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Google Developer Testifies That Java Memo Was Misinterpreted
benfrog writes with a piece that appeared in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about the in-progress legal battle between Oracle and Google over Java: "Ex-Sun and current Google employee Tim Lindholm testified that it was "not what he meant" when asked about the smoking gun email (included here (PDF)) that essentially said that Google needed to get a license for Java because all the alternatives 'suck[ed].' He went on in 'brief but tense testimony' to claim that his day-to-day involvement with Android was limited."
Pants on fire.
But we're on Google's side so we'll let it go.
Maybe he meant lie sense. That's the ability to detect when your lie is making you sound retarded.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Where he said he didn't mean a Sun license. Just a license.
Yeah, I don't understand why Oracle's attorneys ask such stupid questions. I mean obviously there are multiple Java implementations other than Sun's which they could have licensed if they didn't want to go the route of creating an alternative internally.
If he didn't mean they should negotiate a Java license with Sun, why did he say:
How you could possibly interpret that statement as meaning anything other than "we need to negotiate a license" is beyond me. I may not like Oracle's aggressiveness in pursuing the issue, but I can't read this email as being anything other than an acknowledgement that Google needs a license.
Now don't get me wrong. Google could have later used the GPL version of Java safely, but they didn't have that option back then. Plus there's the question of whether you're allowed to use pieces of a GPL piece of software, such as the Dalvik compiler and core runtime with a Dalvik-compiled copy of the Java code for it's libraries and packages.
I would contend that they're well within the GPL, provided that the Dalvik code was also released under the GPL. However, if the Dalvik core isn't under GPL, then they've got the issue of mixing GPL and non-GPL code to muddy the waters, and maybe that's the angle Oracle is playing.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Reading the email linked by the FP, I would call his claim fairly plausible - I wouldn't take him to have meant "gee, we've infringed the hell out of it, we need to get legal ASAP", but rather "Can you please just buy the best option for us so we can move on and stop the games?"
Honestly, something like that exact discussion comes up on a monthly basis where I work, and some shyster could probably find examples of me saying substantially the same thing in my emails. And I don't give two shakes of a rat's ass about whether or not my employer wants to stay legal on the licensing side - If they don't mind me using a copy of Windows registered to Razor1911, no skin off my back (and hell, good ammo for me if things get ugly).
Of course you have never written a message like that, he used proper grammar in his emails. 8)
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Keep your hat on ... what are you going to be, the thought police ?
... Gee that phone looks identical to an iPhone.
... fire your arse and send the kid to finishing school ?
Its an email, people think and put it to words. You even made the statement. He is not a lawer.
Don't be so scared of lawyers, they will be fertilizer too one day
So what if your kid comes to work and says in a recording
What do we do
p29 of the exhibit
If I am working for the human resource department of Google, I will fire that Mr. Lindholm long ago
Where the hell have you been working that HR get to choose who to fire? That's really not how it works.
Under that last point, they would definitely need a license from Sun, as "Java" was a registered trademark from Sun. MS and Sun had already been through that battle. If you want to call it Java, you needed permission from Sun. That's very different from claiming you need a license to make a Java compatible language. No smoking gun here.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
From the article:
"This week Larry Page could not recall who Lindholm was"
Hey Larry, let me google that for you:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tim+lindholm
That "copied" code is a joke.
If you have the function prototype per the java doc and you test the limit cases to see what exceptions are thrown, how else can you implement that array range check in a non-trivial way?
That's just lawyer bullshit.
No matter what he meant, it shouldn't matter. Oracle is trying to use the e-mail to prove "Google knew ahead of time they were in the wrong!" when in fact this e-mail was written AFTER Oracle bought Sun and was murmuring about lawsuits. It's also an unsent draft of an e-mail written by a Google employee who wasn't working on Android! Wow!
I guess if I want to screw over my company in the future, I know how to do it now... Incriminating e-mail drafts!
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
You know, go down to the DMV and get a driver's license so android could drive one of those google cars. In the country Java (note the capitalization), not for the JAVA SDK.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I read it as: Whatever kind of license we need to run Android, we should get one. As somebody who was not, himself, actually involved in any kind of licensing negotiations, laws, etc., he didn't have the least flipping clue WHAT that might entail.
Imagine my boss seeing emacs for the first time and saying "Holy $hit! this emacs is awesome! SirWired, go buy whatever we need to run it." That isn't any kind of admission that running emacs requires paying somebody; just a statement that he wants it.
Google's position is that no license from Sun was in fact needed, and that Eric Lindstrom was not the person that had anything to do with that determination
So you wouldn't call one of the authors of the original Java Virtual Machine spec a person who you would hire? Look at the top of this document:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se7/html/index.html
NOTHING is free. Everything takes time and money to create. Now, for various reasons, people give software away...but this is a massive corporation producing software worth billions of dollars, and a key part of it depends on software that was developed at a cost of millions of dollars.
So a reasonable few million bucks to Oracle for their trouble seems fair.
Ya, at least he knows how to write.
Your being an idiot aside, this was an unsent DRAFT email. Your reasons for hiring/firing are just stupid, as you clearly have no idea what is being discussed here nor what was being discussed in the email.
You know, people in businesses sometimes discuss BUSINESS in their communications. Go figure, huh? You, the expert, have never communicated any business information via any form ever. So you are a GREAT employee. Heh.
For your information, this man was more than qualified for the job, seeing as he is an expert on Java from the fucking creators of it. Yet you would fire him for stating a business reason to perform a routine licensing, which they later decided they didn't need to do by going with another implementation.
At its obvious you aren't in any position to actually act out these bizarre fantasies of yours. Thanks for being the idiot you are, so nobody actually has to worry about what YOU think.
Not long into reading your self-important rant, the abundance of spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors brought me to the conclusion that you are not one to hire.
I don't think I understand the subtle difference in what I said and what you said... So let me try to be clear by pretending to know what I'm talking about for a second: Oracle is trying to use the e-mail to show evidence of WILLFUL INFRINGEMENT.
And it could be evidence of that, except: 1) it was written after Oracle started threatening, 2) it was written AFTER Sun's CEO publicly congratulated Google on releasing Android and promised Sun would support the Android platform 3) it was written by someone in Google not working on Android 4) it was saved as a draft but not sent.
Are you trying to say Oracle is less evil than Google? Are you at all familiar with Oracle?
Honestly even if Google is in the wrong here (which I strongly disagree with), I think it's vitally important Oracle lose this case, as the legal theory they are trying to push (that public APIs are subject to copyright and licensing) is absolute INSANITY and would be the death knell to a large percentage of the software industry.
Though it would make developing on proprietary systems significantly more painful than Free/Open systems like Linux, so that would make some people around here very happy...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
If there is any lesson to be learnt from this trial it gonna be this - Hire the right person [...snip...] I mean, what qualification that Mr. Lindholm has on legal stuffs ?
Google did not hire Mr. Lindholm to work as a lawyer. Would you also expect your janitors to know how to code? Your delivery drivers to reconcile AP? Your controller to weld deck plates?
How can an ex-Sun employee, currently employed by Google, write an email saying things like "Google need a license for Java" ?
Because non-lawyers can still put two and two together to come up with four. Because the average employee frequently needs to make recommendations within their own domain of knowledge that have implications outside that domain. Because IT people in particular don't generally give a shit about what HR thinks, and HR would already fire us in a heartbeat if the company could live without us.
Or more accurately - Because someone asked.
Oracle is trying to use the e-mail to prove
There are literally shittons of emails talking about Google needing a license, trying to get a license, not doing clean-room because they were confident they would get a license, etc. To show it wasn't clean-room Oracle doesn't even have to show anything was copied, Google up and said it. 'Should we do this clean-room?' 'No, it'll be fine'.
Google now needs to prove to a jury not just that they didn't actually need a license, but also that all their top execs and engineers were wrong. If say in a police interrogation you admit to doing the crime a jury will still convict you even if there is absolute proof that you didn't do it. Human nature says if you admitted to it then you did it, so Google has a huge uphill battle to climb here with these emails. At this point they may be already planning the appeal, where the actual law matters.
Of course taken literally, Google needed to get 'a', one, single, not plural, just one licence, for the whole of Google and all of it's customers. So smoking gun all right, clearly a euphemism, no claim that google needed to get hundreds millions of licences to distribute it to all of it's customers.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The NBA hall of famer and TV basketball analyst once responded to criticism by explaining he had been misquoted in his own autobiography
Except there are emails from 2005 saying the same thing. Even for this very same engineer. Sorry, but that excuse fails.
Actually I would say it should be looked upon as a more fundamental question which is this: Should email be treated as a letter, or as a text message?
The problem with treating emails like a letter is simply people don't think about emails like they do about a letter, probably because it is so trivial to send. With a letter one has to take the time and consolidate their thoughts, write them down, fold it up, put in the envelope etc, whereas with emails they are treated with no more thought most of the time than a LOLCat.
I just have to wonder how many times companies will be bitchslapped by emails like this before they either simply don't allow emails or have them disposed of quickly. because unless you can somehow get your employees to treat emails with the gravitas of a formal letter they will just keep biting you right in the ass.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Google did not hire Mr. Lindholm to work as a lawyer. Would you also expect your janitors to know how to code? Your delivery drivers to reconcile AP? Your controller to weld deck plates?
No. But you would expect employees (well, maybe except for janitors) to understand the implications in the current legal climate, and refrain from putting things so bluntly as "we're clearly violating these patents and must get a license", even in internal email - unless they are explicitly asked to express their legal opinion. At least, that sort of thing has been part of on-boarding training in pretty much every place I've worked in the last eight years.
Was it? I don't see the word "patent" in the email.
No. But you would expect employees (well, maybe except for janitors) to understand the implications in the current legal climate, and refrain from putting things so bluntly as "we're clearly violating these patents and must get a license", even in internal email - unless they are explicitly asked to express their legal opinion. At least, that sort of thing has been part of on-boarding training in pretty much every place I've worked in the last eight years.
I'm all the time sending an email to my boss telling him that we need a license for such-and-such piece of software. It's just expected of most programmers in any sane company to recommend to their boss software tools or libraries that could make things easier or better.
It's the sort of email I would write, what's wrong with it? Maybe it's not accurate but you can't call him a liar for that, he was mistaken on the subtleties of licensing morass. But as someone who is not a lawyer, who is not speaking for the company, is not high up in the management chain, and who is only sending internal email about what he thinks should be done, it should not matter. Are we no longer allowed to send email to coworkers without having legal check it out first?
I know people today tend to get mail now and then at certain times saying "don't discuss X in email because it could be subpoenaed." but generally that's stuff about current ongoing litigation or sensitive issues, but this doesn't seem like something that should have risen to that level.
Except that the license is for the patents which is what Sun held.
So if the patents are invalid or do not apply to Google's implementation, then no license is needed?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I'm all the time sending an email to my boss telling him that we need a license for such-and-such piece of software. It's just expected of most programmers in any sane company to recommend to their boss software tools or libraries that could make things easier or better.
That is not a legal issue, it's a procurement request.
It would be a legal issue if you were already using the software in question (though in that case it would be unethical to not raise it, though it's still a good idea to do it with legal first). Something more closely resembling the situation at hand is if you had been using some software with a very complicated licensing scheme, and you came to believe that the license your company has does not actually allow you to use it in some of the ways you do - but said license violation is not intentional. For those kinds of things, you bring up with the lawyers, and you explicitly invoke the attorney-client privilege if possible (your training should cover this, as well).
If it said "this is not clean room", Oracle would flourish those excerpts, not ambiguous out of context snippets about getting licenses which in context could be taken as "because that way's easier than doing it on our own"
Nah, this all went to hell in the lawyer zone.
Many quality employees send recommendations to management all the time. It's up to Legal to *REPLY* and say "nice suggestion, we don't need to".
In Verbal Culture companies you get hosed because you are *missing* documentation because no one tells the right people stuff.
Then when $%#$ hits Fans you get questions like "he declined our contract and we never made a new one? WTF?"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
the only thing that I can come up with is just like MSFT tried to do in the 90s they tried to take advantage of all the experience that developers have with Java without bothering to actually get the rights to do so
It's nothing like that, please do not insult our intellgence. Microsoft's purpose was to pollute the Java brand by popularizing its incompatible version, calling it Java, whereas it was possible and even the default that Java programs developed with Microsoft's version would not operate correctly with Sun's version. As you know.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Haven't seen those e-mails... Got a link?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
"... email (included here (PDF)) ..."
The guy uses the word "Memorialize" rather than "document" in its verb form. I would fire him just for that :o)
That is excavate what this is about. ;-)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is true for each and every person that works in a company, including the HR people. If a company keeps people who do nothing for the company, they are doing it wrong.
Does this happen sometimes? Sure and I am sure you have people on a list that you would think do nothing for the company. But then that is YOUR list and not the companies list.
Just as a side-note: HR has extremely seldom to do anything with who gets fired.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I'm like you, however I notice many fellow engineers feel free to make legal statements in email all the time, even when lawyers tell them to shut up, they persist, even get mad someone's telling them to shut up. I can only conclude such people are autistic. Yes they may make great engineers. They just need to be babysat.
