ellison's annual salary is 1$, no joke. He is paid in stock to avoid income taxes.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[smileygladhands]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10315648-92.html

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

I've received stock in lieu of a salary increase. Trust me, you still pay quite a bit in income tax...any income from the sale of stock is taxable income.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Black Parrot]

Actually, Ellison's annual salary is 1$, no joke. He is paid in stock to avoid income taxes.

Does he have to pay tax when he cashes in the stock?

If so, how does he come out ahead?

(And if no, why isn't he covered with tar and feathers.)

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[smileygladhands]

He has enough real money coming from other sources. He doesn't have to sell the stock he gets from the company.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[fliptout]

Capital gains tax is 15%. Thus all the controversy with Warren Buffet/Mitt Romney/et al paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[narcc]

Taxed at an extraordinarily low rate...

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Fjandr]

For one thing, you don't have to sell stock to use it. You can borrow against its value and, if you have enough, can essentially do so indefinitely.

It's also taxed at capital gains rates if it's sold, which are much lower than standard income tax rates (15% maximum under US law currently for investments held for at least a year). Capital gains can also be offset by tax losses, which can carry forward forever, or through structured sales.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a capital gain because he didn't buy the stock; there was no investment. Just because it's "stock" doesn't make it a capital gain, and in this case it's ordinary income.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the controversy (eyeroll) is because SS/FICA only applies to the first $100,600 or so and they have large charitable donations. Paid in stock? Sure, the capital gains is at 15% (long term), but it's taxed as normal income when you receive it. Dividends? They're at a lower rate, but only after the company already paid income tax on it (somewhere between 20-40%). With REITS, MLPs, or pass-through corps, you would pay your marginal rate on that dividend income but there wouldn't be a corporate tax and you'd actually wind up keeping more money.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[fliptout]

Ok, let's go there.

If you sell the stock less than 12 months after exercising the stock option, you pay regular income taxes.

If you sell the stock 12 months after exercising the option, you pay 15%.

http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/taxes/taxes-on-nonqualified-stock-options-9304/

http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/taxes/taxes-on-incentive-stock-options-12196/

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[serbanp]

Yeah, Stock Options are regular income if sold less than 12 months after exercise and Long-Term Capital Gains (taxed far lower) if after. However, in the second case, I really don't see how he could avoid some AMT penalty...

In Larry's case, is he paid in Stock Options or in Stock (common or restricted)? 'cos if it's the latter, he still pays the standard income tax on the face value at vesting time and can pay the low rate only on the spread when he sells.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Dahamma]

And when you are already the 6th richest man on the planet you don't need money coming in from other sources, anyway. Salary, stock grants, whatever, none of those are motivation to help Oracle succeed as much as his 25% share of the company...

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Dahamma]

Actually, he's partially correct. He would have to pay regular income tax on any spread of purchase price (which could be 0 for RSAs) and fair market value on the date he received them. Cap gains (or losses) would be on the difference between that FMV and the price at which he sells them (if/when he ever does).

It's a bit more complicated for ISOs (AMT instead of income) but Ellison most definitely would get NQOs because ISOs are limited to $100K FMV, which would be a joke to him (I'm sure he pays more than that for a week of upkeep on his yacht).

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[slamb]

Taxed at an extraordinarily low rate...

Yes and no.

My understanding is that if an employer gives you stock outright as part of your compensation, you must pay federal earned income tax on the fair-market value of the stock as of when they gave it to you, which would be 35% for the last dollar earned by someone in the top tax bracket. You also pay federal capital gains tax on any increase in price since then, up to 35% if you held the stock less than a year, likely 15% if you held it more than a year. (It could be 0% if more than a year and your income is less than a certain amount, but if so you probably don't have any stock anyway.)

You might say the 15% is an extraordinary low rate, but then again, if you were just paid a like amount of cash, you could have used it to buy the stock at its fair-market value and achieved the same overall tax rate anyway. The real trick is to (1) have enough spare money that you don't need this income for at least a year, possibly a lot longer depending on market conditions, and to (2) know what stocks will gain so dramatically that your initial investment seems insignificant. If you can do those things on most of your income, the low tax rate is just the icing on the extraordinarily large cake you can easily afford to have and eat, too...

Of course there are some loopholes, but I think they're only practical for "job-creators" like Mitt Romney, not regular folk like you and me. (And for the record, some of my income was considered long-term capital gains, but apparently not nearly as much as Romney's; my tax rate was much higher.)

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Tough Love]

Ellison's the prettiest. And he smells like pie.

Cowpie?

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[yuhong]

I think Ellison is the co-founder of the company.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Capital gains taxes, stock options all have higher than normal rates. It's not so much so they can get a way without taxes, because the tax rate on such is about 45% (just increased) bush had it lower, Obama let it rise. (thanks for that, just what we needed)

They will use it like a savings account if they see the stock doing ok. They will just cash out when they need the money. Otherwise they don't have to pay taxes on stocks that are in the market.

At least that's my understanding of it

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[TapeCutter]

However, in the second case, I really don't see how he could avoid some AMT penalty

Use the stock as colateral for a gigantic line of credit, only pay off the interest and only pay it with money from the line of credit. From what I can tell you can do this until your dead and never pay a cent in tax (unless the stock inconvienently pays a divedend).

As to TFA, Larry should have taken a leaf from the politician's play book and replied "I don't recall". Documentation can easily demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that you do 'know' something, but it cannot be proven that you remeber it, all the opposition can do is point out he has a remarkably convienient memory.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Kotoku]

As someone with a tax accounting background (but not currently working in that field) I'll do my best to add a little clarity to the issue.

Stock compensation will require an immediate tax payment ONLY if it is without conditions. If, for example, the company granting the stock to you puts a two year period in which you must maintain employment before you can sell the stock then you can avoid immediate payment of taxes and it gives you time to take advantage of some benefits (though it gets pretty hairy from that point trying to claim value reductions or reduced value for the limitation of liquidity).

In response to your other comment about being able to take a like amount of cash and buy the stock at fair-market value to achieve the same tax rate that is not true because you would expose yourself to double taxation (which is the reason most people put a before-tax investment into their 401k). If you received a million dollars in cash you would end up paying your income taxes on that amount and then capital gains taxes on the stock as well.

As a side note, if a company is trying to reduce tax liability themselves they can compensate employees in stock, treat it as an expense akin to cash payouts, and reduce their overall burden. Corporations always win on matters like that.

One of the real brilliant things these billionaires do is, after covering basic taxes, not sell the stock at all. If you don't sell it you avoid tax consequences. Larry Ellison "borrowed" against the value of his stock to buy his giant yacht and doesn't pay a dime in taxes. If he keeps them for his whole life he can pass them to his heirs and the income tax will never have been paid (heirs only pay a tax on appreciation of value since the death of the owner, often a fraction of the true value of the stock).

-Not To Be Taken As Professional Advice, Consult A CPA/Lawyer before making any decisions.-

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[roman_mir]

As an owner of a dividend paying stock, you are paying the corporate tax rate before you are paying your dividend, because the dividend is paid out of corporate after-tax profits.

Take the Buffer rule as an example of a lie. Obama pays less than his secretary, Buffet pays much more, in both absolute and relative terms.

Buffet is the biggest shareholder of BH, he pays himself 1% salary of his earnings, that's 40,000,000, on which 35% is paid by his corporation (that's his money, and actually it's 29% and not 35%, he is fighting IRS about that) and then he pays 15% on top, so his real rate is 44.75% (if BH pays 35% tax first).

Now, he only pays himself 1% of his real income, so 99% stays in the company, it's deferred from POV of taxation, he ain't touching that now. But if he wanted to take that money out, he'd pay the normal income taxes on it.

Of-course when asked recently about it, he said he is going to DONATE all his money after death, but that means his 'rule' wouldn't apply to him anyway, it's all propaganda (as shown by the 29% vs 35% corporate tax fight with the IRS).

Of-course that rule is more applicable to Obama, who is paying 20.5% income tax, not 15% on top of 35% (well, 29). Of-course Obama's salary is paid out of income taxes collected from productive people (or it's printed money, so it's collected from everybody who holds dollars and other USD denominated assets via inflation). In reality Obama isn't putting anything into economy except for his book sales. Also government employees do not pay income taxes, it's an accounting trick, gov't can't collect income taxes from itself, it can only shuffle money around that it steals from actual working people.

In any case this rule will decrease the amount of available investments, because the new 30% tax will simply prevent people from paying themselves the dividends, because it will increase the tax load on the investor from 44.75% to 54.5%, that's actually a 19.5% raise in dividend tax.

So people would rather leave their money in whatever bonds, not take it out as income, but where do people think INVESTMENT CAPITAL comes from? There will be less investment capital available for people to try and get it to start new companies, it's going to prevent quite a number of businesses and jobs from appearing!

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Also government employees do not pay income taxes, it's an accounting trick, gov't can't collect income taxes from itself, it can only shuffle money around that it steals from actual working people.

You are truly delusional and trolling to boot, or merely displaying your ignorance in full. (listen to FOX news a lot?)

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[hackula]

I believe you have this mixed up. Capital gains are taxed at 15%. Earned income tax for top earners is ~36.5%. Obama WANTS to implement the Buffet rule which would raise this top bracket to 39%. Also Obama has not let the Bush tax cuts expire, as they are still in place.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[hackula]

Yep. This was big a few years ago when people were still flipping houses. People were forced to begrudgingly stay in their house for longer than 12 months (the horror!) to avoid paying the penalty tax.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[roman_mir]

You find calculations on your news shows? I don't watch Fox, I am not in USA, then again, I don't watch CNN nor MSNBC nor whatever else you've got going there.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[chooks]

Larry Ellison "borrowed" against the value of his stock to buy his giant yacht and doesn't pay a dime in taxes.

This is one thing that has always puzzled me: if Ellison is "borrowing" the money (against hist stock portfolio) presumably at some point he needs to pay the "loan" back....Is it just how double ledger accounting is done that people are okay with having an outstanding loan on their books to Ellison (which in the intricacies of the double ledger counts as an asset for the entity giving the loan -- In which case the "loan" never really needs to be payed back?).

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Patersmith]

Let's not forget that Oracle pays dividends. Depending on your jurisdiction, dividends are anywhere from tax-free up to a certain amount or are taxed at an extremely preferential rate. The reasoning is that the corp has already paid corporate income tax on the cash being doled out.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

use the stock as collateral for a loan, then default on the loan. sure you don't get as much as the stock value, but you do avoid the tax issue

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[slamb]

Stock compensation will require an immediate tax payment ONLY if it is without conditions. If, for example, the company granting the stock to you puts a two year period in which you must maintain employment before you can sell the stock then you can avoid immediate payment of taxes and it gives you time to take advantage of some benefits (though it gets pretty hairy from that point trying to claim value reductions or reduced value for the limitation of liquidity).

