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Oracle: Google Has "Destroyed" the Market For Java

itwbennett writes: Oracle made a request late last month to broaden its case against Android. Now, claiming that 'Android has now irreversibly destroyed Java's fundamental value proposition as a potential mobile device operating system,' Oracle on Wednesday filed a supplemental complaint in San Francisco district court that encompasses the six Android versions that have come out since Oracle originally filed its case back in 2010: Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, Kit Kat and Lollipop.

9 of 457 comments (clear)

  1. Groklaw Needed More Than Ever by linuxrocks123 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a shame Pamela Jones shuttered Groklaw ... her insight into this case would have been invaluable.

    We need to stop the dangerous idea that interfaces can be copyrighted before it becomes as much a bane on software as software patents were before Alice vs. CLS Bank.

    --
    vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
    1. Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the API headers are the most valuable part of your software... you're doing something wrong.

  2. Re:Oracle's monopoly? by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because J2ME was such a brilliant mobile platform.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  3. Profiting on the Backs of Others by Great+Big+Bird · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oracle (then Sun) could have created an operating system for mobile phones based around Java. But since Google did, they want to profit off of it? They should go to hell.

    1. Re:Profiting on the Backs of Others by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      By "irreversibly destroyed Java's fundamental value", Oracle means "we should be getting payments from Google because they're using a version of Java that they didn't license from us to make money." Everything else is fluff.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  4. Fuck Oracle by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Java was never useful on phones until Google built something decent.

    Sun/Oracle could never build a decent phone with Java, no matter how much money they pumped into it.

    If you work somewhere that uses Oracle products or is considering an Oracle product, fight to the bone to get their shitware tossed out.

    We need to end this company, it's a tumor in the software ecosystem.

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    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  5. Ooops, misread the headline by gnunick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At first, I read that as "Oracle Has 'Destroyed' the Market For Java"... which, of course, seemed quite plausible.

    RIP SUN

    --
    I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
  6. Oracle confuses language and operating system by Morgaine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'Android has now irreversibly destroyed Java 's fundamental value proposition as a potential mobile device operating system ,'

    Java is a programming language, not an operating system. Examples of operating systems are Linux and Unix.

    Nothing could have "destroyed Java's fundamental value proposition as a potential mobile device operating system" because the value proposition of Java as an operating system is zero, and always has been. It's like the value proposition of an orange to be an apple.

    Oracle's nonsensical claim might be merely a case of lawyers or managers showing their ignorance of the computing subject domain or just being sloppy with their terminology, which is not uncommon. However, it gets worse.

    A proprietary software package may have a calculated expectation of market share and profit if there is no competition, but this is not the case with programming languages because they always have competition from countless other languages. It is especially not the case with open source programming languages because they typically enjoy multiple implementations, and these make captive markets almost impossible to maintain.

    It seems therefore that Oracle's market expectations were based on a flawed analysis.

    That mistake would have made any market expectations unsafe, but any expectations were dealt a further blow by Oracle's highly abusive attempt to copyright SSO in their litigation against Google. This must have alienated practically everybody who knows anything about programming, and the likelihood is high that many Java programmers who had other languages available must have abandoned Java like the plague to avoid potential SSO copyright liability.

    In other words, if anyone killed off interest in Java, it was probably Oracle themselves.

    --
    "The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
  7. Re:Oracle's monopoly? by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oracle are the ones that have destroyed Java since nobody trusts Oracle and their licensing.

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    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.