Oracle Tells Supreme Court Google Copyright Breach Knocked It Out Of Smartphone Market (crn.com)

Joseph Tsidulko, writing for CRN: Oracle asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to not review an appellate court's decision finding Google violated Oracle's copyright of the Java platform when building the Android mobile operating system. In that opposition brief, Oracle's attorneys said Google's copyright violation shut Oracle, the Java platform owner, out of the emerging smartphone market, causing incalculable harm to its business. The complex case pitting two Silicon Valley giants against each other has raged on since 2010, and already saw many twists in turns before a circuit court last year reversed a jury decision in favor of Oracle. That prompted Google's appeal to the nation's highest court. Oracle notes Google had previously asked for a writ of certiorari -- the legal term for review by the high court -- in 2015 without success in an earlier phase of the case, and the company argues nothing has changed in the time since.

Oracle believes Google destroyed its hopes of competing as a smartphone platform developer with the Java platform, which enables development and execution of software written in Java, including through APIs that access a vast software library. The lawsuit alleged Google copied those APIs without a proper license. Java was developed at Sun Microsystems, which Oracle acquired in 2010. "Google's theory is that, having invested all those resources to create a program popular with platform developers and app programmers alike, Oracle should be required to let a competitor copy its code so that it can coopt the fan base to create its own best-selling sequel," Oracle's brief states.

Comments

When evil battles evil

[93 Escort Wagon]

Who do I root for?

Hopefully this will be a very long, messy, and expensive legal battle for both companies.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Tablizer]

Who do I root for?

Oracle is trying to trick the courts into allowing the copyrighting of interfaces. Before it was mostly limited implementation. Thus, Oracle is potentially doing more damage to the legal system.

Re:When evil battles evil

[green1]

Well, you could maybe look at what the argument is, instead of who brought it forward. I know it's cool to hate on the big companies, and we all know it's well deserved, but who the players are should not affect the merit, or lack thereof, of any particular argument.

In this particular case, you root for Google. Not because Google is in any way "good" or "not evil", but because Oracle is trying to ensure that no company can ever make anything interoperable with another company's stuff ever again. There is no accusation that Google copied code, only that they re-implemented the API. A strict interpretation in favour of Oracle would mean that you could never use anyone's API to interface with them without violating their copyright (or paying royalties, etc) This would be a very dangerous precedent.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is trying to ensure that no company can ever make anything interoperable with another company's stuff ever again

You go too far. Interoperability would still be possible if Oracle had (does) prevailed. But only with open APIs that aren't entangled with rent seeker IP. Platforms like Android would have to adhere to unencumbered APIs.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is trying to trick the courts into allowing the copyrighting of interfaces.

I question I have whenever this comes up...and maybe this isn't the best place to ask this but I will:

According to Wikipedia: "x86 may require license from Intel; x86-64 may require an additional license from AMD"

Isn't x86 and x86-64 just an interface? Why does it need to be licensed?

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

The googs java at oracles teat

How ever you roll this. Two evil companies fighting over a poor implementation is tech comic relief.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

>Who do I root for?

Injuries.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's patented.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true.
In the Berne Convention the act of creation grants copyright, so there is no such thing as an unencumbered API if Oracle's interpretation prevails.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it needs to be licensed on the hardware side, but I don't believe QEMU pays Intel anything.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Let oracle win. I hate java garbage with all my gut. Android should have adopted C++ from the beginning, it would be the best platform to want to develop for by now.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Root for the Righteous Justness of the late Windows Phone. Android has felt funny in my stomach of faultless morals ever since I first heard the system is to be programmed with Java. By that time I had already read the license text by Sun and avoided Java because of it.

Re: When evil battles evil

[green1]

Unfortunately the legal precedent wouldn't be just for Java. It would be for all APIs for every piece of software ever written.

You may not like Java, and that's perfectly fair, but that's not a reason to root for Oracle in this case.

Re:When evil battles evil

[green1]

A company is still free to explicitly give those rights to the public domain, or license them under a non-restrictive license.

Of course it makes it an active act that tends to go against shareholder interests, vs a passive act that's for the betterment of society as a whole, so the odds of it happening in most cases is very small.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate java garbage with all my gut. Android should have adopted C++

So you want to replace a language that has an unsound but relatively easy-to-understand type system and straightforward OO model with a language that has a disaster for a type system and OO model?

If you would have said Haskell I would have been right there with you, but C++ is an experiment that should have been terminated a long time ago.

Re: When evil battles evil

[gmiller123456]

Because it's patented.

Patents are only good for about 20 years. Any patents on the original x86 instrutions would have expired long ago.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Who do I root for?

Oracle is trying to trick the courts into allowing the copyrighting of interfaces. Before it was mostly limited implementation. Thus, Oracle is potentially doing more damage to the legal system.

Commander-in-chief has justified the use of threats and intimidation against justices, so it's now the norm. In a year or two we'll all be going "I remember back when you just had to threaten a SCOTUS justice to get your way, not actually take one out. Boy, those were the days".