You lost me. I get paid in part like this - stock units that vest after so much time has passed provided I still work there. The stock units don't all make it to my brokerage account at vesting time; some disappear to pay the taxes just like when I'm paid in cash. Matching income and withholdings show up on my W2. Maybe there's something trickier (/more sleazy) I or my employer could be doing, but I don't think what you're saying is always true. Ehh, maybe I will consult a CPA next time as you suggest, just to see...

In response to your other comment about being able to take a like amount of cash and buy the stock at fair-market value to achieve the same tax rate that is not true because you would expose yourself to double taxation ... If you received a million dollars in cash you would end up paying your income taxes on that amount and then capital gains taxes on the stock as well.

How is that double taxation? The initial investment and the gains are different money. Each dollar is only taxed once, right?

One of the real brilliant things these billionaires do is, after covering basic taxes, not sell the stock at all. If you don't sell it you avoid tax consequences. Larry Ellison "borrowed" against the value of his stock to buy his giant yacht and doesn't pay a dime in taxes. If he keeps them for his whole life he can pass them to his heirs and the income tax will never have been paid (heirs only pay a tax on appreciation of value since the death of the owner, often a fraction of the true value of the stock).

Brilliant, maybe; also disgraceful. There's little point in blaming Larry Ellison for trying this - he is what he is, and that's certainly not someone who will change his behavior in response to my opinion of him - but I wish we didn't allow it. I'd like to see Congress make a real effort to stop "coddling the super-rich", to use Warren Buffett's phrase. In this case, why do heirs not inherit his "cost basis"?

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

He borrows from the bank against his stock when needed, everything else is a business expense.

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[Kotoku]

This story is about a day old...so if you are interested I hope it still gets to you.

Without knowing your situation it is hard to say as two primary employee stock option plans exist, NSO and ISO plans. Under an NSO, if given an option to purchase stock at a fixed price you, for all intents and purposes, own the stock but are able to delay paying taxes until you want to actually purchase even if an ascertainable market value exists that would reflect the value of your options. Suppose that options to purchase the stock are exercised at a price of $2.00 a share. If, at the time of exercise, the fair market value of your company stock is $3.50 per share, then $1.50 per share (the difference between the fair market value of the stock and the exercise price) would be treated as compensation income. If the stock is held for more than one year and subsequently sold for $5.00 per share, the additional $1.50 per share of appreciation can qualify for capital gain treatment. Depending on the options available to you this may be preferable than an immediate liquidation to cover tax costs as those shares could be held longer and receive capital gain treatment which it doesn't sound like yours currently are. So many situations exist it would take me hours to cover them all but it is a starting point to think about.

It is double taxation in this sense:

Situation 1: Make $100, all put into 401k, able to buy $100 in stock. Later, stock is sold and taxes paid - 1 instance of taxation.
Situation 2: Make $100, paid out to you via your check with 10% Income Tax. Able to buy $90 in stock. Later, stock is sold and taxes paid - 2 instances of taxation.

To answer your last question, I can't explain why the tax law is like it is in regards to heirs cost basis upon inheritance, just the potential savings it entails. On a side note to that though, you'll find that good financial planners warn about variable annuities as opposed to an investment like previously mentioned because that specific type of investment burns the heirs by making them pay ordinary income tax rates on the gain. Makes it a little crazier thinking that one financial instrument gets treated so differently than another. :)

Re:Yah You Know, CEOs

[jaymemaurice]

So, how does Larry pay back the borrowed money on a $1 salary without paying taxes? By selling the yatch to someone else to pay back the loan and selling some stock (paying capital gains) to pay the depreciation (if any)?!
Larry should be the name for all hypothetical finacial questions from now on...

MAD.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I don't think this lawsuit is going to be good for anyone but Apple.

Google might get a huge kick in the junk over Dalvik, Oracle might get a huge kick in the junk over whether or not Java is even an open platform or not, and the only ones who look to gain are Apple and maybe Microsoft.

Re:MAD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it quite looks like Oracle is just going to go down in flames, Google is going to make it out without a scratch (as they should), and the world will go on like it always has.

Re:MAD.

[Anonymous Coward]

True. Apart from greed, Ellison pursued this to impress his close friend Jobs. Another clueless CEO tricked by Jobs.

Re:MAD.

[tconnors]

Google might get a huge kick in the junk over Dalvik, Oracle might get a huge kick in the junk over whether or not...

Could you please stop using the word "junk"? It's stupid.

Re:MAD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that might exactly be the point of this hutzpah. We all know that Larry and Jobs were BFFs.

Re:MAD.

[Shoe Puppet]

Google might get a huge kick in the garbage over Dalvik, Oracle might get a huge kick in the refuse over whether or not...

That doesn't sound any better.

Re:MAD.

[St.Creed]

I second that. It is.

Re:MAD.

[stretch0611]

I don't think this lawsuit is going to be good for anyone but Apple.

As is normally the case, I'm sure it will be good for the lawyers as well.

Re:MAD.

[marcosdumay]

Well, if Oracle wins their claims, it will be very bad for both Google and Oracle. Now, if Google wins, both will lose just the money spent on the trial.

Why Oracle started that is something I can't understand.

Re:MAD.

[Anonymous Coward]

well, Micro$haft might get the opportunity to gain but they'll squander it.

Of course the language itself is free.

[bmo]

A language is nothing but a listing of words and how they are used. It is a cataloging of facts.

Facts, as such, are not copyrightable. You can't copyright the listings in a phone book, and neither can you copyright the contents of a header file. Because there is no creative content, and as far as the US is concerned, "sweat of the brow" does not give you copyright.

This is why Oracle is not going after IBM for Iced Tea, because Oracle they know they have nothing and are afraid of what the Nazgul might do in retaliation.

--
BMO

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[bmo]

Sigh...

Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991),[1] commonly called Feist v. Rural, is an important United States Supreme Court case establishing that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright. In the case appealed, Feist had copied information from Rural's telephone listings to include in its own, after Rural had refused to license the information. Rural sued for copyright infringement. The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and that therefore no infringement existed.

1991. SCOTUS.

This is a rather famous case and anyone with even a passing familiarity with copyright should have read about this at least once.

Sorry to burst *your* bubble.

--
BMO

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[bmo]

Follow-up

This is also why the astrology book company that was suing the owner of tzdata.dat also had no case and when confronted with ICANN taking over tzdata, they chickened out. Because it's one thing to sue someone who can't afford to even show up in court and another to sue someone who can defend themselves.

--
BMO

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[tlhIngan]

Well, Java might be free, but the patents used to implement the JVM may not be.

It's why Microsoft licenses the patents in question from Sun/Oracle even though they don't do Java anymore. They license it for their .NET CLR.

Now, Sun back then gave anyone with a compatible J2SE implementation (and probably J2EE) a license to the patents for free (because you can't implement a JVM without them).

However, they didn't extend this to J2ME, and reaped tons of money off of licensing for cellphones, blu-ray players, etc. It's a pretty profitable part of Java.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[bmo]

You are correct, but it also means that those patents have to be valid.

Just because someone pays for a license fee doesn't mean the patent was valid in the first place. Remember that Microsoft and Sun both gave piles of money to SCO for "SCO Source licenses" when they already had licenses paid for in perpetuity (this was just a fig-leaf for champerty).

--
BMO

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Short Circuit]

Not that I want to disagree with you on this subject, but there's a difference between a cataloging of unrelated information and information which relates to each other.

A language is not "nothing but a listing of words an how they're used", a language is an idea which is described in a specification and/or implementation. That idea satisfies that "minimum amount of creativity" you need in order to copyright something.

Otherwise, a novel would just be a "narration of fictitious characters and things they did to each other as they resided in the author's mind", and would thus be similarly uncopyrightable.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft didn't get those patents for free. They settled an antitrust lawsuit with Sun by paying them two billion dollars.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle doesn't claim any patents in this case.
And Dalvik doesn't claim to be a compatible implementation. It is based on Apache's Project Harmony, which Sun did not allow to be certified as Java-compatible.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Serious Callers Only]

is an important United States Supreme Court case establishing that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright.

Unfortunately for your argument, languages are far from information alone with a minimum of original creativity. They take a lot of thinking, planning, and creative thought in order to come up with a structure for others to work in. I completely disagree with Oracle's position here, but you can't claim that creating a programming language is like listing facts in a telephone directory, it takes a lot more work and creativity than that and it is not created based on merely observing the world but on copying the good bits of other languages (so Oracle is crazy to even go down this path). It's more like creating a font, a dictionary, or recipes, all of which have *elements* which are copyrightable, but are in this same murky grey area, precisely because they are used by so many other people to create other stuff, which makes it of questionable value to society to lock them up with copyright.

Unfortunately arguments in a courtroom are never about value to society, though you could argue that they should be, as in this sort of common law legal system court decisions (as the one you cite above) *creates and defines the law*.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think all software is just a bunch of words, can you honestly say that the bunch of words that make up Git could have been written to work as well, by anyone else?

There really is creativity involved in software, which I think is copyrightable.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[symbolset]

Unfortunately you can't copyright an idea.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[unixisc]

Was the Google counsel's question about the language itself, or things like the Java Virtual Machines, the JDK or JRE? The question sounds very nebulous, the way it was asked.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[micheas]

They are still including one or two patents.

Most of the patents in this case have been invalidated by the copyright office after google requested a re-examination of the patents. This is why the Billions has gone down to something less then 35 million.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

This is why Oracle is not going after IBM . . . yet

Or in public. IBM has a lot invested in Java for their software products. They cannot afford to let their customers get all jittery about looming SCO style shakedowns.

So maybe IBM had an agreement with Sun, that Oracle cannot wiggle out of? Or the lawyers for IBM an Oracle have already worked out a secret deal behind the scenes.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[bussdriver]

How about a rules system of combining words; a grammar which defines the language -- putting a patent on that--- since it is a lot like software is a certain order of instructions... this would be certain orders of statements which let a human instruct the computer in the abstract...

How about a patent on software design patterns?

Lets patent new slang grammars found in pop music and hip hop...

The phone book is sorted... can I patent a process of ordering database entries for faster access times? Prior art... but you get my point.