Because Java might not be the best tool for the job? I know some Java developers find this a shocking idea, but it's really true: sometimes another language and environment is a better solution.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No. But you would expect employees (well, maybe except for janitors) to understand the implications in the current legal climate, and refrain from putting things so bluntly as "we're clearly violating these patents and must get a license", even in internal email - unless they are explicitly asked to express their legal opinion. At least, that sort of thing has been part of on-boarding training in pretty much every place I've worked in the last eight years.
Except that's not what he says. Patents are not, at any point, mentioned in the memo. The memo expresses a desire to use the Java trademark in marketing Android. It is well-known that Sun required licensing of the Java Technology Compatibility Kit and a successful pass of its tests before it would allow you to use the Java trademark in this way, so the license stated as required (a license for the TCK software, not a patent license) would most definitely have been required IF google had proceeded with the plan as it was described in that memo. They did not proceed with this plan, however, instead deciding to distance themselves from Java, make their virtual machine incompatible with the Java virtual machine (although providing tools supporting automated translation between the two formats), and not use the Java trademark in any of their marketing material. So it is unclear what relevance a (correct) statement about the licensing terms on the Java trademark has on a court case about a system that does not use that trademark. This so-called "smoking gun" is just misdirection on Oracle's part.
Unlike Microsoft, Google doesn't claim that their platform is compatible with the JVM. Just as C can be compiled for x86 or ARM, Java can now be compiled for JVM and Dalvik and nobody claims they are bytecode-compatible.
(+1, Disagree)
The discussion we're talking about was about procurement, too, albeit on a larger scale -- the android dev team were deciding they needed to procure Java, because the alternatives they considered (primarily objective C) "sucked" in their opinion. So they were suggesting buying a license for Sun's Java TCK, a prerequisite for producing an officially sanctioned version of Java at the time.
Actually, the license discussed in the email is for TCK, which is a tool for testing and certifying that Java implementations correctly implement the Java standard.
Are you talking about places like Russia & Zimbabwe, or did you just get your JD from DeVry?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If say in a police interrogation you admit to doing the crime a jury will still convict you even if there is absolute proof that you didn't do it.
Of course they won't, assuming your defence is half competent. The law isn't about who said what, it is about the facts of the case. If Google don't need a license then even if they thought they did it doesn't matter, the simple fact is that one is not required and they owe Oracle nothing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If it isn't going to happen, please let Android die so it can be replaced by something cleaner.
If Android dies at this point, it gets replaced by iOS (walled garden) or Windows Mobile (MSIL, which isn't exactly a lot better than Java). I don't consider either of those a good outcome.
Read the context. Licensing Java would have given them advantages... they would have been able to use the Java virtual machine's native instruction format (meaning applications didn't need to go through a translation phase to run), they would have been able to include J2ME support (thus run preexisting applications and games) and would have been able to use the Java trademark in their advertising (familiar to mobile phone buyers, so would have boosted early sales). Java licensing was desirable, and they evaluated alternatives to Java in order to scare Sun into thinking they actually would switch.
If say in a police interrogation you admit to doing the crime a jury will still convict you even if there is absolute proof that you didn't do it. Human nature says if you admitted to it then you did it
The actual evidence, on the other hand, indicates that it is remarkably easy for the police to get people to confess to things they didn't do. Much of what we think of as "common sense" or "human nature" is complete BS.
Your being an idiot aside, this was an unsent DRAFT email.
It is not just a draft. Oracle ARE using the drafts as evidence, but the final email also included the licensing language. The reason Oracle had to use the drafts was because the original email was at one point argued to be privileged information. It was found not to be and the final email is considered evidence.
It's also an unsent draft of an e-mail written by a Google employee who wasn't working on Android!
Oracle are using the final sent email now, the reason they had to use drafts earlier was because Google tried to claim attorney-client privilege on the final email (because it was sent to a few lawyers). Also Lindholm has said that he worked on Android, just that he didn't work on it very much.
And now I can understand why Oracle's shorts are in a knot.
A key point of Java technology is the cross-platform nature of the JVM. Without the JVM, you lose the portability that was a primary goal, and which Sun fought Microsoft to protect. Microsoft, despite having licensed Java, was beaten down in court for their "variant" on Java.
Regardless of the legalities of the case, I now have to take Oracle's side on the issue. Google is breaking the Java "contract" with developers: portability. Java is not just the syntax and libraries; it's the whole ecosystem, including the concept of portable jars. So regardless of the finer points of law that have been brought up, I hope Oracle wins.
