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.

Comments

Groklaw Needed More Than Ever

[linuxrocks123]

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.

Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever

[Luthair]

She was conspiring with Bob against Eve!

Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever

[0123456]

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

Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever

[flink]

And the difference between this and the MS Java case is...what exactly? Because the only difference I can see is Google pulled a name out of their ass, which means all MSFT had to do was call it "MS Coffee" and it would have all been golden.

The difference is trademarks. Microsoft called their unauthorized implementation Java(tm). You don't get to do that without passing Sun's certification process. MS never implemented the entire Java specification. They modified some parts and left others out (embrace and extend). So someone who wrote a Java program against the Sun JDK and brought it to the MS platform would potentially see it fail out of the box. Due to these issues Sun used it's trademark to sue for relief from having its brand damaged.

This is different from unauthorized implementations that did not claim to be official Java products. Indeed, prior to Sun open sourcing the HotSpot JVM, there were quite a few open source unofficial implementations: e.g. GNU Kaffe, Apache Harmony, GCJ, etc. Claiming ownership over interfaces/API is a new and treacherous behavior that came along with Oracle.

And what if somebody was to do this to Linux? After all they have access to the code, should be easy enough to just rip it off and take it proprietary by following the Google model, what would the difference be? None at all.

None. Linus owns the Linux trademark in many countries. Assuming someone didn't copy the source code and just re-implemented the APIs, it would be totally kosher as long as you didn't call it "Linux". How do you think Linux was allowed to exist in the first place? It's just an unauthorized implementation of a bunch of POSIX APIs, but because Linus didn't call his kernel a UNIX(tm) system or claim POSIX(tm) compliance, he didn't run afoul of trademark law.

Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever

[Cederic]

The irony being that BEA bought JRockit because their JVM implementation was significantly better than Sun's on Intel, and Oracle bought BEA.

This is before Oracle bought Sun, so Oracle were themselves doing to Sun what they're claiming Google have done to them.

Fundamentally it all boils down to Larry Ellison and his company being cunts.

Re:Oracle's monopoly?

[MightyMartian]

Because J2ME was such a brilliant mobile platform.

Profiting on the Backs of Others

[Great Big Bird]

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.

Re:Profiting on the Backs of Others

[binarylarry]

The problem with J2ME is that it's awful.

It's always been awful, I've always dreaded using apps on pre iOS/Android phones.

Re: Profiting on the Backs of Others

[binarylarry]

Microsoft licensed the Java platform and trademark and then intentionally built an incompatible implementation, put the Java logo on it and claimed compatibility.

Android has never claimed to be a compliant Java platform, it merely lets you use the Java programming language and GNU's standard java library (gcj & libjava) to build apps for Android.

Re:Profiting on the Backs of Others

[Dutch Gun]

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.

Fuck Oracle

[binarylarry]

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.

JAVA FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

Java...[garbage collection] is the .[garbage collection] best .[garbage collection] programming .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] language for .[garbage collection] mobile devices .[garbage collection] .[garbage collection] because it is .[garbage collection] faster .[garbage collection] then C++ and .[garbage collection] more .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] deterministic and .[garbage collection] .[garbage collection] .[garbage collection] nev .[garbage collection] er .[garbage collection] drops .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] user .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] input.

I like Java .[garbage collection] becuase .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] it's write .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] once, .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] and it runs .[garbage collection] .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] provided you have all .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] the libraries, the .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] correct java interpreter .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] and enough .[garbage collection].[garbage collection]

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at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:152)
at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.handle(Server.java:326)
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at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection$RequestHandler.content(HttpConnection.java:943)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseNext(HttpParser.java:756)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseAvailable(HttpParser.java:218)
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Caused by: com.example.myproject.MyProjectServletException

Ooops, misread the headline

[gnunick]

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

RIP SUN

Really???

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody feel sorry for Oracle???

Oracle confuses language and operating system

[Morgaine]

'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.

Re:Oracle's monopoly?

[Z00L00K]

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

Re: Oracle's monopoly?

[AC-x]

That means that Google must comply with Oracle's terms within the limits defined by law.

But Google doesn't use Java, they use Dalvik/ART, which aren't written by Oracle and therefore don't have Oracle's ToCs attached to them.

They do happen to be compatible with Java, but if you are allowed to copyright APIs (which is what Oracle are pushing for) then that would be absolutely insane for the IT industry, as you wouldn't be able to implement an API (or possibly even access an API) without the permission of whoever wrote that API.