Somebody please trademark War On Terror.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[voidphoenix]

Unfortunately for your argument, languages are far from information alone with a minimum of original creativity. They take a lot of thinking, planning, and creative thought in order to come up with a structure for others to work in. I completely disagree with Oracle's position here, but you can't claim that creating a programming language is like listing facts in a telephone directory, it takes a lot more work and creativity than that and it is not created based on merely observing the world but on copying the good bits of other languages (so Oracle is crazy to even go down this path). It's more like creating a font, a dictionary, or recipes, all of which have *elements* which are copyrightable, but are in this same murky grey area, precisely because they are used by so many other people to create other stuff, which makes it of questionable value to society to lock them up with copyright.

The amount of effort requires to come up with a language has nothing to do with what is copyrightable. As a direct analogue, here's the US Copyright Office's page on games. Notice:

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

I bring up games because the principles are exactly the same. The rulebook which comes with the game, is a written description of the rules. It is *not* the rules, it is a particular expression in literary form, and is therefore subject to copyright. But the actual rules, the principles, mechanics, algorithms and procedures of the game, are mathematical abstractions. They are ideas, not subject to copyright.

A dictionary is not a language. It describes the language. It is an expression which is copyrightable. A grammar book is not language. It is another description, another literary expression, also copyrightable. Language is abstract. It is a set of rules, and rules are not copyrightable. The _description_ of the rules is copyrightable. In the same vein, the API specification document is copyrightable. The API itself is not. This is an important distinction that most people fail to make.

If Google, for example, were to reproduce Java's API documentation verbatim and distribute it with the Android SDK, they would be in violation of copyright. But if anyone merely read the API and re-implemented the language based on the described rules, they wouldn't be violating any copyright. They may have copied the ideas, but ideas cannot be copyrighted.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Xtifr]

So you agree with SCO that anyone who uses Linux should be sued for violating the UNIX copyrights?

Dalvik has no more to do with Java than Linux does with Unix.

(And note that Oracle is using the same lawyers that SCO did.)

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Yet.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

...No, Microsoft does not have a patent license from Sun/Oracle for reasons of the .NET CLR.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, map data, such as Google Maps, is copyrighted. Aren't the locations and names of streets just facts?

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[devitto]

Actually, how the 'facts' are brought together (alphabetically? sorted by last, first or middle name?) is copyrightable. This is how music companies can claim copyright over an album of uncopyrighted work, e.g. Shakespeare's full works, in chronilogical order.

Dom

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[bmo]

Aren't the locations and names of streets just facts?

Yes, and they are not copyrightable.

The *presentation* is copyrighted. The fact that you can't tell the difference between presentation and mere facts is telling.

--
BMO

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[bmo]

Silly response first:

Shakespeare was a composer?

Serious response now.

No. Sweat of the brow by sorting in chronological order is not copyrightable. Publishers do not own the alphabet. There is no creativity in sorting by alphabetical order.

The creation of an anthology, with artwork on the cover, typeset, illustrations, etc, *is* copyrightable because that is ipso facto "creative", but I can go and snag my own copy of an out-of-copyright anthology of Shakespeare's works and re-do it in my own way and copyright that, and another publisher like Penguin can't sue me.

--
BMO

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[hackula]

As someone working in the mapping field, I can say that a map is much more than the locations and labels it contains. There is quite a bit of effort that goes into styling and rendering the maps.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[Miamicanes]

Map data is also salted with fictional bits whose only purpose is to make it obvious when somebody has copied a map's data instead of independently doing the field work from scratch (or obtaining the data from another source), and to give the copyright holder the excuse it needs to sue the creator of the derived map. Remember, you only need one trivial (but concrete) example of infringement to win in court, and by their very nature, proving infringement of that tiny bit of sentinel data is going to be taken as proof that you've infringed upon the whole thing.

Of course, things can backfire. I know there's at least one case of a municipality that "corrected" its official GIS map with salted data from a commercial map (the employees assumed there was just an oversight or mistake made at some point in the past by county officials), and the salted data made its way out into the wild... making a huge mess in the process.

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[bmo]

"Map data is also salted with fictional bits whose only purpose is to make it obvious when somebody has copied a map's data instead of independently doing the field work from scratch (or obtaining the data from another source), and to give the copyright holder the excuse it needs to sue the creator of the derived map."

That's not enough.

And that is not creative either. If you read the case I quoted, facts, as such, are not copyrightable. Ever. And "salted streets" are not creative.

It's the layout and artwork. It's the written descriptions. It's the artistic merit embedded in the work that makes it copyrightable.

Remember, you only need one trivial (but concrete) example of infringement to win in court,

Name a case in the US since the one I quoted. Name one.

SCO tried pointing to individual lines of code out of context (your "sentinel data" idea) as proof that Linux infringed on Unix, which they claimed to own, but didn't, and courts laughed at them.

--
BMO

Re:Of course the language itself is free.

[symbolset]

+1

no, we payed $7.4 billion for it!

[hxnwix]

And I'll be god damned if we're not going to make that money back! The world owes us big time!

Welcome to Java!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://skife.org/java/jcp/2010/12/07/the-tck-trap.html

Re:Welcome to Java!

[Miamicanes]

And in the real world, you put in the prohibition against patent-infringing uses, and release it anyway. Regardless of how blatantly it might violate the GPL2, remember -- the GPL2 isn't self-executing. Somebody with standing to sue (ie, a contributor who holds part of the copyright along with others) would have to sue you, and demonstrate in court that your infringement caused real damages that can be quantified and made whole by payment of some specific amount of money to you. No, before you ask, your likelihood of getting an injunction on the grounds that "violating the principle of the GPL2" constitutes irreparable harm that can not be remedied would be somewhere between "slim" and "none". The judge would tell you to go home, and come back when you can cite specific losses you've suffered personally and assign a dollar value to them.

Put another way, in America, you can't sue somebody because they violated your moral principles and offended you. Or at least, you aren't going to be able to use the court system to make them change their wicked ways. If you're lucky & personally have standing to sue, and can show that the anger you feel from those wanton violations gave you autistic meltdowns that runined 117 days of your productivity, you might be able to convince a judge to grant you a hundred thousand or so in damages to compensate you for your medical bills and lost wages, but that's pretty much it. Courts don't address abstract harms, or right moral wrongs. They shuffle around cash when somebody harms someone, and call it a day.

It's actually because...

[XDirtypunkX]

It's actually because Larry couldn't understand the word "free" in the context of an Oracle product.

Re:It's actually because...

[qu33ksilver]

We live in difficult times. In the legal complexities of software terms, anything we say can be interpreted for something else. I would be happy if he would have said- "Can it even be answered ? "

WWSD?

[identity0]

What would Stallman testify to?

"You see, when we say 'Free', we mean not just free as in cost, but Free as in Freedom, or as we sometimes say, 'libre software'. This means that software which does not place restrictions on the develope-"
"Yes or no, Mr. Stallman?"
"Well, your honor, to be Free Software means that one follows the guidelines of the Free Software Foundation-"
"Yes or no, Mr. Stallman?"
"To be technically be Free, Java would have to-"
"Yes or no, Mr. Stallman?"
"I'd just like to interject for a mo-"
"The court finds the witness to be guilty... I don't know how, but he is somehow."

Re:WWSD?

[phantomfive]

Calm down dude, we like Stallman for what he does, not for how he smells. He's done a lot. The rest is his own personal business.

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually since most of what he does these days is bitch and moan, I can't say that "we like him for what he does" is entirely accurate either. The GNU/Linux farce is just another example of him desperately trying to remain relevant and another in a long line of embarrassments on his part.

What has Stallman done in the past five years that's of any significance? I'm sure you'll blabber about GPLv3 but if you'll note the community response to that, it's become more divisive than the GPLv2 ever was. If Stallman were really that interested in freedom he'd go with the BSD license, since that actually offers, you know, the most freedom. GPLv3 is all about Stallman's ego and his personal, anti-corporate agenda, not about free software.

TL;DR: for a smelly bastard Stallman is quite washed up.

Re:WWSD?

[jkrise]

Good one!

I remembered this conference in Belfast years ago; when an Oracle executive got grilled for describing some products as 'free'....

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8941

"Owen Hughes, of Oracle, managed not to fall afoul of Stallman. Instead, Hughes angered the entire audience. Working from a
  slick presentation that was more "sales pitch" than "technical
  information", Hughes referred to numerous Oracle products that are
  "free". For each product, the standard pitch was, "I've used this. It's
  really cool. You should take a look at it. Download it for free from...".
  After a handful of comments like this, the audience could contain
  itself no longer. A quick question from the floor asked, "It is free as
  in speech or free as in beer?". Hughes wasn't sure how to answer. A
  voice from the back of the hall called out, "Don't use the word 'free'
  to describe this, use 'cost-less'". It soon became clear that what is
  "free" to Oracle, is not "free" to the vast majority of conference
  attendees. This distinction was the cue for others to ask if Oracle distributed the
  source code to these "free" products. Hughes looked positively shocked
  that someone would ask such a question of him, then meekly replied, "No,
  source code is not included." From the floor, Bruce Perens offered
  Hughes some advice, "You need to clean this up before presenting it to
  an audience like this again.".

Re:WWSD?

[phantomfive]

What has Stallman done in the past five years that's of any significance?

More than you, Mr AC.

Re:WWSD?

[dkf]

If Stallman were really that interested in freedom he'd go with the BSD license, since that actually offers, you know, the most freedom. GPLv3 is all about Stallman's ego and his personal, anti-corporate agenda, not about free software.

The GPL (in its various versions) and the BSD license emphasize different parts of freedom. GPL is particularly about the freedom of those upstream, and the BSD license is particularly about the freedom of those downstream. Unfortunately, it's not possible to maximize both of those at the same time as they're somewhat antagonistic; some things that a downstream participant (a consumer of the licensed code) might want to do will reduce the power of the upstream participant (a producer of the licensed code). A case in point is where the code in question is used as a component (despite not being originally intended as such) and resold as part of a larger product; the freedom for the downstream actor to do that is much more extensively curtailed by the GPL than by the BSD license.

This is really a philosophical difference — you can't reconcile them, and it's really about a statement of values — and it is often counterweighted by a community that uses "soft power" to encourage the other sorts of freedom; patches still flow upstream in BSD-based communities, people still build products in GPL-based communities.

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have thought that Stallman's insistence on precisely correct use of terminology would be a perfect fit for a courtroom.

Re:WWSD?

[unixisc]

I'm not a fan of Oracle, but it's actually Owen Hughes who was using the word 'free' the right way - the way it's understood in English. Stallman's redefinition of the word is completely warped, and so was Bruce Perens' advice in this case.