If Microsoft can be bitch-slapped, so can Google.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
You'll probably get furious then if you'd see this or this. Those bastards are even worse than Google - they compile our pretty and portable .jars to completely non-crossplatform machine code! How dare they.
Java programming language != Java platform. There's no "contract" that any jar will run on any platform using Java programming language - go try running Java EE application on a Java-enabled phone or Bluray's BD-J applet on your PC.
And yes, MS was bitchslapped because they claimed to implement standard, compatible Java SE implementation while introducing incompatiblities. Google claims to implement NOT any of Snoracle's Java platforms, but a new runtime using Java programming language.
You can now proceed to remove your foot from your mouth.
Oracle are arguing that they needed a license.
The point of the e-mail is to show that Google were aware they needed a license and so the infringement was willful which increases the penalties. If he was wrong then it doesn't really matter what he said since willful won't matter.
I think the issue fundamentally is this: Google wants to allow as many people to use the Android name as possible, but sticking to the Java spec for Android would have complicated matters with licensing (look no further than how GNU and Apache both have different names and considerations for their own Java/Java-like implementations). So, it made more sense to base the technology on Java yet make it legally different and not sign any contracts with Sun/Oracle to use the Java trademark. Meanwhile, MS went the other way, going out of their way to sign a contract to use the Java trademark and then intentionally made it Windows specific, knowing full well that it went against the idea of the Java ecosystem. To me, it seems clearly a different situation.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
There are no legally licensed mobile implementations of Java, never have been(at least according to Oracle).
You can implement Java however you like, wherever you like, but the license therefor requires that your implementation pass the TCK. The TCK is not open source, and is licensed for use only on desktops and servers, explicitly. This is stupid, but it's part of Sun's legacy of trying to actually make enough money to not get bought by Oracle, a plan they failed at.
Fire him? I'd fire at him.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
the case falls into a murky area where simple, clear sensible law should exist. When that happens, the lawyers are the biggest winners.
Remember that if you are one of those people who feel it is 100% certain that Google will win (or lose).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
For a while, my old high school promoted one of their janitors to system admin. I never worked with him, though, so I don't know how well he could code.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
You're making the mistake of trying to use external facts to determine what somebody meant. None of that actually matters unless it went into Lindholm's thought process when making the statement.
And it remains the case that the most obvious interpretation of the statement is probably the correct one: "I'm not a lawyer, but we can probably just throw money at someone and make it go away, right?"
Which, of course, is useless as evidence of anything. Discussions regarding the option of paying off a troll are by no means admissions that the troll has a valid claim, and even if they were, Lindholm isn't even a lawyer qualified to make that sort of a determination.
look, they went their own way simply to avoid the JSR-shittape-perpetual forever negotiations for adding methods no vendor then goes on implementing properly. everyone knew that going with such "official" java deal was going to be too much of a hellhole to bother with, certainly their engineers knew this, after all if it was a good route then java me would have evolved faster into what android essentially is, because that shitprocess is how SUN paid their "engineers"(sit-on-their-ass-negotiators) assigned to the thing, just getting things laid down just wasn't their thing(and before someone starts, no, they did not do a good thing on maintaining compatibility between vendors, in fact they did a pretty damn bad job at that). the fact that sun had it's fingers in several os's which they were unable to execute into devices just tells how well it would have gone if they had gone with them(savaje & etc).
it's not a money thing even, just red tape. now it's just a money thing though.
they knew they wanted to go with java like system, they didn't want to have their hands tied to a specific cpu(fat binaries are no good if you don't know the architechtures you want them for.. and you want your stuff to run in the future too) and they wanted some advantages from the vm.
(that the "java vm" which is on some random device x, does pre-compiling, or compiles the .classfiles to something else just on installation, was already a done thing before android too)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Google is breaking the Java "contract" with developers: portability.
I'd be much more (read: nonzero) sympathetic to that position if Google didn't explicitly state that their binaries run on Dalvik, and not the JVM:
But seeing as how cross-platform compatibility isn't a stated goal or feature of Java The Language on Android, that's all totally irrelevant to the situation at hand. Suppose someone implemented Python on a non-CPython VM. Your logic would imply that the Python Software Foundation should be able to sue them for breaking cross-platform .pyc compatibility. That's ludicrous.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
And now I can understand why Oracle's shorts are in a knot.
