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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.
Who?
I know people who are actively *NOT* buying Oracle because of stupid lawsuits.
But maybe Larry doesn't care anymore, he has enough money to play, and can't spend it all before he dies.
Weird.
FFS... we need a special court for tech cases.
Too much money and power in play.
This could take decades.
On the one side you have the engineers that rely on APIs to Get Stuff Done, on the assumption that that's why the APIs exist. On the other side you have the 1% parasites who realize "oops, somebody took our work and made billions off it. Bring in the lawyers!"
Now I must go and wash my mouth out. Both of them are bad but here, Oracle is worse.
I see a lot of people complaining Oracle is in the wrong here.
Why is that the case? It's true that without the large number of Java programmers around, Android would not have had nearly as fast a rate of adoption as far as application creation went. That gave Google a huge benefit for the platform, for which they did not pay Oracle anything.
Sure Google may have just used the API and written the underlying implementation, but think about it - most languages these days are only powerful because of extensive libraries and API's. People familiar with the extent of Java API's would be able to develop applications far more quickly for Android than if they had just used Java the language but come up with a whole new standard library.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Have I completely misunderstood this case or has Bloomberg?
They certainly are working hard to kill Java. Besides the lawsuits, Oracle also gives Java lousy support and upgrade options. Few companies can make Microsoft seem the less evil alternative (C-sharp/.NET), and Oracle is one of them.
Table-ized A.I.
A ruling in Oracle's favor would shut down the ability to use Wine to run Windows-exclusive applications on your Mac because Microsoft could assert copyright in the Windows API against the Wine developers. Is that an outcome that you find helpful to the economy?
So... is 'Larry the Scumbag considered the lesser evil, yet??
Of all the bad laws being thought up in the EU, at least they got the API copyright decision correct.
APIs are not copyright-able in the EU according to their highest court.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/eus-top-court-apis-cant-be-copyrighted-would-monopolise-ideas
...for Ever More Bucks. Screw every other consideration.
How much more concentration of wealth do we need?
Wouldn't this be a non-issue. I still don't understand how Java is open source but not open source.
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Thanks for killing Java as a programming language and forcing everyone to move to Python instead, because I just LOVE it when it complains I indented by 3 spaces instead of 4!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Oracle claims Google was in such a rush in the mid-2000s to create an operating system for mobile devices that the company used key parts of copyrighted Java technology without paying royalties.
If this is true, it certainly isnt happening again. Google dominates smartphones and could very easily decide to phase out java for go/rust, torpedoing whatever rent-seeking strategy Oracle had originally devised. What oracle is attempting to do is nothing short of what Microsoft tried to do with TomTom's implementation of FAT. If BTRFS, percona, and maria are any indication its not the work that matters. Plenty of talented engineers are willing to devote their time and effort to avoiding Oracle. Quite frankly the Oracle Database has turned into a manacle for Ellison. Unable to prevent its inevitable loss to open source alternatives through NDA agreements that prohibit public release of independent Oracle performance tests, and unable to convince cloud-bound companies to continue forking out high dollar per-core licenses for it, The software exists as a 90s anachronism to the hubris of dotcom. Oracle Enterprise Linux was, for all its intentions, a flop, and after acquisition and rebranding MySQL is a withered husk compared to its open source counterparts.
Good people go to bed earlier.
A ruling in Oracle's favor would shut down the ability to use Wine to run Windows-exclusive applications on your Mac
First of all, I question if this is really true. It's a different case because it presents a way for executables to make system calls that work, it's not the same as an API specific to a programming language. It is very similar, I grant you that.
Also, WINE is not making any money, whereas Google has made a ton of money from Android.
Double also, Microsoft benefits from people being able to run Windows applications in more places, because it encourages more Windows development.
Lastly though, I have to say think it would be awful to lose WINE. But the question is, would it be wrong? And in the larger scope of things, should I consider it bad to lose something that helps propagate the continuation of Windows?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
C# would actually be a good language, if it weren't completely Microsoft-specific. Microsoft obviously analyzed all the common errors C++ programmers make, and tried to create a language in which those mistakes weren't possible. Combined with Managed Code, it allows them to develop more reliable software with worse programmers.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Keep repeating that until people understand the facts.
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.
Let me take a stab at using my journalism skills to improve the clarity and accuracy of this summary:
At the heart of the issue is a technical lingo known as API, which is how programmers tell computers what to do. Since computers can only do as they're told, and only understand ones and zeroes, programmers must use a special robot language to talk to computers, which gets translated from the programmer's magical jargon to a series of ones and zeroes. Unfortunately, a series of ones and zeroes looks very similar to other series of ones and zeroes, so it can be difficult for programmers to keep track of what they're telling the computer.
That's where APIs help; they let the programmers speak more normally to computers, using a pseudo-robot language like "while iterating a data structure perform calculations on the user's social data network", which gets translated into a series of ones and zeroes like "1000101".
I was about to write a class implementing the .NET IComparable interface when I read this. In light of this I guess we can't do this without a licensing agreement. Oh well, lunch time.
> ORCL Mkt cap 189.87B
> GOOG Mkt cap 726.29B
Nah, I think Google is actually pretty happy they didn't buy Sun.
This doesn't matter anymore. Google are no longer the good guys who need to be defended. Now that they've abandoned "don't be evil" they're just another tech titan. Let 'em battle it out with their fellow evildoer.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Few companies can make Microsoft seem the less evil alternative (C-sharp/.NET), and Oracle is one of them.
Microsoft has open sourced the core of .NET under an MIT license, plus a patent grant. It's not hard to seem more evil than that...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This type of argument has been going on for ages in one form or another. When spreadsheets were new there were look and feel lawsuits where companies tried to claim ownership of the design of the user interface for their product. The same with all sorts of other stuff. The evolution of HTML was largely driven at first by Netscape's innovations with the standards committee just trying desperately to keep up ... sort of.
Google has benefited by making use of the Java API, how much they should pay if anything is still being argued. Personally I think Oracle should control the definition of the API but not benefit from someone else's implementation. If you publish a recipe it doesn't mean you can charge all the cooks that use the recipe to produce something. Not only that the purpose of publishing the API is to encourage people to write software that uses the API, I don't see how the direction of use can be controlled by the copyright holder.
Clearly the only difference between the companies is whether they bought Sun. I mean, they both produce databases, and query databases as their primary business. Now, Oracle does it as a middleware, and Google does databases of tracking, ads and searches (in that order) which it then provides as a service, but it's the same thing. Computery-stuff is all interchangable. That's why I have web designers write all my C code for embedded devices.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Didn't IBM have their own complete implementation of Java for years?
Did they just pay licensing/royalties for it? Why are they not in the debate?
The decades of embrace, extend, and extinguish have made many wary of MS adoption. The other extreme is how MS suddenly abandons things leaving developers anxious. For example any developer that bet on Windows Phone is not getting much on return.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
from parent "it allows them to develop more reliable software with worse programmers."
Come on now. Don't be so coy. You can say it: Indo-Chmps
Speak truth to power.
.NET Core and Xamarin allow use of C# on other platforms.
The decades of embrace, extend, and extinguish have made many wary of MS adoption.
This is exactly the reason that I won't touch TypeScript.
Microsoft technologies are The One Ring ... they serve only one master. (And you, nor your customers, are it.)
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..
Or actually any amount you want.
Heard of .NET Core?
15 years ago, I was handed a project to interface with a system where the only documentation was the Java reference implementation. The company we were dealing with did everything in Java; there was no support from them if you strayed from the safe lands of Java.
When they started doing "proper" documentation, Java was first and foremost in it. There was slight mention of other programming languages.
Now, you cannot find Java mentioned in any of their documentation. You can submit support requests for PHP, .NET, Python, or even Perl, but not Java.... You're on your own if you wander in the lands of Java.
The decades of embrace, extend, and extinguish have made many wary of MS adoption.
What did they embrace, extend and extinguish? Seems that if this was going on for decades there should be a *lot* of examples you can point to. Certainly it isn't Java or web standards.
"Part of Google’s defense focused on the idea that Java was developed for desktop computers, while Android was created for phones and other mobile devices."
If that was Google's defense then they should have lost in court. Java was developed for mobile devices FIRST! That was Java's intended use. The desktop market took over when the developers realized the potential the JVM provided.
Lesson learned about using Java or anything from Oracle. Migrate away from their products as fast as you can. Oracle is not a good company to get software because you will eventually be burned by them. Makes you wonder if it was Sun/Oracle who put SCO up to suing others over Linux.
Oracle develops a code for anyone to use, then gets butthurt when anyone uses it?!?!?
I'm conflicted about who to root for in this thug on thug match up.
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C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."
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Then R.I.P. Java. It is too dangerous to develop new software if APIs suddenly acquire copyright protection because the licensing terms effectively change and could impact your business. At this point to run a business responsibly you should negotiate up front what your license terms for tools, compilers and APIs should be. Going with platforms, tools and languages that are open licensed is going to be necessary for many businesses that don't have the resources to wrestle with licenses, lawyers and sales staff with complex licensing payment terms.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
When Alsup took the time to actually teach himself some basics of programming and made a ruling based on a surprisingly informed decision for a judge, that should have been the end of it. You would think, upon reviewing the case, any appellate judge with even a few lingering vestiges of integrity, would defer to someone who took the time and effort to make themselves a minor expert on the matter and reject the request for an appeal.
Yes, yes, I know. In an age where judges are appointed based on their political ideologies rather than their qualifications for the job, and performance as a lawyer/lower court judge, expecting any amount of integrity is laughably naive.
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So, the jury reached a verdict, but the court system throws it out and reverses the decision unilaterally? Why bother then? It's a waste of taxpayer money to fund "court" proceedings apparently.
What do you mean it isn't certainly Java? You do remember the federal trial concerning MS right? MS tried to embrace, extinguish, and extend with Java. As for web standards, they tried the same thing with the browser (again at the trial). Then there's the hijacking of the Open Office XML standard. I suggest you do a simple google search. Or if you are too lazy, read wikipedia.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
They certainly are working hard to kill Java. Besides the lawsuits, Oracle also gives Java lousy support and upgrade options. Few companies can make Microsoft seem the less evil alternative (C-sharp/.NET), and Oracle is one of them.
evil microsoft. way to ancient 90s mentality it up in here. you forgot the $.
You can't kill Java developers. There are hordes of them that are all looking to work for barely above minimum wage. Average Java developer salary is $73k/year, but about 5% of them will take substantially less than that. It's not unheard of to pay contractors $36k/year, that's about $18/hour.
I don't consider them supported well enough to use on Linux projects, but maybe someday...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
cant wait for a javaless android , there where a few projects going on even one at google , wonder where its at
.NET Core and Xamarin allow use of a subtly incompatible, incomplete subset of C# on a very few other platforms.
> Wait, what? Int round(float) isn't what is in question here, it's what the function round does and the underlying code to execute it.
Half right.
Oracle's claim is that Google isn't allowed to have round(float) round it's input. Google says the copyright protects the *expression* of the idea, the implementation. The actual copyright statute says the idea is not protected, the expression of the idea is. Oracle says it's unlawful for Google to have a function called round() which rounds it's input, because Java has that. Google would have to call theirs round_a_number() or something, Oracle says.
Google says you are allowed to make something COMPATIBLE with java, with a different implementation. Oracle says making it java compatible was unlawful.
> This is whether or not Google has the right to implement its own JVM.
And you can't implement a JVM without having round(). HOW round works can change (the expression, aka implementation).
What do you mean it isn't certainly Java? You do remember the federal trial concerning MS right? MS tried to embrace, extinguish, and extend with Java. As for web standards, they tried the same thing with the browser (again at the trial). Then there's the hijacking of the Open Office XML standard. I suggest you do a simple google search. Or if you are too lazy, read wikipedia.
No, most people don't remember the 22 year old phrase from a company that has undergone significant change in both management and operation. People may vaguely remember the browser wars but that was mainly other companies bitching that MS had too much market share and they couldn't compete (I know there was more). Your average person didn't really know or care and your tech savvy person would just get around all that BS. That Wikipedia article does really just reinforces that even when Sun owned Java they were litigious. All large companies have done some bad things but in general I'd choose today's MS over Oracle any day.
What Google made was a Java-compatible runtime.
Oracle claims that making it compatible, using the same interface, is unlawful.
Consider anything that uses any kind of network protocol, serial, protocol, etc. If Oracle wins, the precedent is that it's unlawful to make an accessory compatible with any device which uses a non-standard protocol, because you'd be copying interface, just as Google copied the interface to Java.
Technically true.
But not practically so.
Google and some others too. It was utterly demented to allow Oracle to get control of Sun.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Suddenly abandon ... you mean like Google does? MS at least supported Windows Phone for a few years, and briefly allowed upgrades to W10 on even marginally usable old hardware. Google, the phone carriers, and especially the OEMs using it don't do that. Result is that my olde WinPhone is currently running W10, though blocked at a release for which support finally ended after 1/18 (for a 2014 model).
I'm not going to claim MS supports stuff forever, like IBM. Or even like Apple. But they're better than Google in that regard.
Now what does all this have to do with Java, other than the lawsuit? Google isn't without fault in the matter, but I'm not sure making API's copyrightable by themselves is right either. A logical outcome of this, for instance, is to render Windows and DOS clones (DOSBox, DRDOS, Wine and other Linux subsystems for Windows compatibility, for instance) infringing.
"The other extreme is how MS suddenly abandons things leaving developers anxious"
Yea thank god I've built my business around Google products instead.
If this precedent passes, IBM will overnight regain ownership of the *ENTIRE WINTEL ECOSYSTEM*. Or even more ironic, Lenovo will, if the transfer of IBM's PC division included all of the intellectual property including IBM's BIOS code. Everything since the Compaq cloning case will be rendered moot as this copyright precedent will require everybody who implemented BIOS calls to pay licensing tribute back to IBM, retroactively. Anybody still including legacy support will drop it like its hot, coreboot will have to shut down, etc.
This will also eliminate qemu and company since you won't legally have a right to use a cpu architecture's assembly/opcodes because they will be protected by copyright.
If this cases has passed/passes, it truly will be time to burn America, or at least D.C. to the ground.
It's not really a matter of support.
Parts of .net were standardized in ECMA 334 and 335 and as with all MS sponsored standards, the usual fast tracked (read as not reviewed) ISO. The real problem is, that beyond what is contained in those Standards, you enter a patent minefield, that makes dealing with Oracle feel like a free trip to Disneyland and makes Larry Ellison look like the Tooth Fairy's kinder sister.
Microsoft did issue a Patent Promise, however they specifically do not cover your possible infringement, in case they sell one or more patents to third parties
Then suddenly using a compressed connection to a DB, or generating OOXML-formatted reports infringing on "Cellspacing like Excel'95" could blow up in your face
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geez -- feels like a tennis match. This case is still going on?!?!
Fair use, not fair, Out of bounds. Lob. Love.
call me when it's over.
So? Apple gained a huge benefit for their platform by freeloading BSD for which they did not pay the authors anything.
Exactly right!!
The difference is that Apple used code that was EXPLICITLY given for others to use for free. BSD gave everyone permission to use not just the API's, but the code behind the API's.
So then it would follow, if you took something like Java not under a BSD license, and tried to use it, there might be trouble if you used it in a way the license holders did not allow.
In any case Google has contributed to the development Java through the JCP.
But that is irrelevant, it's not like Oracle considered that payment for the license use in question, even if it was helpful to the Java community.
Just why do you think Google switched to Kotlin anyway, they saw this coming a mile away.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The decades of embrace, extend, and extinguish have made many wary of MS adoption.
Yup username checks out....
Then you are just uninformed. But if you haven't bothered to notice how much the company have changed especially with the current CEO, the nothing will seem to have changed. It is kind of a self-fulfilling mindset.
Huh? M$ is still evil and still have the work world by the balls. Wanna list?
Table-ized A.I.
