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Six-Hour Meeting Friday Fails to End Oracle/Google Lawsuit (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google and Oracle executives met for six hours Friday in an unsuccessful attempt to resolve an ongoing copyright lawsuit. "Because an agreement couldn't be made, the next phase of the case will head to court in May, where a jury will decide if Google had the right to use certain parts of Oracle's programming language, Java, for free or if it owes Oracle damages..." reports Business Insider. "Last month, Google said that its damages expert strongly disagreed that it should owe Oracle upward of $8 billion for using certain parts of Oracle's software in its smartphone operating system, Android."
Friday's court-ordered talk included both Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Oracle CEO Safra Catz, and it marks the second time the two companies have failed to reach an out-of-court settlement, a fact alluded to by the case's judge in newly-released documents. "After an earlier run at settling this case failed, the court observed that some cases just need to be tried," reports the court docket. "This case apparently needs to be tried twice."
Friday's court-ordered talk included both Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Oracle CEO Safra Catz, and it marks the second time the two companies have failed to reach an out-of-court settlement, a fact alluded to by the case's judge in newly-released documents. "After an earlier run at settling this case failed, the court observed that some cases just need to be tried," reports the court docket. "This case apparently needs to be tried twice."
"a jury will decide if Google had the right to use certain parts of Oracle's programming language, Java, for free or if it owes Oracle damages"
That's the way Oracle wants to spin it.
Java is GPL'd, and Google didn't use Oracles/Sun Java machine anyway. So YES Google can use Oracles code because it's GPLd and Oracle agreed to that in the GPL. Do you mean "can Oracle back out of the GPL contract?" because no they can't. In any case Google did not use Oracles VM anyway. It used Davlik VM.
The question is, can Google use a piece of software that implements the same API as Oracle's/Sun Java. As if the API can be separated from the software somehow you can GPL the software without GPL'ing the API it implements. Fat fooking chance.
Oracle bought Java when it bought Sun. Sun made a product called 'WABI' a Windows clone that implemented the Windows API on Unix. So Oracle are hoping to fool the jury here. It implemented someone elses API, the API in question is under GPL, i.e. they explicitly gave permission in contract form to copy it.
So what is the question really.... can Oracle fool a jury into making a bad decision letting Oracle break a contract and putting all open software at risk?