Sure you can, just like the rest of us. Larry's shorts are in a knot because he wants to do a particularly evil thing by fencing in what is supposed to belong the the commons, that is to say, the languages we use. And the rest of us (except for you perhaps) know it is a bad idea, don't want him to, and are taking steps to prevent it. As everybody knows, that is why Larry's shorts are in a knot.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You fail. The email is dated 2005. Way BEFORE Android was released, in fact, before it was even close to finalized.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
But there were no way Google could ever be compatible with java on the phone. Because they would either have to be compaitble with the entire java jdk 1.6 stack including awt/swing and would end up with something which would be really really slow, ugly, huge and not something you would ever want on a phone.
Or they could be compatible with Java Me, but then Android would really really suck, because Java Me is a really bad platform to base an entire system on It is missing far to many things and Java Me are not designde to be the base for a modern smartphone.
So to sum up:
Java the language is really good on smart phones, which is why google is using it in all but name.
Java the virtual machine(With its bytecode system and security model) is ok on mobile devices which is why google made Dalvik which is very close to the official java vm.
Java the library/framework/platform sucks for mobile devices and there is no way in hell Google could make something successfull while beeing 100% compability with anything available under the java name.
Which is why they wanted to license the language and vm, and then implement their own mobilephone platform using that(Which is what this memo most likely is about).
But sun fucked up. They should have said: Ok we accept that the current java libraries/frameworks are not usefull for a full mobile platform, so pay us some money for a license to java, and the java vm implementation, and then make a new platform. Let us call it "java me 7.0" and then that platform would have been what is now android.
It is the same problem Microsoft had with java. They originally wanted to make java the program language used for windows gui programming, but they correctly identified a range of problems with java which made it very cumbersome to develop gui applications in java. So they updated the language. And then sun should have said "Hey your are right, your changes to the language will make it much more usefull, lets include them in java 1.2. Insted they said no and launched a lawsuite which ended with Microsoft developing .net.
And as a guy who do gui development in java, I can only say that I wish Sun would have included most of Microsofts changes to the java language with jdk 1.2, because the current system of using interfaces to simulate callbacks really really suck. But at least they will fix it in java 1.8 so better late then newer.
Google claims to implement NOT any of Snoracle's Java platforms
How dare you misspell Whoracle's name.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
A million java programming, Inigo Montoya's, shouting, you kill my language and my living, prepare to die! With java programming being one of the top payed programming languages, this is quite serious. Ok i've got perl, and php and a bit of C/C++, but when it comes to language design, Java is still the best, and my first choice for solid and reliable, development.
Sticking stubbornly to Java as the native platform for Android was stupid, but then Google does lots of stupid things. However, if it defeats Troll Oracle's attempts to extend intellectual property rights in directions that harm society, then it may all turn out well. But it is just insanely stupid for Google not to have already moved the core Android libraries away from Java, so that the java interface just becomes a wrapper. It's because Googler's aren't really as smart as they like to tell each other they are, and that filters down from the top.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
But when many apps run on the same platform, you want that virtual machine to prevent one app screwing up, from taking down the others and the OS.
Besides, many people use 'license' as a synonym for 'copy' or 'implementation of'. Sure it isn't technically correct in legal speak, but the email was not written for a court of law.
Didn't they already purchase Android by that time, and were basically debating how to release it?
Except that's precisely what Oracle is suing over. AFAIK, Dalvik does support JVM-based binaries; and Android uses a subset of Apache's implementation of the Java SE standard, not any code from Sun/Oracle. So, as long as they support backwards compatible with wrappers of a Java-like library, assumedly Oracle would still be interested in continuing the lawsuit. Meanwhile, trying to clone or mimic another language/platform would potentially risk another lawsuit.
And remember, Android started before Oracle owned Java, so presumably Google went with their Java-like platform precisely because they thought Sun would see them in the clear; but then things changed. So, even if Python or C# or a Python-like language were in the clear today, they may face a lawsuit tomorrow. And to remain backwards compatibility, they'd again be in the same boat of yet another wrapper and still facing a lawsuit.
So, their only real choice is what? To produce a wholly unique language (again, remember all the talk about how Oracle could face the wrath from C's developers if their logic on copyrighting the Java language holds, so it might not even be enough to just develop a new library) and give up all backwards compatibility on Android apps to greatly reduce the risk of lawsuits? That doesn't seem exactly a great compromise, especially given how baseless the lawsuit likely is. I mean, I understand the point of Oracle defending it's trademark, and it's possible Google or others have went to far in talking about Java when it comes to Android--although given it's speaking about the Java language, it's a bit dicey no matter how you look at it given how vague the line is on where the language and its components begin and end when they're source compatible to various degrees--, but since it seems Oracle isn't merely trying to squash the seeming polluting of their trademark like Sun's lawsuit against MS, I don't exactly see there to be any clear way in which Oracle is fighting for anything specific that they can lay claim to and I don't see what Google could reasonably have done to avoid the confusion that naturally arises in trying to differentiate the ecosystem as a whole from some of its core components when they share the same name. I do know that except for tech sites, I never really even hear any mention of Java when it comes to Android and even then, it's almost always with the provision that what Android offers is a Java-like language and not Java as we know it itself.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
I don't know about that... You're assuming Linux would exist after something like this.