The correct question to him should have been, 'Is it open-source?' I know, that's not what Stallman is interested in, since it doesn't feed his agenda. But such a question would have enabled Hughes to give a direct answer. The heckler who said 'Don't use the word 'free' to describe this, use 'cost-less'' was the one who, like Stallman, has either forgotten English, or didn't know it in the first place. If I am walking around Costco and get a sample of some sausages, or cheese, or lemonade that some vendor wants me to add to my cart, I wouldn't ask her (in the event I didn't know) whether it was cost-less: I'd ask whether it's free.

For the purposes that Stallman has described at length, a more appropriate word for him to have used would have been 'Liberated Software'. I know why he doesn't use it - it would betray his Marxist motivations more than his usage of weasel words like 'Free' does, since Liberated, though perfectly appropriate in English to describe the FSF's definition of 'Free Software', and is the literal English equivalent of 'libre', is more associated with Leftist thought, like terms such as Progressive. His excuse for not using libre is that English speaking people in India won't understand it. That's hogwash, and besides, FSF India already uses a Hindi term 'Swatantra Software' (meaning Independent Software, which is another fine term he could have used w/o confusing people, and the Hindi term doesn't mean Rs0 price. Besides, even in India, if you tell someone that something is 'free software' they too will assume that it's Rs 0). If the idea is to promote the ideology of commutative freedom, then Liberated software would have been the most appropriate term to use.

So if one wants to ask the question about whether a software is 'free' or not in the way that Stallman defines it, the correct question to ask is whether the software is open source. If one is hung up on the 'principle' of the user having the full freedom to do everything he or she likes, then ask whether the software is liberated, or GPLed, or something along those lines.

In short, stop bastardizing the word 'free'!

Re:WWSD?

[Xtifr]

"The" way it's used in English? I'm afraid you have a very silly idea of how English works. There is no "the way". I just checked two different dictionaries. One had seventeen different definitions for "free", and the other had twenty-four!

Re:WWSD?

[bytesex]

'Once a prisoner, he is now free.' So we have slavery now ?

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

So by your exclusive definition of the word 'free' I could tell a story of 'the free people' and everyone would think they are slaves sold for free or gratis? In this context 'free' is more likely to refer to freedom.

The same thing could be true for software. It all depends on the context.

The world is not black and white. Learn to appreciate nuance.

Re:WWSD?

[unixisc]

Yeah, dictionaries will have all the meanings. That has nothing to do w/ how a word is understood, when used in daily conversations. More often than not, when one is talking about getting something free, one is usually talking about price, and only when one is talking about things like prisoners or slaves does a different usage of 'free' get implied.

Most people - if you ask them what they understand by 'free software' - will tell you 'software whose price tag is $0.00.' What Stallman calls 'gratis' (like we're living in the 16th century - the only reason I know what it means is that I once had to read Shakespeare). So when he insists on using a term that only confuses people, it's right to call him on it. That's a part of the reason that ESR started the Open Source Initiative, and started pushing Open Source. From a non ideological persepective, it gets straight to the point, and lets companies evaluate whether they want to use this development methodology or not. Also

• It doesn't confuse consumers into thinking that the price tag of a software is $0.00 when it isn't
• It doesn't scare companies into thinking that the software has to be provided for $0.00, and that even if it doesn't, that's not what many of their customers would initially be thinking

Re:WWSD?

[unixisc]

Free people implies people who are independent, or have certain freedoms. Free speech always means the freedom to speak one's mind, but rarely, if ever, means delivering an address somewhere w/o getting paid for it. Free beer always means getting a can of beer w/o having to pay for it - it almost never means freedom to drink beer.

Free software similarly means getting software while paying $0.00 for it. Using the alternate definitions, it may also mean the freedom to freely copy and distribute it. However, it definitely doesn't mean that that software can have a price - if that's what one means, use 'Open Source' to describe it.

For all your protestations, fact remains that if you did a Jay Leno 'Man on the Street' w/ a random bunch of people @ Burbank, or in your own neighborhood, and asked them 'what is free software', 99% of the time, they'd tell you 'software which is free - where you don't need to pay anything'. If you do get somebody who gives you the FSF definition, you are lucky enough to have run into a geek.

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Free slaves, no less. Affordable by everyone... Yay!

Re:WWSD?

[Xtifr]

Yeah, it works better as a verb. Back in the late eighties, I tried to persuade them that they should change their name to The Foundation to Free Software, but it was a little late for that.

Re:WWSD?

[icebraining]

Most people - if you ask them what they understand by 'free software'

Completely irrelevant; he was in a conference for professionals, not "most people". Should scientists avoid using the word theory, because "most people" think it means hypothesis?

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that, if this text represents correctly what he said, he did not say that the product is free, but that downloading is free. And I'm pretty sure that the act of downloading it didn't add any further restrictions to the product, so the download was indeed free.

Re:WWSD?

[rjstanford]

No, but if when presenting they say, "This would work in theory..." people don't yell at them from the crowd because they're using the popular definition of the word in a way that was clear and unmistakable.

When you say, as Hughes did, "Download it for free..." then its obvious in context that he means gratis. You could argue the point if he'd said "Download this free software from" ... but he didn't.

Context. Its important. Without it we cannot communicate, and open communication is vital to society.

And no, I didn't mean open as in "Please open this jar," or even "please open this socket." Its impossible, at least in English, to avoid ambiguities when the person receiving the conversation is intent on creating them.

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's rather simple to check the "freeness" of a license just compare it to what would happen if the object was under public domain(i.e. all the public has domain over the object), and you'll easily see that GPL is as close to public domain as any proprietary license.

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be able to list some quick and easy examples if that were the case, yet you don't...

Re:WWSD?

[phantomfive]

He travels around the world talking about free software. You whine on Slashdot. Who wins? Not you.

Re:WWSD?

[Isaac Remuant]

And not just travel. He engages in and supports movements that align with what he preaches.

He gave a couple of talks in Argentina (in excellent spanish) recommending gnu/Linux for different purposes and helped a movement to include a distro (I think it was Ubuntu) alongside Windows on the government granted netbooks for schoolchildren (A very important nationwide program)

Re:WWSD?

[Isaac Remuant]

Most people - if you ask them what they understand by 'free software' - will tell you 'software whose price tag is $0.00.' What Stallman calls 'gratis' (like we're living in the 16th century - the only reason I know what it means is that I once had to read Shakespeare). So when he insists on using a term that only confuses people, it's right to call him on it.

There's this language called spanish, you know...

Gratis = Free (no price)
Libre = Free (freedom)

He might be looking for that lack of ambiguity when using the word.

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is incorrect, in almost all ways applicable to the topic at hand. Congratulations.

Re:WWSD?

[JamesP]

That's assuming he could shower and be properly dressed for the occasion

Re:WWSD?

[idontgno]

Oh, that explains it.

A co-worker asked me if I was free for lunch, and I responded that I never charged to dine with a friend. And he just LOOOOKED at me...

Silly co-worker. He seemed to have the mistaken impression that "free" meant something besides "of no cost". I'm glad I could set him right.

And I'm also glad I'm not the only one on this crusade. Thanks for your valiant effort to free I MEAN liberate the word "free" from the shackles of context-based parsing. Just a little farther and we will arrive at the golden Promised Land of Newspeak. And that is doubleplusgood.

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I heard that was the Pirate Bay's original name before they realized that 'liberating software' was more akin to 'liberating goods' according to certain media pundits explanations and decided to name themselves accordingly :D

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do more before 9:00a.m. than most people do all day!

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are a sore loser.

Re:WWSD?

[unixisc]

He pushed Ubuntu? That's strange - he includes Canonical in the list of organizations whose software fails his definition of 'free'. In fact, FSFLA (as in FSF Latin America, not Los Angeles) has forked Linux and produced a kernel called Libre-Linux, whose only difference from other Linux versions is that it won't get adulterated w/ 'non-Free software'. On GNU's main page, they're now promoting Trisquel. In fact, the distros that the FSF promotes are ones I guess even most /.ers have never heard of - Blag, Dragora, GNewSense (which Stallman uses on his Lemote Yeedong), Tuto, Venenux and so on. None of the common ones, such as Debian, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and so on. In fact, they go out of their way to explain why they are 'non-Free'. Their reasons are classic - for instance, for Debian, 'the installer in some cases recommends these nonfree firmware files for the peripherals on the machine.', for Canonical, 'Ubuntu offers the option to install only free packages, which means it also offers the option to install nonfree packages too'. In short, you can't win w/ this bunch of whiners, no matter how much of free software you provide, or how careful you are to separate the 'free' from the 'non-free'.

In reality, the reason FSF have forked Linux is that Linus has made it clear that he won't make his kernel GPL3, and the FSF/GNU guys have proven themselves completely incompetent and incapable of producing HURD. Even the guys @ Debian and Arch are better at this. My guess - FSF is just going to take every version from kernel.org, stamp GPL3 on them, rename them and release them on their own - they're incapable of working on the kernel themselves.

I agree w/ the AC 2 levels up. If we were talking about Stallman actually writing code that prople would be interested in using, such as Openshot video editor or PDFcreator or Calligra Suite, then I'd agree that Stallman has contributed more in the last 5 years than AC has. All Stallman has done is shamelessly demand that software companies pay to host him at conferences, and suck up to his obsessions, such as calling Linux 'GNU/Linux', avoiding the term open source and talking about 'software freedom', and obsess about privacy violations of big brother. One doesn't need any programming, software development or even management skills to do that - all one needs is to be insanely opinionated. And on this front, I have no idea what Mr AC does for a living, but I'm willing to wager that s/he would be more successful in winning over organizations to her/his side. Reason being that while one can make a case for either BSD or GPL3, the AC is more likely than Stallman to listen to what the 'community' wants and needs from the licenses, and produce something of that kind, whereas Stallman would just turn on his propaganda about how they are not promoting 'Software Freedom' and alienate them, rather than win them over.

Notice how organizations like Apple, BSD, et al are actively working on either removing or replacing every bit of software that's going GPL3, no matter how valuable, be it GCC, Samba, glibc, and you have your evidence that Stallman has finally turned GPL into something that developers flee from. Even some GNU projects, such as GNOME3, haven't adapted the GPL3 license, since they don't want to be kicked out by mainstream Linux users, I'm willing to bet that over time, Linus is more likely than not to gradually replace GNU userand with something else, just so that they don't get stuck w/ GPL3. At which point, calling the OS GNU/Linux will be about as inaccurate as calling a BSD GNU/FreeBSD, and Stallman would have done to GPL what MS might end up doing to Windows w/ Windows 8 - for all practical purposes, kill it!

