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Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google (bloomberg.com)
Google could owe Oracle billions of dollars after an appeals court said it didn't have the right to use the Oracle-owned Java programming code in its Android operating system on mobile devices. From a report: Google's use of Java shortcuts to develop Android went too far and was a violation of Oracle's copyrights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled. The case was remanded to a federal court in California to determine how much the Alphabet unit should pay.
The dispute is over pre-written directions known as application program interfaces, or APIs, which can work across different types of devices and provide the instructions for things like connecting to the internet or accessing certain types of files. By using the APIs, programmers don't have to write new code from scratch to implement every function in their software or change it for every type of device. The case has divided Silicon Valley for years, testing the boundaries between the rights of those who develop interface code and those who rely on it to develop software programs.
The dispute is over pre-written directions known as application program interfaces, or APIs, which can work across different types of devices and provide the instructions for things like connecting to the internet or accessing certain types of files. By using the APIs, programmers don't have to write new code from scratch to implement every function in their software or change it for every type of device. The case has divided Silicon Valley for years, testing the boundaries between the rights of those who develop interface code and those who rely on it to develop software programs.
And the amount of server-side legacy code being replaced by Java is staggering. Legacy code is considered obsolete, and is being replaced just about everywhere it exists. I don't work in the cable industry. The amount of code that's being refactored towards Java is in, and of itself, mind blowing.
Sun and later Oracle were so fixated on the nonfunctional J2ME stack that they didn't see Google coming. Sun had the skeleton of what later became Android with the SavaJe acquisition but didn't have the funds or desire to make it happen. They (and later Oracle) failed to adequately invest in mobile and now Google has. Larry is simply pissed that someone other than himself is making money on something he neglected to capitalize on. To Lawsuit Larry, that's a crime - to anyone else, it's called business.
Organization? You must be joking..