That patent grant is so poorly written, that every single FOSS lawyer is advising against using it. In fact usage of the MONO project libraries is universally considered a legal problem waiting to happen (by everybody but Canonical ... which is owned by Microsoft).
It describes to a person who can understand it how, at least theoretically, something works or is supposed to work, but does not itself offer any useful function or purpose beyond educating a person with a sufficient understanding of relevant source material on how whatever is described by it might be built. It's actually just a description of how the thing would work *IF* you actually built it.
It's worth noting, also, that electronic schematics are not ordinarily even considered to be copyrightable by themselves. There can be trademarks used in the schematic, or copyrighted content in it preventing wholesale copying. You can also patent whatever thing it is a schematic for, or you can keep your schematics a trade secret entirely to protect them, but if you publish a schematic there is *NOTHING* that you can legally do to stop someone else from copying that schematic and using it in something of their own design unless they have *OTHERWISE* infringed on your intellectual property (in which case it is not the copying of the schematic that is the problem, rather it is the other infringement that is actually an issue).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
as absurd as your example is there are lawyers who will file a law suit alleging that and ferociously pursue companies big and little for a cash settlement in the patent troll friendly East District of Texas courts. Whether they are right or wrong doesn't matter. So long as victims pay up it doesn't matter.
I was wondering why a second language suddenly appeared in the Android IDE. I'm assuming Google will be solely supporting Kotlin soon?
The court is simply wrong. The court is not qualified to rule on the matter.
This case should have been dismissed with prejudice from the beginning.
Alsup did a great job and the higher court willfully ignored his detailed judgement.
Stupid old men, can't reason clearly.
Time for a recall!!!
I wouldn't touch Java with a 50' pole.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I remember Microsoft won the "look-and-feel" lawsuit Apple initiated.
This seems very similar. Different judges, I suppose, which should make us all uncomfortable...
The you're a bit behind the times. Several large companies already depend on .Net Core applications written in C# running on docker instances.
Then again, you might be waiting to switch when Linux is on the Desktop.
Yeah, but Microsoft hangs on to projects far longer than Google does.
Past Microsoft would replace a product with something completely incompatible with no notice, leaving their "partners" twisting in the wind. Example: PlaysForSure that wouldn't play on Microsoft's own player hardware. It's unclear if this trait has been jettisoned from "Current Microsoft"
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Using a lot of Novell NetWare these days? Remember when NT4 had their NetWare compatibility services, that allowed people to wholesale switch their servers overnight without even reinstalling a single piece of client software?
I'd bet that little piece of software would run afoul of the precedent set by this appeal...
Granted, Novell tripped on their own dicks enough to crash that ecosystem themselves, but Microsoft was pretty proud of how they fucked Novell back in the day.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I believe Google should win this. I also think your argument has a major weakness.
> And besides, how can Oracle copyright an API that has dozens of things that came before? round() has been around in basically every floating point language ever.
All of the words in John Lennon's song "Imagine" were around before he wrote the song. How could Lennon copyright a song that has dozens of things that came before? Lennon (and Oracle) selected "particular* words and arranged them in a particular way, a skillful way. Lennon can't copyright each word in the lyrics to Imagine, but he can certainly copyright the lyrics as a whole.
There are two reasons I think Oracle should lose:
Copyright, by statute, protects a unique EXPRESSION of an idea and explicitly does not protect the idea itself. For software, I interpret that as meaning the implementation is protected. One cannot copy/paste the source code of Unix without permission, one CAN make a new OS which behaves similarly to Unix.
In practical effect, Oracle's argument is that nobody is allowed to make a JRE that is *compatible with* Oracle's JRE. In order to make a new thing compatible with an old thing, it must use the same interface as the old. It would be bad public policy to rule that it's unlawful to make things compatible by using the interface.
Classic ASP - still supported. Visual Basic - still supported. Nearly all old versions of stuff available on MSDN. It would be easier to argue that they hold on to things for too long.
There is no doubt that they do shelve unsuccessful systems, but that could be said of any company.
I think the moral of the story is that one should wait for the bandwagon to get big enough before jumping on for the long term.
Greed is the root of all evil.
The decades of embrace, extend, and extinguish have made many wary of MS adoption. The other extreme is how MS suddenly abandons things leaving developers anxious. For example any developer that bet on Windows Phone is not getting much on return.
I'm not a Microsoft fan, but Google has a way bigger reputation for just abandoning stuff. So bad that when Keep came out, people predicted when it would be abandoned:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/22/google-keep-services-closed
Since then they have instituted their "more wood behind fewer arrows" policy, which is a good idea.
Meanwhile, Microsoft still *hasn't* abandoned Windows Phone users, despite an ongoing, total failure in the marketplace:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Lumia
Can't really ding them for their lack of commitment on that one.
No, most people don't remember the 22 year old phrase from a company that has undergone significant change in both management and operation.
Someone asked for an example of embrace, extend, and extinguish. I posted some.
All large companies have done some bad things but in general I'd choose today's MS over Oracle any day.
And I"m not saying Oracle is better in any regards. In the context of the conversation someone asked why more people don't use .NET. I gave them specific reasons: EEE and constant abandonment.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
MS at least supported Windows Phone for a few years, and briefly allowed upgrades to W10 on even marginally usable old hardware
Only if you defined "supported" in the loosest of terms. If we just look at Windows Mobile, that is the epitome of MS abandonment from the development and customer perspective. For example from WinMo 6 to Windows Phone 7, almost nothing was transitioned from one version to the next. If you developed for WinMo 6, you had to abandon it and go to WP7. As a customers they had to abandon their phones if they wanted WP7.
But if you actually moved to developing WP7, were you guaranteed stability? No. as the transition from WP7 to WP8 also saw the move from a WindowsCE kernel to a WindowsNT kernel. As a developer you had to compile for both versions to be on them both and eventually abandon your WP7 code going forward. Also customers were again screwed as they had to buy new phones for WP8 and could not simply update their OS due to hardware requirements.
And then WP10 finally came. Did it finally bring stability? No. Again some phones (I would say most) on WP8.1 could not update to WP10. At the same time, MS themselves are starting to abandon the platform on the development side.
So if you invested years in developing for Windows Mobile/Windows Phone you were rewarded by a platform that routinely abandoned both developers and consumers.
Now what does all this have to do with Java, other than the lawsuit?
I was responding to the thread of why more developers don't use .NET under a MIT license?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Classic ASP - still supported. Visual Basic - still supported. Nearly all old versions of stuff available on MSDN. It would be easier to argue that they hold on to things for too long.,
And if you developed for Windows Mobile/Windows Phone you are out of luck. If you were a PlaysForSure partner you were stabbed in the back when MS went with V2.0 that didn't work with your players and only worked with their Zune and then abandon that a few years later. There's many reasons why developers are wary of MS.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm not a Microsoft fan, but Google has a way bigger reputation for just abandoning stuff. So bad that when Keep came out, people predicted when it would be abandoned:
That is true however the context of the thread isn't why you should pick Google over MS. The context was why developers haven't adopted .NET despite a MIT license.
Meanwhile, Microsoft still *hasn't* abandoned Windows Phone users, despite an ongoing, total failure in the marketplace:
What? Microsoft is no longer developing either features or hardware for Windows Phone as announced by Microsoft. I consider that abandoning the platform. Add to that 3rd party developers are not flocking to the platform as well as current developers are not updating their apps, I would say WP10 is dead.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
c# is 100% open source you fucking half wit
Will revert back to IBM, causing Compaq and everybody since to owe royalties dating back the entire history of the clone PC business. And when people forcefully transition to UEFI to get away from that, you will see Intel rent-seeking on UEFI in its place.
It is bad enough we are now stuck with UEFI for x86_64 and now ARM. Imagine it getting foisted on what is left of the computer ecosystem.
Legally, how is an API different from a language? I can't imagine a plausible argument that an API is copyrightable but a language is not, since they are essentially the same thing.
So everyone who has ever written C, Fortran, Cobol, or HTML now owes its inventor a license fee.
You can apply the logic to protocols, since a protocol is an API and an API is a protocol. So now Ethernet, TCP/IP, HTTP, etc., etc., are also copyrightable.