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary! I've posted tens of thousands of +5 informative, insightful, funny and interesting comments on slashdot. You appear to have posted ... four.

Re:WWSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard this said a number of times, but it is really nonsense. No interpretation could make the upstream exercising of control be about 'freedom' that would not make every conceivable action about 'freedom'. Slavery? That's about the freedom of the slaveowners to have slaves. Proprietary, closed-source, commercial software? That's about the freedom of the company publishing it to enact restrictive licenses.

It is tiring, and doesn't hold up to even cursory inspection. BSD-like licenses are very much about the kind of freedom described. They put low to minimal restrictions on anyone involved, leaving them 'free'. GPL-like licenses that put restrictions on users of the code add nothing but restrictions. Those restrictions may make the upstream parties happier, but it is completely unreasonable to view them as being freedom-based because they give the upstream parties the freedom to restrict the freedom of downstream parties.

In Soviet Russia

[Roachie]

Ellison is not sure if HE is free!

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever in your life posted a comment worth reading?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

All internet memes, like the people who quote Monty Python's dead parrot skit, should eventually disappear totally, and that's a good thing. Please do whatever you can to accelerate this process. The "soviet Russia" joke ceased to be funny a long, long time ago.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

Let me explain the eternal september....

Re:In Soviet Russia

[voidphoenix]

A link might be helpful...

Re:In Soviet Russia

[unixisc]

I just read up on Yakov Smirnoff (sounds like the vodka) and realized what these jokes were about. I'd have thought the right way to describe them would have been something like 'In USA, you break laws, in USSR, laws break you', instead of America and either Russia or Soviet Russia. After all, Soviet Russia is a somewhat nebulous term, and could easily mean either the Soviet Union, or the Russian federation. But what Smirnoff was describing was applicable not only in Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky, Sverdlovsk, but also outside the RSFSR but within the USSR, as in Kharkov, Yalta, Frunze, Alma Ata, Tashkent, and so on. Hence the usage of Russia, as opposed to the USSR, to describe what he was describing, was a tad inaccurate.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, memes hate you!

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Roachie]

Fuck, make a crack about Ellison and everyone goes apeshit on the Soviet Russia joke. Relax assholes, its a fucking crack, not a subject for philosophical debate. Chuckle or grumble to yourself about it and move on.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Roachie]

I like to think then every time I type out a Soviet Russia gag on Slash , about 10,000 neckbeards get all indignant and invoke the Eternal September, look up wiki links, type up snarky comments, etc. And all the while the cheese on their nachos gets cold.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Roachie]

Yakov reads up on YOU!

Ellison not prepared? WTF?

[Trip6]

If the core of the lawsuit is over the free parts of Java, are you telling me Ellison was not even prepped enough to answer that question? Who will get fired over that I wonder?

Re:Ellison not prepared? WTF?

[Eponymous Hero]

it was a bullshit question. it's like asking, is water a liquid, yes or no? the "i don't know" here clearly refers to "i don't know what you're trying to pull. stop trying to distort the issue." and for the record, i'm no fan of sun, oracle, or java. it is what it is.

Blu ray

[Grindalf]

Blu Ray uses this as part of it's firmware. It will be interesting to see what happens if the licence conditions change and it has to be removed with an update that installs automatically from a new blu ray disk. Many other devices are this precarious too! As are many other US developed software environments. In general, we could all break because bad licences exist in the united states that were not legislated against.

Re:Blu ray

[Anonymous Coward]

BR players and other device manufacturers pay Oracle a royalty to license Java. Google doesn't, hence the lawsuit.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/embedded/overview/embedded-faq-159987.html

Re:Blu ray

[Xtifr]

Blue Ray players license Oracle's JVM. That's reasonable, Oracle/Sun wrote that. Google wrote their own VM from scratch that doesn't work anything like Oracle's JVM. The only thing it has in common is: a bunch of APIs and nine lines of code (added by accident and long since removed). That's it. That's the basis of Oracle's infringement claims.

APIs have long been held to be uncopyrightable. Oracle is trying to change well-established case law, and if they succeed, it's going to raise a shitstorm, not just with Java users, but throughout the industry!

Re:Blu ray

[phantomfive]

APIs are uncopyrightable, and if you develop a clean-room solution, then you can prove that what you have created was not a derivative work.

Google demonstrably did not make a clean-room copy. Therefore they are going to need to use some other method to show that their product is not a derivative work. There are ways to do this, for example, when GNU was copying Unix, they would sometimes use a different algorithm than the one used by AT&T.

But in this case, it looks like it might be hard for Google to show their product is not a derivative work.

Re:Blu ray

[Xtifr]

APIs are uncopyrightable

I agree, but Oracle doesn't.

Google demonstrably did not make a clean-room copy.

And your evidence for this bold claim is? Dalvik doesn't work anything like the JVM (it doesn't even use the same bytecode), and the libraries that Google used were based on Apache Harmony, not the JDK. Oracle only found nine lines of code in common between Java and Android, and those nine lines have long since been removed.

Re:Blu ray

[phantomfive]

And your evidence for this bold claim is?

The article. And your own paragraph. If they'd done a clean room implementation, they wouldn't have found nine lines in common. Also, they wouldn't have used Sun's documentation, which Google admitted to doing. It's going to be hard for Google to show that their product isn't a derivative work.

The only way out I can see for Google, if they get lucky, is that Sun released Java under the terms of the GPL. That would mean, that even if Dalvik and their implementation of Java is a derivative work, they will still be able to use it under the terms of the GPL.

I say, if they get lucky, because Sun didn't release all of Java under GPL. If Google used some of the parts that weren't under the GPL, then it won't matter.

Re:Blu ray

[Xtifr]

You're confused. This nine lines is not a smoking gun suggesting further investigation--this nine lines is all that's left of Oracle's copyright claims after discovery and pre-trial motion practice. Nine lines (contributed by the same person who originally wrote them for Sun) out of tens of thousands, and some vague allegations about the APIs is all they have to go to trial with. And you've already admitted that you don't believe API's are copyrightable, so I don't see how you can possibly imagine Oracle is going to win.

Re:Blu ray

[phantomfive]

I think you are confused about what a derivative work is. An API cannot be copyrighted, but if Google made their implementation based on Oracle's implementation, then it is a derivative work. One way to prove that your implementation is not a derivative work is by doing a clean-room implementation. There are other ways to prove your implementation is not a derivative work, but I don't think Google used any standard way.

Google is going to have a hard time showing they did a clean-room implementation. They were looking directly at Oracle's code when they wrote their version of Java. I don't see how Google can show they didn't derive their work from Oracle's copyrighted work. Most likely they will not be able to.

Re:Blu ray

[phantomfive]

The point is, Google could have done it without infringing Oracle's copyright. They could have followed methods that we know will keep them safe in court. But they didn't. They made a huge oversight, and it could hurt them badly.

Re:Blu ray

[Xtifr]

They could have, but it would have been seen as a silly, pointless expense, since Sun was actively supporting, blessing, and cheering for Apache's Project Harmony--which is what the Android libraries are actually based on! Google wrote their own VM from scratch (and Oracle isn't accusing them of copyright infringement there), but they didn't write the libraries!

This also addresses your other comment where you suggest that Google will have a hard time proving they didn't copy from Oracle's implementation. In fact, it should be easy for Google to show that their code is derived from Apache's code, not Oracle's, because it is.

If Oracle should be suing anyone, it's Apache--but of course, there's no hope of "beeel-yuns!" to be found there. Plus, they'd find it pretty hard to get past claims of estoppel.

Re:Blu ray

[phantomfive]

Sure, let Google try that. As far as I can tell, the best defense Google might have is relying on the fact that Java was released under the GPL.

Maybe you haven't seen Oracle's collection of evidence here. They have a lot of evidence that Google derived their work from Sun, including the pieces of code, including an engineer testifying that he was staring at documents taken from the Sun website while he did it. Whether they also derived from Apache's implementation is irrelevant, because they certainly derived sufficiently from Sun.

Re:Blu ray

[Xtifr]

Dude, it doesn't matter if Oracle has film and eyewitnesses to show Google cutting-and-pasting from Oracle's source code, because the only copyright claims they have are for the API! And as you yourself said, APIs are not copyrightable. Pre-trial motions have already resulted in the following two jury instructions:

1. The Java programming language is open and free for anyone to use.
2. The names of the Java language API files, packages, classes, and methods are not protected by copyright law.

The judge has already seen the evidence Oracle has, and has ruled that no code was copied (except for those frequently-mentioned six lines of code, which Google has already admitted to copying).

It doesn't matter how huge a pile of evidence Oracle may have. The only thing they're allowed to try to claim is the APIs. And I'm pretty sure that not being protected by copyright law trumps even the hugest pile of evidence.

Re:Blu ray

[phantomfive]

Dude, it doesn't matter if Oracle has film and eyewitnesses to show Google cutting-and-pasting from Oracle's source code, because the only copyright claims they have are for the API!

Wait, why do you think this? Certainly Oracle owns the copyright on their implementation of Java. And certainly they own the copyright for their documentation. And other random parts of java.

Re:Blu ray

[Xtifr]

Why do I think that? Because the case has been going on for a year and a half now, and I've been following it that whole time. The public trial has just started, but the case was originally filed in August of 2010. Between now and then, Oracle and Google have been fighting the whole time, with dueling motions and dueling experts. In fact, their experts were so much at odds that the court felt compelled to appoint its own, so we're going to see three experts testify during the trial. And further, both sides challenged the court's expert before trial and got parts of his testimony stricken.

Indirect copying is simply harder to prove than direct copying. Not impossible, of course, but to even bring a case, you have to meet certain hurdles, which Oracle wasn't able to get over. Their evidence didn't meet the required minimum standard, and the judge disallowed it, except for the few lines that Google admitted were copied, and some vague claims that the API's might be protectable. Oh, and the documentation, which, after further review, I realize you were right about. More on that below.

Remember, this case is primarily about patents. Oracle knows that Google took great pains to avoid copying their code, for the most part, and only threw in a few vague copyright claims in the some of it would stick. The meat of the trial won't come till the copyright part is done. Of course, a year and a half ago, Oracle had more patents than they do now. Google got the PTO to review the patents, and most of them have not survived that review, so Oracle has been trying to switch their focus to the copyright claims, but they've had limited success with that.

