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Schmidt Testifies Android Did Not Use Sun's IP
CWmike writes "Google built a 'clean room' version of Java and did not use Sun's intellectual property, Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, testified in court Tuesday. Schmidt said its use of Java in Android was 'legally correct.' On this day seven of the trial, Schmidt gave the jury a brief history of Java, describing its release as 'an almost religious moment.' He told the jury that Google had once hoped to partner with Sun to develop Android using Java, but that negotiations broke off because Google wanted Android to be open source, and Sun was unwilling to give up that much control over Java. Instead, Schmidt said, Google created the 'clean room' version of Java that didn't use Sun's protected code. Its engineers invented 'a completely different approach' to the way Java worked internally, Schmidt testified."
Where do you get the shit that you smoke?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
We really need better names in this industry. I read the headline and immediately imagined a robot falling over and convulsing while saying "IP conflict.. conffflict... unaaaable to.. reboot," while a self-satisfied and positively glowing Sun glanced over the top of his laptop and started giggling quietly to himself. But it could just be the caffeine withdrawl too.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Guess why Google doesn't use it or create their own? Because that would be much more work to do.
1) What's wrong with saving yourself work?
2) Isn't that the whole point of OSS?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If Oracle is so worried about the "Fragmentation of Java", why would they want to force Google to write a completely different API?
And so the myth that Steve jobs is still alive begins!...is that you Steve? Knock once for "yes" and twice for "God wants an iPad!".
If what he says is true, there should be lots of evidence including a big stack of affidavits signed by the reverse-engineers swearing that they have never seen the original code. If he can't pull these out of his pocket, along with the Attorney who oversaw the project, I'd be.. erm... skeptical.
Isn't this basically what Linus Torvalds did with Linux? If it can be done with an OS couldn't you do it with a compiler or an interpreter? I'm not a programmer, so the likeliness of this story being true is beyond my ability to judge.
-- QED
My take on the case:
Sun requires licensing to ship their JVM and SDK with a commercial product.
Google claims their wrote their own without using any Sun code.
If that is true, there's Google's case: they're not using the parts requiring licensing.
Nice nearly universal copypasta there.
Name any market Apple has created? Tablets? Smartphones? MP3 players? It's all polished implementations of other peoples well proven ideas. Their finest and purest idea was their first one: computing accesible to masses.
Name any market Microsoft has created? Operating systems? Database servers? Directory services? It's all polished etc. etc. etc.
Seriously though - I love the irony in someone saying
"Name any market Google has created [...] It's all polished implementations of other peoples well proven ideas."
in response to a comment about Google "stealing" from Apple
What "IP" did Schmidt "steal" while serving on Apple's board?
Schmidt has dirty paws. I would not be surprised if this behavior is why Sergey Brin had to oust him. Name any market Google has created? Search? Mail? Maps? Online Docs? It's all polished implementations of other peoples well proven ideas. Their finest and purest idea was their first one: search ranking by citation.
AdWords. I'm unaware of any prior system that did automatic auctions for specific search terms. As far as Google's success, AdWords was equally as important as search, since it's the financial basis for the entire company. If you read some of the early history of Google their original sales methods were human centric, slow and no better than anyone else. AdWords started the flood of cash.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
"Google wanted Android to be open source, and Sun was unwilling to give up that much control over Java."
What?! Java already was open source, GPLv2. Since 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Java_implementations#Sun.27s_November_2006_announcement
It must be something else then, or what am I missing here?
That's impossible. Where in heaven would Jobs have found a lawyer?
We're talking about an intermediate representation. Both Google and Oracle's virtual machines take their respective bytecode formats and convert them to a register-based machine language prior to execution. The only difference is that Google does this by translating from a different register-based language while Oracle translates from a stack-based language. This isn't about calling conventions, but compiler technology.
He should have excused himself from the board the moment Google started working on Android.
That would have been silly because Google started working on Android when Apple was a company that made portable music players and pretty much nothing else. But even so, he did in fact recuse himself from all discussions involving the iPhone and resigned not long after its release. Since Google purchasing Android was very publicly known there is no excuse for the rest of the board for not removing him if they thought it was a problem. There was absolutely nothing secret about it, so if it was a problem as you seem to believe then that is a testament to incredible stupidity of the Apple board room and not much else.
Oh come on, just saying a name is harmless. It's like Candlejack - I say "Candlejack" all the time, and nothing bad ever ha
Adwords was technology developed by a company originally named Boingo, later renamed to Applied Semantics, and which Google purchased in 2003. Google did not develop Adwords itself.
If you say "Steve Jobs" three times to a mirror he appears and smashes your Android phone.
Why did you click on both 'Preview' and 'Submit' before attempting to comple your sentence?
No, he's just wrong.
In fact, despite the fact that kernel and userland programs in Android require it to be open source, Google is making it as hard as possible for it to be any use for others.
This is wrong - only the kernel is GPL. They have no obligation to release the rest of the source, which is either Apache2 or BSD licensed. In fact, they didn't for a version (Honeycomb?).
Bionic, Dalvik, they could've kept all of that closed and they didn't.
You need to be registered partner and pay hefty sums just to officially use Android.
This is a red herring and slightly wrong. You can call your device "Android" if you pass the compatibility test, which is free (as in beer and speech). If this is enough to call Android not open, then Firefox isn't either (see Iceweasel).
You have to get a license to get access to Google Play, which isn't software but a service provided by Google and not really part of Android.
In fact, they have basically used the work of countless amount of volunteer programmers without giving much back.
That's called open source. We all use much more than we contribute back; in fact, that's the whole point!
But the fact is that the Android software is open, and Linux 3.3 included contributions from Android's kernel.
Guess why Google doesn't use it or create their own? Because that would be much more work to do.
They have created a language (Go), they pay for the development of Python (check who employs Guido van Rossum) and they have developed a full compiler and VM (Dalvik).
The reason they chose Java has nothing to do with it being more work, but with the fact that developers already know the language.
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FTFY
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun