Opposition Mounts To Oracle's Attempt To Copyright Java APIs

An anonymous reader writes with a bit from Groklaw: "The remarkable outpouring of support for Google in the Oracle v. Google appeal continues, with a group of well-known innovators, start-ups, and those who fund them — innovators like Ray Ozzie, Tim O'Reilly, Mitch Kapor, Dan Bricklin, and Esther Dyson — standing with [Thursday's] group of leading computer scientists in telling the court that Oracle's attempt to copyright its Java APIs would be damaging to innovation." As usual, Groklaw gives a cogent, readable introduction to the issue.

Comments

Link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the link?

Re:Link?

[sgt scrub]

Slashdot readers needing a link so they can read the article? I see why you posted anonymous.

Re:Link?

[Curupira]

Where is the link?

Well, maybe no link is better than the typical Slashdot behavior, i.e., linking to the blog of that infamous paid Oracle shill... :)

Re:Link?

[girlinatrainingbra]

Re: Anyhow, my conspiracy theory is that maybe /. has reached a tippiong point where whatever corporation currently owns /. doesn't get enough click-referral revenue, so they've stopped bothering to link to the articles?

aha!!! I am inclined to agree with you. Though Timothy's history of bizarre posting behavior may mean it's just the same old same old, you may have hit upon the real truth with your conspiracy theory! I breathe along with you. [look up the meaning of conspiracy...]

Re:Link?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130531131600482

Re:Link?

[maxwell demon]

But if we have no link, how are we to know which server we shall melt away?

WTF?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

So Oracle think they can just jump in and claim ownership of APIs that are in the Java specification -- most of which were added to the spec via the JSR process? They have no chance here.

Re:WTF?!?

[game kid]

On the contrary, they were really good at making people and distro maintainers move from their MySQL to MariaDB.

Re:WTF?!?

[interval1066]

This may be a move to if not monitize, maintian some kind of ownership over the java brand? I mean, perhaps its a misguided attempt to exert ownership over the technology in the face of offerings like OpenJDK? I'm just trying to understand what Oracle's motivation is.

Re:WTF?!?

[Aryden]

Their whole point was to monetize Java. They want money from the "4 billion devices that run Java" which they aren't getting. It's not the branding they are concerned with, that is taken care of via trademark, this is all about the use of Java apis.

Re:WTF?!?

[binarylarry]

A Java fork would be great.

Get control away from shitbags like Oracle over to some kind of foundation. Get rid of the fucking Ask toolbar spyware, improve the platform more quickly, etc.

Re:WTF?!?

[AuMatar]

Wouldn't that basically be Dalvik? Just work on adding the missing libraries.

Re:WTF?!?

[binarylarry]

No, Dalvik is a totally different type of virtual machine. It's register-based and uses the Apache Harmony class library.

Forking java would be calling it something else but reusing the HotSpot VM along with the standard Java class library. Oh and giving Oracle the finger.

Re:WTF?!?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Named for his 2 daughters, who were named by their mothers.

Re:WTF?!?

[gl4ss]

This may be a move to if not monitize, maintian some kind of ownership over the java brand? I mean, perhaps its a misguided attempt to exert ownership over the technology in the face of offerings like OpenJDK? I'm just trying to understand what Oracle's motivation is.

it's two folding sides of a dollar bill.

first: it's cash money. they were getting(well, sun was/ oracle is) getting cash money from all(well, most) sold mobile smartphones through J2ME licensing. android phone manufacturers aren't paying that for the android phones they sell, so as even cheapo phones are moving to android.. to be honest there's not too many manufacturers selling j2me capable phones nowadays apart from Nokia(in the bottom end). they all(se, samsung etc) moved to android pretty much for the whole price range.

second: revenge and moar money from their failed product that was supposed to be just like android. they had a next generation java mobile phone in development for quite a while. and by quite a while I mean almost a decade(savaje etc are fruits of that in a way). they want cash that they were supposed to get from licensing that since android is in many ways similar to that. the real reason why android won is that they were real fucking slow with the development. it's also why j2me fell to the side, since the jsr processes made every new api perform maybe 10% of functions it promised and even those were annoying to use(for the user, by design).

Re:WTF?!?

[devent]

Java is already "forked". The OpenJDK project is since Java 7 the reference implementation for Java and is licensed under the GPL.
Nothing prevents you to write a custom installer without the Ask toolbar or whatever. Every Linux distribution ships OpenJDK in the main repositories.

Re:WTF?!?

[Smallpond]

A Java fork would be great.

Get control away from shitbags like Oracle over to some kind of foundation. Get rid of the fucking Ask toolbar spyware, improve the platform more quickly, etc.

A fork wouldn't help since Oracle is asserting copyright on the API, not the code.

Re:WTF?!?

[AuMatar]

But it compiles Java code and has a big chunk of the Java standard library. I'd call that Java, I don't care what type of VM its running on.

Re: WTF?!?

[msoftsucks]

This comment shows exactly what's wrong with open source nuts like you. I use Linux solutions wherever I can, but informing clients and getting them off of Microsoft solutions can be a daunting task. Many of them will tune you out completely if you even mention Linux as a solution. Tell them instead that they can save $1000 per machine in software costs without ripping out what they have, and they become your next best bud. It's an easy buy-in to install open source software on Windows desktops side-by-side with whatever they currently have. once you have weened them off the Microsoft tit, then they are ready to wholesale switch to Linux. Especially now that Microsoft is turning the PC in to a walled off garden.

Re:WTF?!?

[VisceralLogic]

So, even though it won't run on any of the millions of computers with Java VMs installed, you still think it should be called Java?

Re:WTF?!?

[Zontar The Mindless]

The daughters' names are My (pronounced "mü") and Maria. But don't take my word for it--look it up in your Funk & Wagnells.

Er, Google it. Whatever.

Re:WTF?!?

[AuMatar]

Yes. Java is a language. If it compiles and runs programs written in that language, it's Java. That would be like claiming that rvds binaries aren't C because the binaries it puts out won't run on x86. The VM is 100% immaterial. Hell, you can compile Ruby and Python and run them on the Java VM, does that make them Java?

Here's the link

[PatientZero]

. . . to Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Funds File Amicus in Support of Google in Oracle v. Google Appeal.

Hey Timothy, wake up! How about the link?

[girlinatrainingbra]

Hey Timothy, wake up! How about the link?

Here it is in case you can't find it:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130531131600482

"Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Funds File Amicus in Support of Google in Oracle v. Google Appeal ~pj"

The End

[PCK]

However unlikely it is that Oracle wins this, if this were to pass it would be the end of the software industry as we know it.

I really hope that somehow there is some kind of backlash against Oracle when this ends. Well I can dream at least.

Re:The End

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Ironic Oracle pushed and pushed Java into the mainstream so it would be in the mainstream. It's a little late for what they are doing now.

Re:The End

[Nerdfest]

It was Sun that did that, then perhaps IBM. Certainly not Oracle.

Re:The End

[jd2112]

However unlikely it is that Oracle wins this, if this were to pass it would be the end of the software industry as we know it.

I really hope that somehow there is some kind of backlash against Oracle when this ends. Well I can dream at least.

Oracle has practically every corporation in the world by the balls (i.e. all their corporate data is locked up in Oracle databases and business logic in Oracle applications). They could start killing babies and it wouldn't affect their bottom line.

Re:The End

[VortexCortex]

However unlikely it is that Oracle wins this, if this were to pass it would be the end of the software industry as we know it.

I really hope that somehow there is some kind of backlash against Oracle when this ends. Well I can dream at least.

I do not agree with you. I think Oracle should win this. It's going to get far worse before it gets better. I'd much rather sooner than later. For instance: If there were ice everywhere and I were an Eskimo, would you try to sell me the ice? No? Then why do folks think it's OK to sell me, a PC owner, infinitely reproducible bits? It's because they have a fundamental misunderstanding of information and work. A mechanic is not granted a limited (70 year beyond their death) monopoly over the work they perform. They have an infinite monopoly to leverage before you do your work, after the work is done and paid for, then you have no monopoly. You don't get to charge each time I start up the car. You shouldn't get to charge for each copy of the bits, you can only do so because laws that support the economically untenable practice of Artificial Scarcity. The work has already been done. You want more money, do more work. Make an estimate / proposal, agree on a price, do the work. Do not seek rent for those who use the work afterwards, get assurance your work will be paid for up front... Like every other labor industry already does. Then you can put an end piracy, by abolishing patent and copyright laws.

Make no mistake. This will happen. It is starting to happen that those who "Publish" content are not necessary. We can all pay the workers directly now. Publishers add no value to the work. They will become publicists / advertizers / marketers of your ability to do work, instead of resellers of artificially scarce bits. This is the first Internet Generation generation -- growing up with fully connected in the Age of Information. The business models will have to adjust. You speak of the end of the software industry as you know it. Indeed. The way it works now is down right retarding, and ridiculously out of touch with reality. Oracle should win because it will point out how stupid Copyright and Patents actually are.

Further: No Scientist can condone the practice of operating under unproven hypotheses. There is no proof that Copyright, or "the software industry as we know it" is actually benefical for society as a whole. No one did any test. They all assumed it was so because the English had a patent and copyright law, so do we. That's bad science, and if you are a scientist, yes even a computer scientist, then you should feel it in the pit of your stomach: That dread that you are running your life and the entire economy of the world based on an unproven, untested, untenable hypothesis.

For Shame.

Re:The End

[garyebickford]

I was there in the days when "you won't get fired for buying IBM", and IBM VPs would get flown in to talk to your boss' boss' boss' to tell them that their 14th level underling was considering buying a non-IBM peripheral, and that while IBM encouraged fair competition, the presence of a non-IBM peripheral 'might' delay support response until it was proved that the peripheral had nothing to do with the problem, and "your company might have to be shut down while the problem was worked out." It was extortion, pure and simple. And it worked until they lost the anti-trust suit (which started in 1969, lasted 13 years!)

See where IBM is now. It could happen to Oracle. Customers don't like any vendor having them by the balls, even when they are nice about it, and Oracle has never, in my experience, been nice. But those are cool boats! :D

Re:The End

[Billly Gates]

There is proof in Oracle's behavior. ... or if we want to be literal highly probably odds that the sole reason for this is to ban Android and extort money from people and raise the cost of apps and phones and kill free apps on all but IPhones. Why else would Oracle do this and wow would they have a tight squeeze on the new mobile markets balls by this!

Copyrights are by their nature monopolies. Similar to patents but covers expressions rather than actual devices.

It can also be reasonably argued that this will hurt other unrelated software cases as lawyers quote other court cases as real facts until they are overthrown. MS could claim they own wine, samba, reactOS, etc. SCO could now claim they own Linux all over again merely because it contains sed, awk, sh, and has the same commands. If you make a clean room implementation then SCO owns it even if you write it. Thats what a copyright is a monopoly and owner ship of work.

Yes publishers too own all their work and can sue your for copyright infringement too by reprinting.

Re:The End

[Kjella]

Back in the real world, how much would you think the asking price of the first copy of Photoshop or Lord of the Rings should be? And if your answer to that is to put it on Kickstarter, I'm going to laugh. If you want custom development it's going to be $50+ a day at minimum wage, many hundred dollars a day if you want it to actually work (if that's not a requirement you can put it on rent-a-coder too) and nobody's going to "take one for the team". And you've got no guarantee you'll get what you wanted unless you have an iron-clad contract listing exact deliveries with no cure, no pay conditions - and you still have to fight the developer over it. Hell, if any of those methods worked open source would already have taken over since you could hire people to work on it for you today, without changing the law.

People in general don't want that risk, plain and simply. I don't want to fund an author that is looking to write a book or even pay chapter by chapter if I feel there's a risk he'll just leave me hanging in the middle. I'd like him to write it, then I can choose to buy it or not. That is your analogy fail, I want to walk the proverbial isles of the app store the same way I walk in the grocery store, I want to see the finished product on offer and either pay or pass it up. That's how "every other labor industry does" but in your world everything in the store should then be free, because all the work is already done. Real world goods have overhead too, it's not like the price of a pound of beef is literally all cost attached to that pound, there were probably lots of fixed cost that'd be paid if that cow was there or not. But that overhead was spread across all pounds of beef the way a developer spreads his overhead (that is, actually writing it) across all the copies.

Or the TL;DR version: I think $1 for Angry Birds was a bloody good deal and don't see it happening without copyright to organize the "pooling".

Re:The End

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but a "successor in interest" is not responsible for, nor the cause of the actions of, the succeeded.

Re:The End

[radarskiy]

"They could start killing babies and it wouldn't affect their bottom line."

Of course it would affect the bottom line. Do you think they'd be killing babies for free?

Re:The End

[Rudolf]

And it worked until they lost the anti-trust suit (which started in 1969, lasted 13 years!)

IBM didn't lose. The government dropped the case in 1982.

http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/library/collections/manuscripts/findingaids/ibmantitrustpart2.ACC1980.htm#bioghist

... the case was withdrawn by William F. Baxter, assistant attorney general in charge of the Antitrust Division, Department of Justice, on January 8, 1982. Baxter signed a Stipulation of Dismissal that stated the government's charges were "without merit."

Re:The End

[Anonymous Coward]

it worked until they lost the anti-trust suit (which started in 1969, lasted 13 years!)

Correction: IBM never lost the anti-trust suit. They successfully fought the court battle until the Reagan administration dropped the whole thing.

It would be more correct to say "it worked until microcomputers yanked the carpet out from underneath the minicomputer market." We all hate Microsoft now, but microcomputers running DOS or Windows freed us all from IBM's iron fist.

(Now Internet computing and mobile devices will free us all from Microsoft's iron fist, which anyway isn't quite as frightening as IBM's iron fist was back in the day.)

Re:The End

[Nivag064]

Many people are migrating from Oracle to Postgres...

http://www.postgresql.org/

Re:The End

[saleenS281]

You're assuming this generation thinks like we do. This generation has grown up with the concept of "you don't own anything, you simply borrow it". Want an MP3? Download it. Buy a new device? It's not compatible, buy it again. A CD? Why would I want a physical copy when I can just buy a new copy for $0.99?

The current/next generation has been conditioned to keep buying the same thing over, and over, and over again. I can only semi-fault them. We were brought up on the same thing, but at least we were sold on "better quality". CD's sounded better than tapes sounded better than vinyl. The industry saw the writing on the wall when SACD was a complete failure, and Napster took off. Unfortunately, the numbers indicate they're still winning. They're losing with the 30-somethings, but the teen-somethings are slowly more than making up for it.

Re:The End

[saleenS281]

Two things: you mean aisles, not isles. You're walking through a grocery store, not an island.

Angry birds was about the worst example you could use. There's a biblical amount of prior art. Angry Birds was in no way original, and had no copyright of their concept because they weren't original. They ripped off countless "slingshot" flash games that came before them... YEARS before them.

Re:The End

[Zontar The Mindless]

Your DEADBEEF in the grocery analogy itself does not bear up. On account of precisely what VortexC was talking about--being able to sell any number of copies with no corresponding increase in production costs. Good luck in doing this with a cow.

Re:The End

[LordLucless]

Back in the real world, how much would you think the asking price of the first copy of Photoshop or Lord of the Rings should be?

I dunno, what's the asking price for the first copy of GIMP? Pick a feature GIMP doesn't have that Photoshop does, that you want - how much do you reckon it'd cost to get a contractor (or the maintainers) to add it? How would that compare to, say, five seats of Photoshop?

Software developer is iterative. Yeah, paying for every feature of a feature-bloated piece of software like Photoshop would be cost-prohibitive. But if you start with a basic package, and everyone who wants a new feature rolls it back in, sooner or later, you'll have something photoshop-equivalent. That sort of development has a lot of up-front cost (paying for the development, time for it to be done) but it can result in economies of scale (no per-seat licensing cost). The only reason it doesn't happen that way, is that the model supported by our current laws is the opposite - has a low up-front cost and scales really poorly.

And if your answer to that is to put it on Kickstarter, I'm going to laugh

That's great and all, but laughing at something isn't precisely an argument. Yeah, custom development's a poor match for crowd-funding, but something with mass appeal, like Lord of the Rings, is another question entirely, and none of your arguments made against crowd-funding for bespoke development apply to mass-market film production. Veronica Mars, a niche movie, raised almost six million dollars on Kickstarter, and that's while crowd-sourcing is in its infancy, and competing with an entrenched existing system.

Now, six million dollars is a drop in the bucket for a star-studded, special effects bonanza like Lord of the Rings (budget ~90 million for Fellowship), but LotR is on the extreme end of film budgets. In the same year, Amélie, which won 5 academy awards, was made on a 10 million dollar budget, on par with the funds able to be raised by the top kickstarters. And all this is without factoring in the distorting effects of massive payments to the actors, and Hollywood's legendary accounting. Sure, you're not likely to be able to fund a LotR-equivalent now, when Kickstarter is in its infancy, but it's not exactly outside the realms of possibility. After all, people were willing to pay ten time's LotR's budget to see it at the box office, presumably without being able to see it first (there would have been some multiple-viewers, of course).

Hell, if any of those methods worked open source would already have taken over since you could hire people to work on it for you today, without changing the law.

It hasn't, because the closed-source methodology is being propped up by the legal system. If you removed copyright law, open source would take over, as the alternative would no longer be tenable.

I want to walk the proverbial isles of the app store the same way I walk in the grocery store, I want to see the finished product on offer and either pay or pass it up. That's how "every other labor industry does"

Really? So you can walk through the "pipe refit" aisle of your plumbing store, and buy your home's repaired plumbing after inspecting it? Or your landscaped garden? Do real estate developers have a shop they can go to where they can buy a sky scraper off-the-shelf?

Re:The End

[Valhawk]

Ugh... Accelerationism is the worst.

It basically boils down to, "Quick, we need more unjust outcomes in the short term in the hopes that maybe it will piss people off enough to solve the problem." Only there's no guarantee we won't just get stuck at the worse level, what there is a guarantee for is that we'll get the unjust outcomes that might power that phantom revolution.

Re:The End

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know where I shop?

Re:The End

[Psychotria]

$50 a day? How does that work?

Re:The End

[stenvar]

Photoshop was a low-end rip-off of other software developed and published mostly with government funds or to address specific in-house needs. Most of the libraries to build Photoshop were developed by others and effectively available for free. The original Photoshop also wasn't a very complicated program, and because there were several widely used existing versions from other vendors, the risk was nearly nil. So I'd say the first copy of Photoshop should have been nearly free.

In fact, that's true for a lot of the software you use day-to-day: the people making the big bucks are usually not the people who originally put in the hard work and took the big risks. Instead, after the original development, someone swoops in, takes no significant risks, clones the best parts of existing software, sells it really cheap (they had none of the overhead), then markets the hell out of it, and finally runs the innovators out of business. And unfortunately software patents just aren't a feasible mechanism stopping that.

The current patent and copyright system rewards such behavior and punishes innovators. It's arguably even worse than not having IP protection on software at all.

Re:The End

[jd2112]

Of all of the Oracle backed applications I am aware of used by all of the companies that I have worked for the number that support Postgres is exactly zero.
(Technically there are some open source web frameworks that support Postgres involved but I would consider that more of infrastructure rather than application space.)
Some of these applications process Millions or even Billions of dollars in transactions. They aren't going to be replaced by an unsupported product that the vendor will point to and say "Posgress is an unsupported database back-end, we can't provide you with support" should there be a problem.

Re:The End

[strikethree]

However, this is what the FSF and GNU want. They think that using Linux kernel APIs or linking to a library is a copyright violation if your source code is not freely available to all. LOL, I can't wait to watch the fireworks as this plays out. FSF and Oracle against Google and sane people. Mixed company indeed. :)

Re:The End

[Zontar The Mindless]

I love people that think they are the only one's in this life that ever had a 10 yr. old daughter and somehow think they have special insight by comparing every moment of their lives to the yammerings of a child.

Only very special moments, like those provided by people who can't use words or punctuate correctly (unlike my daughter, who knows when and when not to use the apostrophe).

*sigh*

[Atzanteol]

As a Java developer let me just say - God I hate Oracle... Can't we just turn Java over to the Apache project now? They would be far better stewards of the technology. Christ *anybody* would probably be a better steward of it than Oracle.

Re:*sigh*

[adrn01]

As a Java developer let me just say - God I hate Oracle... Can't we just turn Java over to the Apache project now? They would be far better stewards of the technology. Christ *anybody* would probably be a better steward of it than Oracle.

Everyone keeps misspelling that. Correct spelling is now:

As a Java developer let me just say - God I hate Orcacle... Can't we just turn Java over to the Apache project now? They would be far better stewards of the technology. Christ *anybody* would probably be a better steward of it than Oracle.

Re:*sigh*

[Nerdfest]

The best thing you can do is to start moving towards languages with truly open specs and APIs, like C has. Go may fit the bill, but I'm not sure. The other thing is to do absolutely everything you can at home and at work, to stop *any* money going to Oracle and companies like them. Move towards open-source, or products from companies that play more nicely with others. If these companies don't get punished in the profit department, they don't take notice. There are enough senior people here and on other forums that a *severe* dent could be made in Oracle.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Java approach. 3 lines of code for a two letter patch that changes nothing useful and doesn't match the documentation,.

Re:*sigh*

[garyebickford]

And end software patents. And a pony.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Java is so ingrained in the world at this point, i wish you luck. I honestly don't think 'moving away' is a viable answer. Burning Oracle to the ground tho, might be.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if Oracle "succeeds", it will be the final nail to the coffin of Java.

I have to say, after so many years, I've grown to *vicously* loathe the Java subculture... With its FrameworkFrameworkFactoryFactoryFactoryObtainerSinglton.obtainer.obtainingAction.get().executor.run(). ;)

I recommend just switching to Haskell, and live a new exciting life! :D

Re:*sigh*

[maxwell demon]

And end software patents. And a pony.

Why should we end a pony?

Re:*sigh*

[Billly Gates]

The best thing you can do is to start moving towards languages with truly open specs and APIs, like C has. Go may fit the bill, but I'm not sure. The other thing is to do absolutely everything you can at home and at work, to stop *any* money going to Oracle and companies like them. Move towards open-source, or products from companies that play more nicely with others. If these companies don't get punished in the profit department, they don't take notice. There are enough senior people here and on other forums that a *severe* dent could be made in Oracle.

No that is not the best solution because lawyers quote other cases like the laws of God of correct interpretation.

This means you can't use wine, reactOS, and maybe Linux itself as SCO can now claim they own the exact string of characters that spell out cat, dir, ls, sed, awk, shell, sh, etc. I believe MS bought rights to either C or C++ some years ago so they could claim printf is an intellectual property of Microsoft and you need a license to run it.

Severe dent in Oracle?? In the real world your bosses bosses boss makes the decision after a round of golf with Oracle or some shitty IE 6 app that meets a need that has Oracle specific crap calls in the product. You either support or get another job!

Besides I am playing with the Android SDK and no I wont buy an expensive mac and switch to ios or downgrade to Windows 8 from Windows 7 to make some windows phone app instead. Why should I?

We need to fight this and pay the EFF and FSF and donate. Maybe if they filed friends of the court with Google it can convince a non-technical judge?

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Tasty sizzling ponyburgers, that's why.

Re:*sigh*

[TapeCutter]

It's Oracle - as is the all knowing god. Orcacle is the sound made by a laughing killer whale.

Re:*sigh*

[elashish14]

See? Nobody cares about the patents.

Re:*sigh*

[Nerdfest]

I'm not talking about punishing Oracle if they win. They should be punished regardless, even for just bringing the case to the courts. As I said, there are many senior people here. Douchebag marketing only goes so far.

Re:*sigh*

[TapeCutter]

If you start purging vendors from the company every time you don't agree with a court decision then you are unlikely to hold that senior position for very long. Also if you want others to "play nice" then do so yourself and stop trying to preempt the court's decision.

Re:*sigh*

[Nerdfest]

Personally, I don't care about the court decisions. There is often a difference between legal and ethical. If people start avoiding companies that only respect one of the two then perhaps things will be a little nicer.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Go may fit the bill, but I'm not sure.

Go is BSD. You can rest assured Rob Pike and co. learned the lesson from Plan 9's mistake. They will not waste time and talent on anything less than free open source specs and implementations. Even now, in this language's infancy, they are making damn sure there are multiple implementations from different vendors targeting multiple architectures under FOSS licensees*.
Mind you, this isn't just some random act of benevolence on the part of Google. They're just hedging their bets following their bitter experience with Java and the failure of the ISO standardization process of Javascript\Ecmascript to protect the language from Microsoft's corruption (e.g. Microsoft is still extorting money from android OEMs over FAT patents).

* Google's own compiler along with the GCC one and even an LLVM prototype exist under Windows and Linux for both the ARM and x86. There's even more compilers and such under different systems and architectures...

Re:*sigh*

[saleenS281]

Basically every application in the enterprise that isn't written by Microsoft is built on Java, so good luck. Storage management consoles, ethernet/infiniband/fibre channel switch GUI's. Database/application/server gui's. The list goes on and on. Java isn't going to die anytime soon if for no other reason than legacy. And the fact it's cross-platform with little to no work. C and open source is a great solution, right up until you have to make an identical GUI work across a Microsoft and *nix platform.

Re:*sigh*

[sjames]

No, it's Oracle as in someone who huffs natural gas all day and then says whatever comes into their head.

Re:*sigh*

[gbjbaanb]

"Moving away" is a viable answer - we've been doing that ever since Java appeared and people said "we need to move away from the legacy crap and rewrite it all in new, cool java".

Today, you just have to recognise that Java *is* the legacy crap, and we need to move those systems away and onto something else. I would hope that something else would be better (ie not just easier for the developers, but something fast and efficient) but I've been around long enough to know there's little chance that'll happen.

Still, web-based stuff is where its at today, time for you to re-skill and get those clunky java GUIs replaces with HTML5 ones, then replace the back end with a REST-based API written in C/C++. (or node.js, or go, or C# if you want the quick-but-not-as-good option).

Re:*sigh*

[gbjbaanb]

C and open source is a great solution,

absolutely, stood the test of time in a way no other language has.

right up until you have to make an identical GUI work across a Microsoft and *nix platform.

there you just show your lack of google-fu. There's Qt which is awesome, or even GTK, or a host of others.

Nowadays you need a GUI that works on Macs too, and mobile.

That said, the whole concept of a thick GUI is dying, the state-of-the-art is currently HTML-based GUIs, and they are as identical as you can get (if you host in the same rendering engine - eg webkit).

The problem you have to worry about is the first sentence. every application in the enterprise that isn't written by Microsoft is built on Java. the industry *is* moving away from Java, as its seen to be either legacy, slow, bloated, or just insecure. The problem is that those industries are looking for alternatives and are choosing Microsoft. The number of jobs for ASP.NET MVC 4 are staggering right now, in a way that I would never have expected for web-based development. We have to be careful MS doesn't scoop up all the old Java systems.

Re:*sigh*

[mikera]

You may or may not like Java, but the JVM is an awesome platform.

IMHO the best strategy right now for people with Java legacy code is to adopt one of the new JVM languages: Scala, Clojure, JRuby, Groovy being the most prominent choices. You can use a great modern language, but keep all the advantages of the JVM (excellent garbage collection, excellent JIT compiler, huge open source library ecosystem, portability etc.)

C/C++ is cool for systems programming or for stuff where you have genuine realtime requirements: but it's a backward step for general purpose application development (i.e. 95%+ of development work). Proper garbage collection, managed runtime safety, JIT compilation, strong concurrency support, portability of compiled bytecode etc. are far more valuable in modern application development than the ability to write optimised low level native code.

Re:*sigh*

[gbjbaanb]

The only real benefit of all the things you've described for RAD development is the large support library, and even then, devs are complaining that there are too many libraries and frameworks that they cannot understand which ones to use when.,

The other things are irrelevant to app development- GC, you don't need GC to write apps, VB6 showed that, and frankly, its a lesser solution to object lifetimes than RAII (note that: object lifetimes- GC is terrible when it comes to deleting objects when you want them gone, hence kludges like .NETs using statement and IDispose())

Runtime safety- if that was the case Java wouldn't be so insecure, but I guess that could just be Oracle being useless at maintaining security patches like Microsoft does for .NET. Certainly, you can have the same runtime security with a native binary - C++ compilers will happily insert guard blocks, array overrun checks etc - its just that most people turn these off for performance, by default.

JIT - no, sorry, its better to compile up-front andlet the code run fast than it is to compile on-demand all the time. I could understand it if the JIT compiled source, but if you're compiling to bytecode and then JIT to native, you've got the worst of both worlds. javascvript does better here, but even then, you see the startup cost,and the inefficience of the optimisation when you have ms to compile. Better for that bytecode compilation step to go full native, if you're taking that time anyway.

Concurrency -loads of languages have concurrency support today - if you don't like raw threads take a look at OpenMP. Certainly strong concurrency was around when I was at university - I used a language called Concurrent Euclid (a pascal derivative) to learn concurrency. Languages like Erlang, have better concurrency than Java by a long way anwhow, but if you're coding quickly (as you say) then a thread block library such as Apple's Grand Central, or Intel's TBB are vastly superior to the rather simplistic threading support in Java.

I think today you'd be better off with something like Javascript as a general purpose app dev language - no compilation step, lots of libraries (for web dev at least), good and simple concurrency with node.js, and more portable than Java ever was. Try it.

Re:*sigh*

[aralin]

This is a total disaster for our HR. How can we now filter out the "one trick pony" types when "Just don't even show me resume anyone with Java or Visual Basic on it" is no longer gonna work? We simply need a language like Java to sort out the men from the boys. Come on. Let it go.

both money and control, The Oracle Way

[swschrad]

perhaps you haven't heard. Oracle grinds the last drop out of the turnip and takes the shoes for resale on the way out of the conference room. there is a reason that Larry Ellison can spend 3 months a year racing sailboats and flaunt FAA noise rules flying back home after quiet hours night after night. it's called money, honey, and they excel in it.

considering it takes Oracle longer to patch an exploit in Java than it does for Apple to patch an exploit, if indeed they acknowledge one, perhaps it would not be a bad thing to let ol Larry take 120 percent of nothing, and standardize on another universal API across the web.

Re:both money and control, The Oracle Way

[turgid]

considering it takes Oracle longer to patch an exploit in Java than it does for Apple to patch an exploit, if indeed they acknowledge one, perhaps it would not be a bad thing to let ol Larry take 120 percent of nothing, and standardize on another universal API across the web.

This is the correct answer.

Re:both money and control, The Oracle Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to Sun's patch rate? You never actually worked with the bugs, did you?

I'll give Oracle credit, they're working well with the "openjdk" development to get Java out from under the burdensome licensing that Sun screwed up their own market with. And they don't *want* MySQL to succeed: they want it *dead* in the industrial space, so people will use Oracle's much more prifitable databases. They bought Sun to get the commercial database customer list, to shoot that incompatible Sun architectural oddness through the head, and to shut MySQL down.

Getting Java license control was a burden, which they're getting out from under as fast as possible. The Google lawsuit is a legacy of old Sun staff that Oracle inherited and daren't just abandone.

Re:both money and control, The Oracle Way

[Anonymous Coward]

The Google lawsuit is a legacy of old Sun staff that Oracle inherited and daren't just abandone.

No, it isn't. Jonathan Schwartz has made it clear repeatedly, in court even, that Sun would never have brought this lawsuit. And he did welcome Android's use of the Java programming language when it was announced.

Re:both money and control, The Oracle Way

[tolkienfan]

There's a difference between Larry Ellison and God:
God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.

Re:both money and control, The Oracle Way

[Zontar The Mindless]

And they don't *want* MySQL to succeed: they want it *dead* in the industrial space, so people will use Oracle's much more prifitable databases. They bought Sun to get the commercial database customer list, to shoot that incompatible Sun architectural oddness through the head, and to shut MySQL down.

This is EXACTLY why Oracle have, I dunno, *doubled* the number of devs and QA working on MySQL! It's all a ruse! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Oracle do a lot of things. Things that waste tonnes of money--e.g. paying hundreds of staff to develop a product you're planning to discontinue--are generally not among them.

Re:both money and control, The Oracle Way

[stenvar]

Sun might not have brought the lawsuit for business reasons, but they set up the process and the licenses in a way that they could bring such lawsuits. Relying on the goodwill of a company not to sue you is foolish, because sooner or later they are going to come under new management and the new management may well decide you that it is in their best interest to sue you.

People should have abandoned Java as soon as Sun reneged on their promise to make it an open, non-proprietary standard through a standards process, which would have involved legally binding commitments on their part not to do what their new owners are doing now.

No innovators needed...

[gnasher719]

.. to object to this. These good people basically say "it would be godawful if Oracle managed to get a copyright on APIs". What they should say is "according to copyright laws, APIs are not material that can be protected by copyright". Because that is what matters to a court. _If_ APIs could be protected by copyright (which they can't) it would be absolutely wrong for a judge to listen to these people.

(Why do APIs not have copyright protection? Because copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation. If a file contains just the API itself, it is not protected. If it contains comments, preferably in poetic form, the file cannot be copied, but still the API can be extracted. And making use of the API description is most definitely not protected by copyright law).

Re:No innovators needed...

[UnknowingFool]

The code behind an API can be protected but the interface itself being protected would defeat the purpose of the API. I think APIs fall under scènes à faire.

Re:No innovators needed...

[DrJimbo]

If you were familiar with the case you would know that one of Oracle's main arguments in its appeal is that APIs are currently protected by copyright and Alsup's ruling (against making APIs copyrightable) has upset the status quo. Yes, IMO Oracle's lawyers should be severely sanctioned for tying up the courts with such utter rubbish, but they haven't been (yet) so this is what the fight is about.

Given this context, these Amici Curiae briefs make perfect sense. Oracle is lying through its teeth about what the current state of affairs is in order to swindle the court and make a quick buck. It was almost essential for people to refute Oracle's BS&F lies in order to keep the legal battle grounded in reality.

The law firm BS&F has been filing bogus lawsuits like this for ten years now. They started by getting paid $20 million for the Microsoft funded SCO attacks against FOSS. They will continue to clog the courts with their BS & FUD until it is no longer economically profitable for them to do so. I think they should be fined $20 million (or more) for their cumulative egregious behavior over the past 10 years and that money should be used to compensate those who have been injured by their shenanigans. You need to catch them in the act and punish them right away or they will never learn.

Re:No innovators needed...

[davecb]

The law is predicated on the results being desirable: monopolies are illegal unless they fit the terms of the (U.S.) copyright act, authorized by the constitution. If the result is a catastrophy, the law is unconstitutional.

That is what is important to the courts.

--dave

Re:No innovators needed...

[Jerry Atrick]

This is literally a rerun of SCO v Linux (the real target of SCO v IBM). The BS&F game plan is to establish new law by precedent, in this case that API's can be copyrighted, which was the only tool they had left to snatch Linux ownership after failing to find any actual copying. Oracle v Google is exactly the same legal team and exactly the same legal arguments, and again they found so little actual copying that only API organisation is left to argue over.

The court correctly noticed that existing precedent and the letter of the law makes API's uncopyrightable but BS&F are arguing that law is wrong and needs correcting. So the correct response is indeed to point out loud and often why APIs should remain uncopyrightable, rather than focus on what current interpretation of law says - because that argument already succeeded. Remind the court about the law but the battle now is about why the law is what it is and why it's correct and Oracle/BS&F/SCO are wrong.

Re:No innovators needed...

[Billly Gates]

I was thinking SCO, but SCO never held the copyright of Unix which is why the lawsuits died. They were only given a right to use it and enforce it.

Now if Novel sold all of it to SCO then SCO would be happy to file a friends of the court and would win as the series of characters of cat, vi, sed, awk, sh, are all copyrighted trademarks of SCO and Linux would have to rename them as sdfd, sd, sdfx, adfjk, and yi etc

Re:No innovators needed...

[Jerry Atrick]

AFAIK those tool names could potentially be trademark protected (potentially because there's zero chance they would be approved in real life), they cannot be copyrighted even in principle for a whole pile of reasons. Even if they could, interoperability would override that, the same way it does for APIs. ...but there's a simpler answer. POSIX specifies all those utilities and one of the few things SCO v the world did decide is that SCO don't own or control the POSIX standard. They're listed at http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/

You're correct that SCO never got the API argument ruled on because they didn't own UNIX. This time Boies found someone that does actually own rights to give standing, they got their argument heard this time. They lost. Pity they couldn't get it ruled on 1st time but we got the result eventually!

Be careful where you tread

[sk999]

If Java API's are copyrightable, does this mean that Oracle has a copyright interest in every program ever written that uses those APIs? Does every Java programmer need to add a comment "Copyright Oracle" to every file that uses a Java API?

The software industry as a whole has been very cavalier about APIs. It is not hard to find examples of big vendors like Microsoft, IBM, or DEC claiming copyright ownership of APIs taken from elsewhere. In return, rarely, if ever, do they become involved in litigation claiming ownership. Some vendors (e.g., The Open Group) consider use of APIs (including implementation) to be covered by "fair use".

Oracle wants to tread in waters that the industry as a whole has deliberately avoided in the past.

I am not a Java developer, and give the way that Oracle has turned the language into toxic waste, I doubt I will ever become one.

Re:Be careful where you tread

[drgould]

If Java API's are copyrightable, does this mean that Oracle has a copyright interest in every program ever written that uses those APIs?

Oracle's purpose in claiming the copyright on the Java API is not to claim derivative copyright interest on programs written in Java. Well, maybe later.

Oracle's purpose is to collect license fees from anyone who uses the Java APIs.

And since Android uses the Java APIs, that includes Google and all Android developers.

Re:Be careful where you tread

[Billly Gates]

No it doesn't.

However, if you were Google or IceTea you couldn't make a clean room implementation as the words and phrases to make a program source compatible is owned by Oracle.

By extension you must now pay Oracle $999 for JavaSE or whatever the fuck Oracle wants to charge as no competition is allowed to exist.

Microsoft would also use this to end SAMBA (A.D compatibility for Linux and MacOSX), Wine, and ReactOS. After all MS would own the exact words and strings of characters of each API call and can quote this case as an example.

Sco can rise from the grave too and claim they own sh, sed, awk, ed, vi, cat, and all of unix because it looks the same and has the same characters as Unixware etc cleanroom implementation or not.

Re:Be careful where you tread

[gnasher719]

If Java API's are copyrightable, does this mean that Oracle has a copyright interest in every program ever written that uses those APIs? Does every Java programmer need to add a comment "Copyright Oracle" to every file that uses a Java API?

That's what Oracle claims, but even that conclusion is very dubious (if we ignore the premise, which is not dubious but plain wrong). I think Microsoft tried to create a Java-like language, or an incompatible Java implementation years ago. So if Microsoft wrote an API for that implementation, that could be a work derived from Oracle's API and might infringe Oracle's copyright. However, if Google purchased or legally downloaded the documentation with Java APIs from Oracle's website, didn't make any copies and gave them to their programmers, then no copyright infringement. Code that implements an API is not derived from the API. That's similar to a customer writing requirements for software that you should develop for them; the requirements document might be protected to some degree, but the software that you write to deliver these requirements is not derived from the requirements in the sense that copyright law defines "derived".

Re:Be careful where you tread

[dgatwood]

If Java API's are copyrightable, does this mean that Oracle has a copyright interest in every program ever written that uses those APIs?

They would be a derivative work, so arguably, yes. IMO, if Oracle somehow magically wins this case, Google's next move should be to buy Novell and counter-sue Oracle for violating their UNIX API copyright for the past 31 years, at which point, it's buh-bye, Oracle.

Re:Be careful where you tread

[gnasher719]

They would be a derivative work, so arguably, yes.

No, it wouldn't be a derivative work. The API is the abstract definition how a library is supposed to work. It is not the library itself. A library implementing the API doesn't include the API. An application including the library doesn't include the API.

Re:Be careful where you tread

[dgatwood]

An application including the library doesn't include the API.

Actually, it does. A compiler cannot know how to work with an object without first reading a header file, class file, etc. that defines its interface. If (and only if) the interface definition itself is protected by copyright, then the act of including a header file or class file is, by definition, combining that interface definition with the new application's code, which makes it a derivative work in precisely the same way that a mix tape is a derivative of the original recordings.

This is why interfaces are considered to not be protectable by copyright. It is a fundamental requirement for software authorship to be legal.

Oracle is stupid...

[Anonymous Coward]

So Oracle "wrote" Java and did not make a single call to strcpy(), fprintf(), et. al.
That's what they're claiming.
If strcpy isn't in the public domain, then calling it requires a license; likewise, re-inventing
the strcpy API is infringement. No kidding. I really hope the argument is made this way.

It's also good to know that Java implements its own kernel, because I got dibs on many of the kernel's APIs.
You see where Oracle is headed...

Re:Oracle is stupid...

[fibonacci8]

Where it's headed is Motorola, Intel, and the other processor manufacturers would have a field day asking Oracle for their API usage royalties.

Re:Groklaw's Gas Pedal analogy

[maxwell demon]

The users of Java are the developers of Java programs. The end users use Java in the same sense as someone taking a taxi uses a car. You don't care where the gas pedal is in the taxi you're taking, as long as the taxi driver is able to correctly use it. But the taxi driver certainly cares.

Re:Groklaw's Gas Pedal analogy

[drgould]

Let's not "dumb down" the issue by making analogies that don't really apply.

Analogies are like scabs. If you pick at them, they bleed.

Re:Still ?

[mark-t]

Already decided in court? Yes. Settled? Far from it.

This is about Oracle trying to appeal the former decision.

Re:Groklaw's Gas Pedal analogy

[mark-t]

Developers *ARE* the end users of an API.

Java is WHY Oracle bought Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle are looking to make the most amount of money it can from its purchase of Sun and finding ways to sue people and get them to pay it more money for using Java is a key part of that strategy.

And while Oracle databases may be in businesses everywhere, nowhere is there a business that wants to do more business with Oracle. Everyone wants to contain that tumor to the smallest region of its IT business possible.

"Where IBM is now???!?!"

[brunes69]

What do you mean.. worth 230 billion dollars vs. Oracles 160? Having 10x the EPS of Oracle? 19th on the Forbes 100 (vs Oracles 89th) ?

I would think Oracle would LOVE to be where IBM is now.

Re:"Where IBM is now???!?!"

[garyebickford]

But IBM did nearly go bankrupt, and it is not at all the same company that it was then, either economically or socially.

Re:"Where IBM is now???!?!"

[searlea]

Depends which numbers you focus on. EPS might be important for share-holders, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Consider net income for 2012: Oracle: $10 Billion net income from 118,000 employees (~$85,000 per employee) IBM: $16 Billion net income from 434,000 employees (~$37,000 per employee) Works out that Oracle currently rakes in roughly $85,000 per employee, while IBM 'only' manages around $37,000. If you were Larry, would you want to match IBM's earnings based on those figures?

Why did Google 'copy' Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know much about this case but it seems to center around Google replicating many of the Java APIs and creating their own VM for Android. Why did Google need to be interoperable with Java? Why start with Java as a jumping off point but, then again, not really? This is a fundamentally different situation from interoperability needs of file formats or SAMBA. This is nearer a situation of cloning... an issue for something like ReactOS, WINE, et al. Google is trying to have its cake and eat it too.

Re:Why did Google 'copy' Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, replicated APIs were in java.lang.* - classes like Array and Exception which are basically baked in the specification of language. Even if you aren't going to touch Java the platform, you will need those if you use Java the language (you're aware of distinction, right?)

PS: So, are you saying that something like Wine is infringing, or that Google is not infringing?

Re:Why did Google 'copy' Java?

[RaceProUK]

If they had used Perl and C++, they would be clear of the legal crap.

But make the barrier to entry higher. Maybe that would be a good thing, but it doesn't really go with the idea that Android is open. Plus, by using Java, they weren't limiting development to Linux/VS owners only.

Yes I know Perl can run on Windows, but realistically, how many will be doing so?

Re:Perhaps it is for the best.

[Anonymous Coward]

At what point, in your opinion, did you think Java became a god-awful mess of a programming language?

Those who claim "from the start" are either delusional idiots, and/or completely ignorant of the history of programming languages.

Personally, I believe Generics were where Java started going horribly wrong. Generics were a solution to a problem almost nobody was actually having, to the detriment of the language. Oracle taking over just accelerates the problem.

If Gosling had spent as much time developing C libraries as he did developing Java, we'd still be stuck with a shitty collection of C libraries; C is a great systems language, but the whole reason for Java is that the average developer does a really shitty job writing in languages like C. They don't write better code in Java, it's just that many of the the common mistakes in C _don't_ _happen_ in Java.

And that's what Gosling et al forget when they listened to the type-theory weenies foist Generics, annotations, etc. into Java. They forgot that they had created a language for the average undisciplined develper, not the self-disciplined cream of the crop.

Re:Perhaps it is for the best.

[Anonymous Coward]

Type safety is supposed to make it harder for developers (including the average undisciplined ones) to shoot themselves in the foot. I find it a weird thing to criticize about the language so harshly.

Re:Perhaps it is for the best.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Java is not so much the language itself, i.e. that part which is written up in "The Java Programming Language" by Gosling et al. It's that the libraries (really frameworks) are huge and seem to be provisioned from a central authority. OK for the *language* to be managed by a central committee - it's tough to see a way around that - but "all the worthwhile APIs" (for J2SE/J2EE/J2ME or whatever the correct acronyms are these days) is a different matter. Contrast that with the size of the C++ standard library - not small, but it has been covered reasonably well in a single volume book (Josuttis). With Java you'd need a bookshelf.

Re:Perhaps it is for the best.

[fcrick]

I completely agree with this sentiment. I'm in favor of anything that will make fewer people use Java. Oracle has proved time and again that they can't even the lowest of bars for security, and the language itself has simply fallen behind other similar languages developers should use instead.

Re:Groklaw's Gas Pedal analogy

[mark-t]

A professional can easily figure out a different way of writing an API

Can you provide any proof of that statement?

I thought that scheme had been shot down.

[__aaltlg1547]

Didn't this come up in court last year and didn't the court send Oracle packing?

Re:Perhaps it is for the best.

[__aaltlg1547]

But it would be precedent saying that APIs can by copyrighted, which they can't because they're technical methods, not creative works, and if the Oracle API becomes copyrighted, every API that isn't called public domain by its makers can be copyrighted and almost no matter what you use, you will have to pay several different entities for function calls, API calls, etc.

Bronies

[tepples]

Why should we end a pony?

One word: bronies.

Offline use

[tepples]

time for you to re-skill and get those clunky java GUIs replaces with HTML5 ones, then replace the back end with a REST-based API written in [something else]

And have it stop working the moment the user's device leaves the building and loses the Wi-Fi connection. Some people expect to get things done while riding transit, you know.

Intentionally unimplemented JS APIs

[tepples]

the state-of-the-art is currently HTML-based GUIs, and they are as identical as you can get

Which means you switch the client side from Java to JS. So how do you make sure that the JS APIs that you rely on are available on all users' devices? Apple refuses to implement WebGL on iOS, and Microsoft refuses to implement WebGL anywhere, for what they call security reasons. And good luck finding one offline storage solution that works across web platforms: some support only IndexedDB, while others support only WebSQL (a thin wrapper around SQLite). Even access to user-selected files didn't work on iOS until iOS 6, and it still doesn't work for anything but photos and videos.

Re:Intentionally unimplemented JS APIs

[Billly Gates]

Thats not realistic.

I think geeks are living in the 20th century here. I know of No and I mean No website that uses java for client applets. ... well maybe Oracle's javaFX page but that is it :-)

I bet most of the slashdotters thinking Java = gui probably use Java intranet pages all the time at work and never know it.

Java is part of the servlet framework. Also what about devices like Cisco routers. I have employers who still use IE 7 as these CISCO switches are not cheap to replace and they can't be viewed with anything else.

Java runs on mainframes, accounting apps, CRM, and other things that does no client displaying at all. No JS is not a solution to replace no more than a shell script is meant to replace C for the Linux kernel.

BS&FUD

[tepples]

The law firm BS&F [...] will continue to clog the courts with their BS & FUD

It surprised me that Google Search thinks you're the first to expand the F in BS&F's name this way. Google bs&f bs&fud (sco OR oracle) failed to turn up anything. Congratulations on coming up with something that isn't an old meme.

Compare Tetris v. Xio

[tepples]

The API is the abstract definition how a library is supposed to work.

Oracle's argument is that the abstract definition itself is original enough to be considered a work of authorship. This argument worked for The Tetris Company when it successfully sued Xio Software for copyright infringement a year ago for having reimplemented the game of falling puzzle pieces made of four squares.

Appeal, appeal en banc, and appeal to SCOTUS

[tepples]

A litigant who loses in district court can appeal to a court of appeals. A litigant who loses in a court of appeals can appeal to a larger panel of judges in the same court, called an appeal en banc. A litigant who loses en banc can appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Re:Appeal, appeal en banc, and appeal to SCOTUS

[__aaltlg1547]

I think they only have the right of one appeal and the superior court normally only considers evidence that was presented at the first court. In general, they are looking for grounds that the lower court made an error of law or the litigants were denied some rights they should have had. Higher courts can simply decline to hear the case.

I think those rules are too limiting in some cases and too loose in others. In criminal cases, there is sometimes new evidence that could be presented in the appeal and that should be allowed, but only if the evidence was not available to the defendants at the time of the first trial. For example, if a witness comes forward placing the defendant at a different place than where the crime was committed, or if DNA evidence is examined and excludes the suspect. In civil cases, I don't think new evidence should be allowed and the losing litigant should not get an automatic appeal. They should have to present evidence to the appeals court that the lower court made an error of law or did not consider facts that were presented in evidence before they are granted a full review.

In this case, I don't see how an appeals court could overturn the original decision, because the original decision comports with the law and many legal precedents.

Re:Appeal, appeal en banc, and appeal to SCOTUS

[tepples]

In criminal cases, there is sometimes new evidence that could be presented in the appeal and that should be allowed, but only if the evidence was not available to the defendants at the time of the first trial. [But] In civil cases, I don't think new evidence should be allowed

Can you explain why, specifically, you think new evidence that was not available to a defendant in a civil case should be barred, especially in a legal system where the alleged infringer always has to pay his own costs no matter who wins?

the original decision comports with the law and many legal precedents

The whole reason that Oracle filed this appeal is that Oracle disagrees with this assertion.

Re:Appeal, appeal en banc, and appeal to SCOTUS

[__aaltlg1547]

In criminal cases, there is sometimes new evidence that could be presented in the appeal and that should be allowed, but only if the evidence was not available to the defendants at the time of the first trial. [But] In civil cases, I don't think new evidence should be allowed

Can you explain why, specifically, you think new evidence that was not available to a defendant in a civil case should be barred, especially in a legal system where the alleged infringer always has to pay his own costs no matter who wins?

the original decision comports with the law and many legal precedents

The whole reason that Oracle filed this appeal is that Oracle disagrees with this assertion.

In a word, effiiency. Yes, it compromises justice somewhat, but also if you make it so you can present new evidence in the appeal you make for lazy lawyering. We want to incentivize both sides to present their best case at the first trial.

The reason I don't think that's appropriate in criminal trials is that there are few criminal appeals anyway and when there are appeals, and peoples' lives and public safety are on the line.

Who believed Java would remain open?

[ebno-10db]

Anyone who believed, at anytime since the Beginning of Java, that it would remain reliably "open", in the sense of Sun or now Oracle not at some point playing legal games like this, was being naive and unjustifiably optimistic. Even if Sun management was sincere, management can change, by for example being bought by Oracle. Even if this silly suit doesn't succeed, or even if it was never brought, there would always be the cloud over Java that it could happen.

Re:Moving away is not viable

[Billly Gates]

First off where are you going to move too?

Second, problem is the customer is not you but your boss. You know the same one who has IE 6 apps and wont upgrade as that does not raise the shareprice? The one who buys things without your approval and says support it or find another job? The one who has to check in with accounting before anything can be approved and writes a business plan on how the shareprice will go up if we do X etc?

Third, what about the legacy crap already there? The stuff that just works and is central to a business process that your boss does not want you to touch unless you are upgrading it. Some of this stuff wont go away PERIOD.

Fourth, is money. Money talks and shit walks. So much money has been invested in your career, training, and your employers infrastructure that you might as well flush it down the toilet to start over. Sunk costs are not tolerated in corporate America. Rewritting all this shit even in a much better platform does not make economical sense.

Notice I did not give a single technical reason yet?! ... last on the very bottom are technical reasons geeks care about.

Name one other platform that has hibernate, rest, MVC, spring, and a million other frameworks? I know of just one that comes close and that is another company that is despised here and even that is missing some things if you know who I am talking about?

If you are a geek at school or hobbiest in a basement we do not give a shit about you or your needs frankly. Those who say oh we will leave you ORACLE!! are ridiculous. Management loves them and is dependent on them and with the first 4 reasons above they can't and wont leave. In their mind they never heard of this silly things if you can't Oracle to work like everyone else than perhaps you should consider a different field?? etc.

Worse, same shit will happen to Mono if Oracle wins as this gives SCO and MS a reason to copyright all clones and clean room implementations. This will ruin everyone.

Java on Mathworld

[tepples]

"No and I mean No" are strong words. I could think of at least one example: Rotatable polyhedra on Mathworld pages, such as dodecahedra seen here, use a Java applet to let the user rotate the three-dimensional figures. Look immediately above the text "The regular dodecahedron is the Platonic solid".

Re:Java on Mathworld

[Billly Gates]

Ok we have 2 whole websites.

No is a strong word as I have not seen it in 10 years. Java can't be replaced because it is run on Enterprise Application Servers and with its thick and extensive frameworks it is difficult to find a replacement. Especially one where it can't fixed very quickly and cheaply. If something took 9 years to mature with Java from scratch it will take 9 years plus longer in something else as the frameworks are not there in other platforms.

Someone was actually serious about mentioning C?! Are you kidding?

Re:Perhaps it is for the best.

[FlyingGuy]

As a language designed specifically for the mass a garbage that is the WWW it is not the best, but it is also not the worst.

Re:Perhaps it is for the best.

[FlyingGuy]

I know everyone love to shit all over Oracle, but you cannot lay all the problems with Java at their feet and to try and do so makes you look rather, well, for lack of a better word, foolish. The problems existed long before Oracle acquired Sun.

Re:Perhaps it is for the best.

[ArcadeMan]

Man, don't get me *started* on garbage collection!!!!

I agree with you. Last tuesday these jerks just tossed my garbage can on its side after emptying it.

Re:Moving away is not viable

[gbjbaanb]

you forget that most of what you mention already happens. Think MS cared that you learned VB6/Silverlight/Linq2Sql/ASP.NET/etc and now those things are obsolete and your boss is clamouring for a cheap replacement strategy, whilst the geeks are clamouring to work on the next technology that looks good on their CV? Java's just another one of those.

Your career training is a short-term thing in our industry, always was.

I do agree, copyrighting Java will have a knock-on effect that will be detrimental to geeks everywhere - but also beneficial to the corporate technology giants who will then have a hammer to beat the free stuff with.. given your insistence on non-technical reasons, don't you think they will all try to let Oracle win.

Re:Moving away is not viable

[Billly Gates]

I do not live in Silicon Valley so employers do not care about these buzzwords. They do care about worked on Java doing crm for x amount of years for intranet app on CVs.

I saw an ad which stated IE 6 experience A MUST! just last year. Obviously, they had to write something for that browser for stuborn customers who did not want to upgrade.

Point is the customer does not like buzzwords and has no concept of being left behind. I.T. is like plumbing to them where they pay a service (a cloud) and data goes down some pipes and through a black box different data comes back into the output pipe. They do not want to upgrade their systems. They do not care about geek issues.

They just want someone with references and can do boring business apps and won't wine when the platform is Oracle. Maybe I am very cyncical and have worked for very cheap employers who simply do not care and look at me as a cost?

I can't be alone and it would be nice if geeks ran the I.T. departments again and things were like universities where new stuff isn't feared and politicals and picking a winning company and software vendors tying things to bad technology send their base sales people too the non technical bosses.

Re:Perhaps it is for the best.

[FlyingGuy]

Actually I would have to say it went off the rails at 1.4. Prior to this it was a language that fulfilled a laudable goal. After that it was just down hill and that course has not changed. It is the classic too many ornaments on the tree condition.

Java as a language for the web is utterly laughable as evidenced by the massively bloated applications that are Tomcat and Glassfish, Weblogic and the rest.

But the ultimate insult is the world wide web. Stateless, anonymous and ultimately hideous to try and accomplish anything of substance. While some might disagree, they have only to look at web sites with very large java back ends to notice how lethargic they were are and continue to be.

Re:Groklaw's Gas Pedal analogy

[PuZZleDucK]

Then you'll need to apply an analogous band-aid.

Since oracle v 7 (or 8)

[ananthap]

Since oracle v 7 (or 8), Oracle has released their data base products first on NT and then on Unixes (Solaris, HP-UX etc). Oracle's plaint will mostly help microsoft by attempting to finish off java. If they finish off Java as an open source product we can only hope that oracle corporation doesn't get a cease and desist injunction for all past version of the API that are floating about. OK