Now, as I said above, you're right about the documentation copyright claims still being alive. I mostly ignored those, because they don't affect Android directly, and my interest is in what's going to happen to Android. Oracle wants a slice of the Android pie, at a minimum, and would prefer if Android were dropped in favor of JavaME. Winning on the documentation claims won't help with those goals. Oracle can get some back payments, but only to cover developers--they're not going to get paid per-phone--and Google can simply pull the documentation and replace it, so Oracle's won't get the on-going license fees they're hoping for, nor any leverage to force Google to switch to JavaME. But a win here would at least help Oracle save face, and help justify the suit to their stockholders.

Re:Blu ray

[phantomfive]

OK, we'll see how it goes.

Let's be fair

[MrEricSir]

Let's be fair here, Ellison isn't a rich out of touch moron, he just hasn't caught up on work lately because he's too busy working on his yacht racing. And it's an uphill battle. He even had to pay another team to race against him in a race that he's paying for.

Re:Let's be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many of his staff can use that excuse? "Sorry Larry, I didn't do it, I was busy working on my ship-in-a-bottle hobby."

Re:Let's be fair

[Corbets]

I have to become a "moron" to live that lifestyle, I'd do it in a heartbeat...!

Tehn he should have asked them

[SmallFurryCreature]

Court cases are not a giant free for all. Read up on deposition. Google asked this question before the live trial AND it was answered by Elison as bing correct, java is free. He knew the question was coming because Google lawyers told him well inn advance that it would and he submited his answer in writing. Now in court he suddenky doesnt know? How gullible are you?

Elison is a dinosaur who just hates google for not using oracle databases. Google was smart enough to stay away fro, that steaming pile of crap. If only they had been smart enough to stay away from Java. Ms and Apple were.

Re:Tehn he should have asked them

[Shifty0x88]

And to think, they used Java just for the UI, and just so that a lot of people could start programming quickly... shame

Re:Tehn he should have asked them

[WillAdams]

Interestingly, Apple did offer Java as an option early on in Mac OS X's life --- the Calculator app was even provided as a Java example, but Apple got tired of the complaints of it being slow to start up (had to wait for the Java runtime to load) and went back to a Cocoa version.

Re:Tehn he should have asked them

[alexo]

Google asked this question before the live trial AND it was answered by Elison as bing [sic] correct

That was a low blow on his part.

Re:When you don't gratuate high school taxes all s

[Dahamma]

You have no idea what you are talking about. Capital gains is obviously a form of income tax. So are dividends, gambling winnings, rental properties, etc. They are not all taxed at the same rate, but that's totally irrelevant.

Everything you put on your 1040 is a form of "income tax". That's why it's official name is "Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return". There really isn't even any debate on it, the IRS clearly states capital gains are part of your income tax.

Or moved to another country

[dutchwhizzman]

It's not that hard to get the shares turned over to a holding company owned by the CEO that is based in a tax-friendly country. Maybe they closed this one by now, but there are plenty of tricks to move your money^wassets around in such a way that you don't pay taxes anywhere. Moving the assets around costs you money, but if they are worth enough, it's cheaper than paying taxes. If you move ten times as much as the threshold, you hardly pay more in total, making it way cheaper. People like Ellison are moving way more than ten times the threshold...

This is legal, not "stupid CEO"

[dutchwhizzman]

It is about violating patents. Any damages that result of that possible violation should have a monetary value attributed to them, if you want the violator to be liable to pay you damages. You are suddenly looking at the legal definition of "free" in order to assess the damages.

The trick question here is that even if you open the source code up and allow anyone to download and use the compiled product, it could still not be "free". There could be a profit model around the right to put the name of the product on other products using the technology, or the right to redistribute the product, or the right to claim your hardware is compatible with it. These are just examples, there are more business models to make money from open source software that can be labeled "free" in specific cases.

This means that there is no binary answer to the question if Java is free, without a lot of context added to it. Ellison's answer is the only right one in his position, since the question was phrased in such a way that he'd be damned if he answered yes or no.

Re:This is legal, not "stupid CEO"

[robbak]

No, this is not about patents. The arguments on patents come later. The patent arguments, when they start, have been trimmed down to one patent that has been ruled invalid, but the time period to appeal that rejection has not yet expired; and another that has had its scope trimmed back, which, together with some admissions made by Oracle, Google argues, clears Android of infringement.

At the moment, this is only about copyrights. Oracle claims that, when they Sun released documentation about the APIs used in Java, the copyright on them prevents anyone else making a clean-room alternate implementation of them. Oh, and that GPLing it all, congratulating Google for implementing those APIs, and publicly assisting Harmony and GNU Classpath( both alternate clean-room implementations ) doesn't affect that at all. The rest of us are just shaking our heads and wondering if they will ever reveal the directions to the universe where this might be the case.

Re:This is legal, not "stupid CEO"

[rjstanford]

No, this is not about patents. The arguments on patents come later.

And this - among other reasons - is why people involved in multiple court cases avoid making offhand comments in one that could be deliberately misconstrued and used against them in another one. Right or wrong, its far from uncomon.

How should he have answered?

[The_mad_linguist]

I suppose the most accurate way to answer is "it depends what you mean by 'Java' and what you mean by 'free'", but that makes it sound like you're being a weasel.

Re:How should he have answered?

[Anonymous Coward]

But Ellison _is_ a weasel.

Re:How should he have answered?

[jd]

Since lawyers are forbidden from asking certain types of question (eg: leading questions, questions without proper answers, etc), at the very least Ellison's lawyers failed to object or failed to prove the question had no meaning. Ergo, in the context the question was asked, it had enough of a meaning for Ellison to answer. Either that, or he should fire his legal department.

Re:How should he have answered?

[spike1]

IF demanded to answer an unanswerable yes/no question in court, the most prudent thing to say would be "Your honour, answering this question in the way that you demand would result in me purjering myself. I swore to tell the truth, the WHOLE truth and nothing but the truth and yes or no are not the WHOLE truth.There is no yes/no answer to such a question, it's far more complicated than that".

Facebook may pay stock taxes of employees

[witherstaff]

I saw a story awhile ago that Facebook increased their line of credit by a few billion to pay the taxes of employees for selling stock. I assume zuckerberg didn't want to pay a billion in taxes. I don't know how that works, you get taxes for making money, the company pays those taxes,which is income from the company, which you end up having to pay taxes on.Of course with over 71,000 pages in the tax code there is probably a loophole to allow this.

Re:Facebook may pay stock taxes of employees

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I don't know how that works, you get taxes for making money, the company pays those taxes,which is income from the company, which you end up having to pay taxes on.

It works because the tax rate is not 100%. Same sort of thing happens for basically any non-deductible expense that a company pays for an employee - they pay for the expense and then they pay for the tax on that money too using a basic formula that handles the tail recursion of taxing the tax.

Shazbot!

[locopuyo]

[VGRD]
[VGRW]
[VGS]

An Oracle joke for the youngsters here

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, just can't pass up a chance to post this one. They should have asked Larry this....

Q: What hardware platform does Oracle run best on?

A: A 35mm slide projector!

(Even though I am only in my 50's I realize I am suddenly an IT "old timer" - we got a lot of mileage out of that one back in the 80's...)

- TWR, Los Angeles

Re:An Oracle joke for the youngsters here

[SecurityGuy]

I still love

Q: What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God?

A: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison!

Because non-java iOS suffers from a lack of develo

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yeah, bullshit. iOS pushed its own, and gosh, those poor developers, none of them managed to get programming quickly. Oh wait, which app market is compeltely dominating again?

If google had been smarter they would have made Java an option, not mandatory. Some Google Java fanboy made this choice and now the company is in trouble for it. As much as I dislike Oracle for all this, a part of me hopes they win, just to get rid of Java. Why on earth burden a full unix OS with just one language and a slow one at that.

Maybe if Oracle wins, MeeGo gets a new look. Now that is a nice development platform. Code in anything you bloody well want. A man's phone. I user perl on my phone, just because I can! (typing it on a virtual keyboard is seriously masochistic)

he doesn't know

[Anonymous Coward]

his ass from a hole in the ground... so this news isn't really news.

Google's lawyer opens by affirming copying of code

[RCourtney]

FTA In Google's Opening Statements:

The source code inside Android is different from Java because Google wrote it from scratch. Mr. Jacobs said yesterday that there was copying, but that there was not a lot of it. 9 lines out of 15,000,000. These lines came from a developer that Google hired from Sun late in the development of Android, and it should not have happened.

Didn't Google's lawyer just affirm that an employee of Google did use a small amount of Sun's code and Google knew it was wrong and that it shouldn't have happened?

One funny gem in the groklaw report...

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems the judge has a sense of humour, at one point he apparently advised the jurors thusly:

"He told the remaining candidates to avoid seeking information about the case from sources outside
the courtroom. They should not, he added, look it up on Google."

lol

Re:One funny gem in the groklaw report...

[Isaac Remuant]

overall, it was quite interesting. It reminds me of Scott Turow's novels.

Re:Because non-java iOS suffers from a lack of dev

[Kotoku]

People learned for Apple, for a piece of that giant market. Many people learned Java for the same reason.

If you look at what you have to program in to make an iOS app (Objective C), I am pretty happy with Google's choice.

If you can say this with a straight face...

[tlambert]

languages are far from information alone with a minimum of original creativity

You've clearly never had to program anything major in Java. Even Gosling got the heck out while the getting was good.

-- Terry

Java's downfall

[Anonymous Coward]

will come from this patent trolling.

I don't trust Google any more

[peppepz]

After reading Oracle's slides, with Google's emails about them trying to hide the fact that they were circumventing the need to obtain a Java ME license ("scrub some Js", "do not demonstrate to Sun lawyers"), and the talk about the GPL "infecting" software, I think that "do no evil" turned from a motto into a joke. They behave as bad as Microsoft, plus they collect a plethora of personal information about every single individual on the net. They're starting to look like a prototype of evil.

Re:I don't trust Google any more

[ledow]

As the articles on Groklaw themselves comment:

Google couldn't use the name Java. So "scrub the J-word" is hardly damning evidence of wanton infringement. In fact, it's their only legal option. Sun basically said that anyone could use the code so long as they DIDN'T call it Java. It's like the IceWeasel / Firefox thing. They have no choice. So not illegal, and not really immoral.

Of course they were circumventing the need to have a Java ME license. That's not the issue, and not illegal. The question is, did they circumvent it properly, or did they get caught on the snags of not doing a proper job of it (i.e. can ANYONE make something Java-like or even use Java code without stepping on things that are IMPOSSIBLE to work around?). This is within the realm of reverse-engineering and IP-skirting. You don't want to pay for their patents, so you work to AVOID them instead. Again, hardly illegal or even immoral.

The GPL thing? They didn't want to use GPL code. Simple as that. Nor do quite a few huge companies. That's their choice. And rather than that just plain infringe GPL code or get the GPL taken down in a court. Again - they didn't want to do something, their only legal avenue was to find an alternative and work around the problem. They can licence their own code under whatever license they want and they can start from ANY licence or licenced code that they choose as a basis to start from. Not illegal, not immoral.

Now, if it were Microsoft? I think they'd avoid the GPL like a plague too. Google didn't make up their own "open" licence though, that's basically useless for anyone trying to contribute, which Microsoft have in the past. And MS have DEFINITELY avoided using certain trademarked names (and tried to enforce trademarks on things like Windows in the past, etc.) and DEFINITELY worked around patents that others owned rather than licence them (their Office suite comes to mind).

The question really is, where's your bias come from?

Re:I don't trust Google any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Boo hoo

Re:I don't trust Google any more

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no GPL version of a decent Java available when Google started this.

Re:I don't trust Google any more

[peppepz]

Sun basically said that anyone could use the code so long as they DIDN'T call it Java. It's like the IceWeasel / Firefox thing. They have no choice. So not illegal, and not really immoral.

You have to decide. Either they could not use the Java name, and in this case they are MASSIVELY infringing, as their code / documentation / web sites contain thousands of times the word "Java", including the Android frontpage, or they can use it, and your justification of Google's sneaky behaviour does not hold.

Of course they were circumventing the need to have a Java ME license. That's not the issue, and not illegal. The question is, did they circumvent it properly, or did they get caught on the snags of not doing a proper job of it (i.e. can ANYONE make something Java-like or even use Java code without stepping on things that are IMPOSSIBLE to work around?). This is within the realm of reverse-engineering and IP-skirting. You don't want to pay for their patents, so you work to AVOID them instead. Again, hardly illegal or even immoral.

The fact is, that they knew they needed a Java ME license (Java SE didn't have licensing problems, but it wasn't technically appetible for them). Java ME's licensing model is of course designed to be impossible to work around, as the company that created it had this crazy aspiration to make money out of it. And Google decided NOT to pay for the license. "Immoral" does not belong to my vocabulary; a judge will decide if this is illegal.

The GPL thing? They didn't want to use GPL code. Simple as that. Nor do quite a few huge companies. That's their choice. And rather than that just plain infringe GPL code or get the GPL taken down in a court. Again - they didn't want to do something, their only legal avenue was to find an alternative and work around the problem. They can licence their own code under whatever license they want and they can start from ANY licence or licenced code that they choose as a basis to start from. Not illegal, not immoral.

My point never was that Google had to use GPL code or that not using GPL code is illegal, you're creating a magistral straw man argument. The point is that Google, a company that builds for itself an exterior image of an open source supporter, who has made billions by leveraging GPL-licensed code, calls the obligation to release a product's source code "an infection". Just like Microsoft. This is not illegal, by all means, it's just disappointing, hypocritical, or, in Google-speak, "evil".

Now, if it were Microsoft? I think they'd avoid the GPL like a plague too. Google didn't make up their own "open" licence though, that's basically useless for anyone trying to contribute, which Microsoft have in the past. And MS have DEFINITELY avoided using certain trademarked names (and tried to enforce trademarks on things like Windows in the past, etc.) and DEFINITELY worked around patents that others owned rather than licence them (their Office suite comes to mind).

(In your comparison, you forgot getting fined for impeding investigations and for privacy violation.) Are you trying to convince me that Google have become as "evil" as Microsoft? That was the main point of my post, actually.

The question really is, where's your bias come from?

I get called "a shill", "a sockpuppet", "a astroturfer" after almost any post I write on Slashdot. I got accused of being paid, among others, by Apple, Nokia, Sony... and Google. I take it with pride as I think it means that I'm doing something minimally useful to prevent Slashdot from becoming an useless echo chamber. Most people understand what kind of communities accuse the dissenters of being "the enemy".

Re:I don't trust Google any more

[phorm]

I suppose a really (really really really) fine line here may be between using "Java" and using the "Java Language" (or Java syntax, whatever).

I could see that being a big part of what may get Google in the end. One little word... ouch.

Re:I don't trust Google any more

[multi io]

Sun basically said that anyone could use the code so long as they DIDN'T call it Java. It's like the IceWeasel / Firefox thing. They have no choice. So not illegal, and not really immoral.

You have to decide. Either they could not use the Java name, and in this case they are MASSIVELY infringing, as their code / documentation / web sites contain thousands of times the word "Java", including the Android frontpage, or they can use it, and your justification of Google's sneaky behaviour does not hold.

Of course they can use the damn word if they refer to the language that you can write Android programs in. They just can't call their runtime in which they run the compiled programs "Java" or a "JVM". And they don't -- they call it "Dalvik". And they've written it themselves. And that's perfectly legal. Of course you don't have to pay license fees anytime you you the word "Java" in any technical sense. If you want, you can write a Java Framework for controlling a spacecraft or a coffee machine, brag "you can write programs for it in JAVA" in the documentation, sell it for thousands of dollars and not pay Oracle anything.

The fact is, that they knew they needed a Java ME license

What? They didn't need one at all unless they wanted to provide a Java ME implementation, which would be a completely different thing. Do you even know what Java ME is? It's a spec defining a subset of J2ME plus lots of additional APIs, profiles and so on. Android doesn't contain any of that.

Java ME's licensing model is of course designed to be impossible to work around, as the company that created it had this crazy aspiration to make money out of it.

What kind of warped statement is that? This is like saying the copyright on "Titanic" is impossible to work around because James Cameron wanted to make money. Knock it off, man.

Re:I don't trust Google any more

[peppepz]

Of course they can use the damn word if they refer to the language that you can write Android programs in. They just can't call their runtime in which they run the compiled programs "Java" or a "JVM". And they don't -- they call it "Dalvik". And they've written it themselves. And that's perfectly legal.

Oracle claims that you can't call "Java" a program that won't run on a "Java" platform. And to call a platform "Java", you either have to implement the full Java SE or pay Oracle for implementing Java ME. This is explicitly written in Java's license, and this is why two huge companies are spending millions in court, but you dismiss it with "of course they can". I wouldn't be so sure.

To avoid the problem, Google could have called their programming language "Dalvik", have the source code stored on files witht the ".dalvik" suffix, rename all Java APIs to "dalvik", and so on. But they didn't, because they wanted to leverage the existing Java ecosystem and developers. In doing this, they fragmented the Java language, as Microsoft had done in the 90s, so Oracle feel that they're being damaged. A judge will decide if they are.

Of course you don't have to pay license fees anytime you you the word "Java" in any technical sense. If you want, you can write a Java Framework for controlling a spacecraft or a coffee machine, brag "you can write programs for it in JAVA" in the documentation, sell it for thousands of dollars and not pay Oracle anything.

Of course - if the programs run on a Java VM. Otherwise, the company writing the VM that is running the said programs would be infringing Oracle's terms of use for Java.

The fact is, that they knew they needed a Java ME license

What? They didn't need one at all unless they wanted to provide a Java ME implementation, which would be a completely different thing. Do you even know what Java ME is? It's a spec defining a subset of J2ME plus lots of additional APIs, profiles and so on. Android doesn't contain any of that.

1) The email was written in the early days of Android. At the time, everyone hosting Java on a cell phone was licensing Java ME (Blackberry, Nokia, all feature phone makers...).
2) Android doesn't contain any of that - exactly because they created an incompatible fork of Java, to avoid paying money to Oracle, which is explicitly what was forbidden in Java's licensing terms.
3) I do know what Java ME is; unlike what you say, it' not a subset of J2ME, it's the new name for it.

What kind of warped statement is that? This is like saying the copyright on "Titanic" is impossible to work around because James Cameron wanted to make money. Knock it off, man.

What's warped with that? I'm all for pruning copyright laws, but while they're there, people have to abide them, or at least not act surprised when they get dragged into court.

Larry Ellison and Tim Geithner walk into a bar...

[srussia]

They order two martinis. The guy behind the bar pours them two Budweisers.

"This martini is great," rave Larry and Timmy, "what's your secret?"

"I dunno, the bartender went out to get some cigarettes, I'm just the owner."

Re:Because non-java iOS suffers from a lack of dev

[Anonymous Coward]

I user perl on my phone

In Soviet Nokia perl user YOU!

Google blundered...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea why Google did not buy Java from Sun or the whole Sun itself!!!
WTF were they thinking!!!

Google anti-open source.

[sproketboy]

A Google engineer, Tim Lindholm, said in a February 2006 e- mail that the company was in negotiations for a Java license. Google didn’t agree to the terms of a type of license that allows companies to use Java code and write new code on top of it which “you have to give back to the open-source community,” Jacobs said.

“You can’t keep it for yourself,” the Oracle lawyer said. “They broke the basic rules of the Java programming community.”

So I don't get why the open source crowd is all pro Google on this.

Re:Google anti-open source.

[phantomfive]

Because there is never a reason to not be anti-Oracle.

Re:Google anti-open source.

[marcosdumay]

Maybe because Google didn't do anything wrong...

But more likely because it is Oracle that is suing them.

Re:Google anti-open source.

[zuperduperman]

Google released everything they created as open source, so they can hardly be anti open source. They released it under a far more liberal license than Oracle did as well. Oracle can freely copy anything they want back from Google's implementation into OpenJDK - but not the other way around.

Re:Google anti-open source.

[motokochan]

That e-mail was written in 2010, after Oracle started the whole litigation deal. The explanation is that the enginer had looked over things and just taking a license, if it had to be done, was going to be less painful than essentially rewriting the whole platform.

Re:Google anti-open source.

[ThatsMyNick]

Because the open-source community believes in being just. Google did negotiate for a Java license, they did not like the terms and dropped the plans of licensing Java all together and went to implement something they call Dalvik (which is Open Source). It is unfair, that Google has to fork out money for Dalvik, especially to Oracle.

Re:Because non-java iOS suffers from a lack of dev

[Calos]

If google had been smarter they would have made Java an option, not mandatory.

To be fair, there is the NDK, which allows C/C++, and I've heard rumbling about Mono-esque C# implementations.

Never having used them, though, I couldn't say how complete they are. I imagine there is some Java glue involved for UI, etc.

c# is looking better and better

[mschaffer]

Kudos to Microsoft!