Consider the fact Linux along with more or less every project ever written under the GNU flag would ALL be in similar violation. It is at the very core of what most all FOSS projects are all about: Free reimplementations of preparatory APIs.
Sure, there is lots of innovation in the FOSS world, but the other 99.9% is reinventing other people's wheels be it reimplementation of compilers, library APIs, tool APIs, UIs, etc. Take that away and there is effectively no FOSS left on the planet. The entire FOSS movement would need to start over from byte 0.
My
because the current system of using interfaces to simulate callbacks really really suck. But at least they will fix it in java 1.8 so better late then newer.
You lost me there. Interfaces seem to me like the right way to do callbacks. Passing function pointers around is very 1980s, and I get that some programmers have never left the 80s, but it's a very poor abstraction. "Give me an object that I can make this callback on" seems like a clean abstraction, and one that should still optimize to some function pointer under the covers.
Is there some Java-specific reason this is a bad answer? Or are you saying "the specific way in which some Java libraries use interfaces to simulate callbacks really really sucks, and it needs this obviously better way to use interfaces to simulate callbacks"?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Except that's precisely what Oracle is suing over.
Except that you didn't get my point. I will state it more simply: Google needs a quick exit path from Oracle's Java trap. They had plenty time to dig an exit tunnel and they didn't. So now it is just, stand and fight or else. Sure, I expect Google to win, but taking that kind of risk unnecessarily is just plain stupid.
More clear now?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Hmm... Reconsidering, I think you're right. If Google had deprecated Dalvik with a replacement two years ago and considering the rapid cycle of smart phone replacement, then the issue of backwards compatibility with probably be virtually a non-issue at this point. Of course, that presumes that Google could have whipped up another VM and library that was both Java-like enough to support a transition yet different enough that Oracle's suit would be a non-issue, and I can't imagine that that wouldn't have taken at least a year or two in itself*. Still, yes, it would have been a wiser move if the point is to avoid the stupid lawsuit(s).
*And I think a year or two is incredibly optimistic. Version 1 of Java, .NET, and just about every other comprehensive platform is almost always enough of a failure that it's not until at least version 2 before wide scale adoption takes place--it's after all, very difficult to know exactly what to include the version and how to do everything right; even cloning another, successful platform often isn't enough. So, people would likely still develop for Dalvik for quite a while and Google would still be under Oracle's thumb. Meanwhile, trying to force a switch can backfire, just resulting in people abandoning the platform altogether. But, even if it took three or four years, lawsuits like the one between Oracle and Google drag on for years, so yes, a plan to switch near the start would have been smart and I agree you're right it was dumb of Google not to act.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Digging through that PDF, all I see are discussions about trying to cooperate with Sun to use Java, and it not working out. Which backs up Google's explanation of WHY they didn't go with J2ME.
So, again, got a link to e-mails where someone at Google says "What we're about to do is illegal."?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Yea because that is what is hurting IOS so badly?
Android will always play second string to IOS simply because on a mobile device native code execution is where it is at.
Got Code?
Not the same thing. That's, if you like, a vertical difference. Everybody knows that EE is SE with a bag on the side, and ME is a subset version of SE (or at least, is intended to be).
The problem here is a horizontal one; when something that runs on one runtime doesn't run on an [apparently] equivalent one from a different vendor.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
One counterexample is all that's needed to disprove your original assertion, and here it is: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8245312.stm
Of course, this wasn't in a country where lawyers get to choose the jurors based on their stupidity, gullibility or corruptibility...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So, it made more sense to base the technology on Java yet make it legally different and not sign any contracts with Sun/Oracle to use the Java trademark.
If you read the PDF email archive, initially Google wanted to license Java from Sun and have the result be called Java. The problem is that Google and Sun could never come to terms, so Google ended up doing an end-around.
Did you miss where I wrote "intended to be"? http://www.developer.com/java/java-8-delayed-until-2013.html
Time will tell how far it goes in practice.
Never said that it was, but I'm glad it amused you. What I'm referring to are inconsistencies between different "regular" JREs. If you believe in "write once run everywhere" I have a bridge you might like to buy.
My point was this: come the day that they all start doing it intentionally, rather than by neglect or accident, do you think that'll be an improvement?
Comprehension fail.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Including J2ME support would NOT have been an advantage. Probably a way to kill the platform on the spot.
(nothing against J2ME itself, but its ecosystem at the time was extremely unhealthy)
I was responding to a specific poster who is continuing to spread the idiocy that this lawsuit is about a license for the JVM vs using an open source alternative. According to Oracle's licensing, the only legal implementation of Java for mobile is the official JME, Blackdown, OpenJRE, etc, all legal for Desktop and Server, not for mobile.
The crux of this case is not whether Google needed a license, Google violated Sun's license terms by making Davlik, it is explicitly against said terms. The issue really comes down to whether Sun, and now Oracle's license terms are legally enforceable. Google seems to have drawn or bought a friendly judge, which is helping them a lot, but they've still got some issues to sort out.
I was responding to a specific poster who is continuing to spread the idiocy that this lawsuit is about a license for the JVM vs using an open source alternative. According to Oracle's licensing, the only legal implementation of Java for mobile is the official JME, Blackdown, OpenJRE, etc, all legal for Desktop and Server, not for mobile.
The open source implementations of Java are licensed under actual open source licenses. There is not one word in the GPL that says you can't use it on a mobile device. The way Sun/Oracle maintains control over "Java" notwithstanding that they released their own implementation under the GPL is by licensing the trademark. If you want to call it Java(TM) then you need a trademark license. Sun has said as much. But Google isn't calling it Java(TM). And given that, it seems like they could pretty easily have done away with the copyright claims going forward just by licensing one of the open source implementations which inherited from Sun's GPL'd implementation, if they wanted to. Apparently instead they've decided that the copyright claims are silly -- it is an independent implementation -- so they'd rather fight it. (I can't say I blame them. Oracle is a bit of a jerk. "We want $6 Billion dollars durr hurr.")
Google violated Sun's license terms by making Davlik, it is explicitly against said terms.
Google doesn't have a license from Sun for Java (or Java(TM) or whatever), the negotiations broke down and Google decided to do their own implementation instead. What do Sun's license terms have anything to do with anything if Google hasn't agreed to them?
The copyright question is very much whether they "need" a license to do what they did, i.e. creating an independent implementation that implements the same API. (I think there is also another question about a few lines of a range check function that is line-for-line identical between Sun's OpenJDK and Google's version... but it seems to have come out that the reason for that is that the code was originally written by a Google engineer and then accepted into OpenJDK. Way to reward your contributors, Oracle.)
Google seems to have drawn or bought a friendly judge
Are you seriously suggesting that they bought off the judge? Give me a break.
I don't know if they bought the judge, I believe probably not, but the point is that they've found a judge sympathetic to their cause.
As to whether they need a license, Oracle insist that they do and Oracle's license terms seem to back them up. The legal question is therefor, "Is Oracle Right". History seems to indicate that they are as Sun won exactly this same lawsuit against Microsoft a while back, Microsoft didn't call their implementation Java either, but they still lost. Google seems to believe that they aren't, or at least has backed themselves into a corner where it's their only viable choice.
My biggest concern with this case is that it was incredibly stupid on Google's part to get into this position in the first place. Sun and then Oracle's opinion on their licensing terms have been well known in the industry far longer than Android has been around, Google lawyers would have been perfectly aware of this. They almost certainly could have sorted something out that would cost them far less than what this is, and the same goes for Sun.
The Microsoft case was a very different set of facts: Microsoft did agree to a license from Sun, and did call their version Java, but then violated the license contract by making their version incompatible. Moreover, Sun sued Microsoft for antitrust violations, and Microsoft settled the case rather than Sun winning in court.
The Google case is about copyright and patents. Oracle is claiming a copyright over the API (which is ridiculous), and for a collection of patents the majority of which have now been rejected by the Patent Office and the remainder of which appear to be non-essential performance optimizations that in the worst case could probably be worked around without breaking anything serious (and it has yet to be decided whether even those claims will hold up in the end).
The whole thing feels like Oracle just being extremely petty and vindictive because they overplayed their hand in the license negotiations, Google called their bluff and now Oracle is butthurt and acting irrationally. (I mean lets face it, the invalidation of the majority of the patents they've tried to assert has already hurt Oracle more than the lawsuit is likely to hurt Google, and that had to have been a predictable outcome of all of this if Oracle had been thinking clearly.)