Re:c# is looking better and better

[fartrader]

Kudos to Microsoft!

Never mind that in its initial versions it was a horrible rip-off of Java.

Re:c# is looking better and better

[neminem]

If something takes obvious inspiration from a previous, similar thing, but then does it better in every way, I wouldn't really call it a "ripoff".

Granted, I've never seen C# v1, so I can't really comment on that, but some of our projects here are stuck on C# v2, and while I do miss some of the nifty features of v3.5 and v4, I'd still much rather be writing code in C# v2 than in Java. Microsoft may have made some pretty terrible products in their time, but C# is actually one of the prettiest languages I've worked in. While Java is... not.

Google agreed to that long ago.

[robbak]

Google has never denied that that code was there. It was testing code, not code that shipped as part of Android. Once they found out, when Oracle told them it was there, they removed it. That's how the system is supposed to work, apart from the lawsuit and judges part.
They have agreed to it, and have included it in the 'facts already agreed' lists for this case. Get it out of the way quickly, give it all the importance it deserves. PAP,HTSH.

Re:When you don't gratuate high school taxes all s

[Anonymous Coward]

It taxes income therefore it is an income tax, you people should start reading those children logic books again.

Larry should have known better

[luis_a_espinal]

"Among the highlights emanating from U.S. District Court in San Francisco courtroom 8 today was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's response to a question regarding the status of the Java programming language, which his company acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010. Asked by Google's lead attorney, Robert Van Nest, if the Java language is free, Ellison was slow to respond. Judge William Alsup pushed Ellison to answer with a yes or no. As ZDNet reporter Rachel King observed in the courtroom, Ellison resisted and huffed, 'I don't know.'"

I find it incredible that Larry Ellison wasn't prepared for a question like that. It is one of the crucial questions around Java 0 in some ways (.ie. usage) it is free, in other ways (.ie. language spec, the trademarked name) it is not. For all the love or hate towards this person, Ellison is a very sharp individual, so it is really baffling that he wasn't prepared for this question at all.

Time will tell if this was a fatal blunder or not.

Re:Larry should have known better

[luis_a_espinal]

Time will tell if this was a fatal blunder or not.

Responding to myself, on second thought, this might be a very Machiavelian answer. Can't wait to see how the whole enchilada unravels.

Re:Larry should have known better

[idontgno]

Wow. The Mystique of Larry is strong with this one.

Larry Ellison is rich, egotistical, and entirely fallible. He still puts his pants on one leg at a time, and apparently he sometimes also catches his junk in his zipper.

This is not a gambit. Ellison is not a chessmaster. He got caught off-guard and failed to advance his case. It's probably not fatal either, just slightly discrediting. and the legal team is paid lots of money to be able to counter that kind of stuff.

Ideas are not copyrightable, implementations are

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing patents with copyrights. Only ideas can be patented (not specific implementations), and only specific implementations can be copyrighted (not ideas).

The idea of Git cannot be copyrighted because it's an idea. In contrast, implementations of Git can indeed be copyrighted. What's more, any given implementation of Git will have its own copyright, and those multiple copyrights held by various Git implementations can be all different to each other.

Note that there is an important exclusion in respect of Git APIs: they cannot be copyrighted as that would prevent interoperability between differently licensed implementation of Git. This is the practical reason why APIs have been excluded from copyright protection for some 5-6 decades, and it applies to Java as much as to everything else.

So that's why you are dramatically wrong. The fact that ideas can require much creativity is undeniable, but ideas cannot be copyrighted.

Oracle loses either way..

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they win, this would only reinforce that Java isn't really free and isn't really OSS -- in other words in the OSS world it will take on a new, and unpleasant smell, that opens the door for competing languages. Not to mention they seem to have spent some cash and good will on marketing to the OSS world.

Winning this case is in direct conflict with some of their core business strategies, specifically getting the OSS community behind them.

Re:Google's lawyer opens by affirming copying of c

[mark-t]

9 lines out of 15 million is well below any reasonable threshold of incidental copying that might occur simply because one only intended to copy a general idea and not the literal code.

Ideas cannot be copyrighted.

Re:Good answer, as I recall

[OldHawk777]

"I promise to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth" "as best I recollect" "as best I can" "to the best of my ability"

For humans, "Reality is self-induced hallucination." "Give me the uncorrupted and unbiased forensic facts, mam."

Believable humans never tell the truth, but typical politicians and clergy always lie.

So, what is justice to do, hopefully remain blind.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

why would someone use such a tool?

[Bigsquid.1776]

Yet another reason why java sucks. Would you use a bandsaw if you could only use certain speed, blades and positions after paying the manufacturer extra? Oh... and we aren't exactly certain what speeds, blades and positions require fees. You won't know until after you've made and sold a product cut by the bandsaw. Just say no to Java...

Free

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

"Free" is such a vague term subject to loose interpretation. However, I would say that anything that is under a license is not free because it does have restrictions, including some monetary ones.

Replying to undo incorrect moderation

[Some Bitch]

Replying to undo incorrect moderation

Sun v. Microsoft is Irrelevant

[Tenebrousedge]

Oracle would like to enforce a copyright claim on a programming language. Sun v. Microsoft was a trademark dispute.

Oracle is not claiming that Google has used the Java trademarks. This phase of the trial will only examine whether Google has violated Oracle's copyrights, and there will be no examination of trademarks in any phase.

Neither party seems to want to directly examine the question of whether programming languages or APIs can be copyrighted, which I find confusing. Oracle's stance on this issue is obvious, but Google's arguments are a little more interesting:

Google expects the following 3 findings to be reached:

        1) there was no copyright infringement; the language is free and the APIs are necessary to use it.
        2) Sun approved its use.
        3) Android is a fair use of the Java APIs.

I take from this that Google is arguing that programming languages may be copyrighted, but that Java was released under an open source license which Google is complying with. Point #2 seems very difficult to dispute; even Mr. One Rich Asshole has been very complimentary of Google's efforts with Java/Android.

With regard to the linux kernel, which has zero to do with this lawsuit, Google has operated with respect to the law and the GPL; they have released the source for every binary they've distributed, and they are actively trying to merge their code with the upstream project. RMS is an idealist, and many F/OSS advocates support him in principle; you could call him the conscience of computing. However, it is recognized by all but the fanatically religious that pure ideologies function only in an ideal world, which we are not fortunate enough to live in.

Today, we recognize that Oracle is a threat to free computing. Tomorrow we may take up the issue of free data with Google -- I sincerely doubt that meaningful digital privacy is possible, in practice if not in theory.

Re:Sun v. Microsoft is Irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

...and they are actively trying to merge their code with the upstream project

My impression is that it's the other way around. The Google model of open source is "throw it over the wall". Not good.

Patents

[DragonWriter]

Most of the patents in this case have been invalidated by the copyright office after google requested a re-examination of the patents.

In fact, none of the patents were invalidated by the Copyright Office (which, as the name suggests, is concerned with copyrights rather than patents.)

Several were, however, invalidated by the Patent and Trademark Office.

Re:To my fellow engineers thinking of using Java.

[sproketboy]

You're not an engineer, you're a code monkey. Big difference.

Re: Java Trap!?

[TaoPhoenix]

I'll ask you as one of a few old(ish) regulars saying that the Oracle slideshow is bad.

Why exactly is Java itself a "trap"? I thought it was just a language like any other language. And I thought Sun was a nice company that tried to give some things back to the community. So was Sun really concocting a lethal secret trap or did Oracle just notice a devastating re-application of the I.P. when used in evil hands?

"Blah blah blah infringe blah blah steal" etc, daily fare, but Trap?! I'm at least two steps above Newbie and I've never seen that theory.

Re:down the road

[TaoPhoenix]

Trying for both a +1 Funny and +1 Underrated, here goes!

I just realized that Corporations are "People" that can buy other "People".

So does Oracle Beat its concubine wife Sun?

Topic Change Alert:

This is in some ways some of the most exciting times for law, (even if some of it is abused horribly), simply because you just didn't cases like some of the modern ones Back In The Day when Law Was Law.

Beautiful Quote: Judge Alsup: "...no Googling the case, although I probably shouldn't use that term here."

Elliptical Translation: "No using the service by the Defendant to gain unprecendented access to information to the case about the Defendant."

Re: "doesn't know"

[TaoPhoenix]

Nah, this is a world class lawsuit, it's one of those lawyer tricks, try to get a sneak shot in so fast the other side doesn't realize they torpedoed their case on day 1.

"'Don't Know" means that of course Oracle wants every last dollar, but in Legal Speak saying "yes it is a valuable/priceless property" leads to strange backfires 7 weeks of presentations later.

Re:was how they coached him to handle it

[TaoPhoenix]

Right, can we please assume that at this level they stop being stupid?

I posted this opinion above too, it felt like a "sneak shot slam" question, "torpedo your case on day 1" because of course we know that Oracle has been the aggressor but a facile answer on day 1 like "Of course this is valuable property" leads to strange disasters 7 weeks later and 19 threads of interlocked Legal Logic.

Re:"devil's advocate" argument

[TaoPhoenix]

Nice try, full credit, but to play ... uh ... something-advocate to you, let's try a counter theory.

We've seen a real shift in law towards Corporatism/AggressionWins/ whatever.

So arguments that should be thrown out under "Old School" law theory are suddenly (last 7 years ish?) winning actual big ticket cases. So Oracle bought Sun with the sole purpose of the lawsuit. They went for the aggressive approach, because if it landed they would have secured a gorgeous payday and smaller paydays for a decade. *There is no penalty yet for over-reaching*. So why not go for a "X Billion Dollar" lawsuit if there's no downside at all? "Oh well, that didn't work. Next Time Gadget, Next Time!"

So then for once we got a smart judge who wasn't in East Texas (I think! - Too lazy, sorry!), so this case might actually be tried under "legit law". So then the correct thing happened, Oracle's crap patents got smashed. Oracle's got like 2-3 real doozy tricks left or they wouldn't still be in the case, but I'll say they didn't go for a 7th level 12 ply SuperTheory like yours - they swung for the easy home run and missed. On another judge it might have worked.

Re:prepped prior to testifying

[TaoPhoenix]

Yep, and I bet this was the prepped answer, "say nothing". As posted above, don't sinkhole your case on day 1 with a grand slam question.

Re: Java Trap!?

[phantomfive]

Here, I believe, is where Java was first called a trap.

Should of answered mu

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mu" means "your question has invalid assumptions and cannot therefore be answered yes or no. Like, "what kind of bad chocolate do you like?"