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot, it is clear you have no idea what C++14 etc offers.
And fuck your "types" if all they do is create a steaming pile of garbage which is java.
Mobile needs to be lean and super performant with an inspirational development tool to accomplish those goals.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle should get a big stack of greenbacks from Google

Re:When evil battles evil

[AmiMoJo]

Hopefully this will be a very long, messy, and expensive legal battle for both companies.

But then the lawyers win, and as terrible as Oracle and Google may be nothing justifies the lawyers winning.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Was c++14 available since 2010? Thatâ(TM)s when the headline says the lawsuit was ongoing.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Was jaba 8?

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Who do I root for?

Oracle is trying to trick the courts into allowing the copyrighting of interfaces. Before it was mostly limited implementation. Thus, Oracle is potentially doing more damage to the legal system.

Commander-in-chief has justified the use of threats and intimidation against justices, so it's now the norm. In a year or two we'll all be going "I remember back when you just had to threaten a SCOTUS justice to get your way, not actually take one out. Boy, those were the days".

Yeah, Obama was an utter JACKASS for intimidating Supreme Court justices in State of the Union addresses like that.

Re:When evil battles evil

[hairyfeet]

How is this ANY different than the MS Java case? Google went to Oracle( just like MSFT went to Sun) and tried to get a license while offering peanuts. Oracle (just like Sun) say "No we won't accept that" and Google (just like MSFT) copied it and slapped a different name on it.

The only difference I can see is that Google gave it a weird name while MSFT called it MS Java so by this logic MSFT would have been perfectly fine to rip off Sun if they would have called their version something like flexfair or some other BS name.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is by far the more evil here. If Oracle managed to win, this means that anything, even open source products, that copy the interface for compatibility reasons will be considered infringement.

Which means things like OpenSSL/LibreSSL, MySQL/MariaDB and the libraries that interface with these become infringement. I mention OpenSSL here because it implements many crypto algorithms, and if you break the interfaces to avoid infringement, you also break everything that is compatible with OpenSSL. Java was unique in one way, that Google copied the interface but not the runtime, which meant it was kinda like compiling a Java program into a C program rather than a Java bytecode program.

But Oracle claiming they were cut out of the smartphone market is hogwash. Java was on every phone there ever was until the iPhone came out, and Steve Jobs rightfully said "no Flash" (and by extension no Java, and no other language runtimes.) Good thing Apple won the Smartphone war.

The very fact that this lawsuit is still going only cements the fact that Android was a bad idea, and still has a possibility of losing, and killing Android permanently.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Aighearach]

That's a physical, hardware interface. This story is about purely software interfaces.

Re:When evil battles evil

[StormReaver]

How is this ANY different than the MS Java case?

Microsoft agreed to abide by Sun's licensing terms in exchange for being allowed to call J# an implementation of Java. Microsoft violated those terms by making J# incompatible with Java.

Google copied the interface specification, wrote its entirely own implementation, and made it quite clear that it was NOT Java; but rather had a high degree of compatibility with certain parts of Java.

These cases could hardly be any more different. They are nearly polar opposites.

Given that, Google was really stupid about the whole thing. It should have started with the GPL'd Java, stripped out the parts not wanted for Android, then GPL'd the whole thing. Tada! A clean and completely unassailable (through copyright) Android. Plus many millions of litigation dollars saved.

Re:When evil battles evil

[nitehawk214]

Exactly. It's funny because it's a repeat of the battle over Java vs J++ over 20 years ago.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

That assumes the interface was not extended.

If someone wanted to make their on x86 CPU, at present you'd only be able to get to SSE. Which means Pentium 3 at most. Now if you made a P3 processor on a 10nm process, you might get away with 16 P3 cores, but because it lacks SSE2/SSE3/SSE4/AVX and the VT-x instructions, you'd have a hard time selling it except to legacy PC enthusiasts. Plus there is all the chipset and memory tech that is obsolete, so unless you want to start manufacturing DDR modules, SOL.

At best the patent expiry allows software emulators and FPGA re-implementations to go ahead without having to licence the patents required to make them work, and most current VM's rely on VT-x instructions, so that likely won't be a thing until 2026.

Apple still licenses the ARM tech even though it could completely make it's own instructions if it wanted. It doesn't because that would mean it would run into patent issues that have already been resolved by using ARM and Intel parts.

Re:When evil battles evil

[StormReaver]

Dammit! Why the hell doesn't Slashdot provide a preview feature before posting!?

Oh, wait.

This is how it should have looked:

How is this ANY different than the MS Java case?

Microsoft agreed to abide by Sun's licensing terms in exchange for being allowed to call J# an implementation of Java. Microsoft violated those terms by making J# incompatible with Java.

Google copied the interface specification, wrote its entirely own implementation, and made it quite clear that it was NOT Java; but rather had a high degree of compatibility with certain parts of Java.

These cases could hardly be any more different. They are nearly polar opposites.

Given that, Google was really stupid about the whole thing. It should have started with the GPL'd Java, stripped out the parts not wanted for Android, then GPL'd the whole thing. Tada! A clean and completely unassailable (through copyright) Android. Plus many millions of litigation dollars saved.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Aighearach]

A company is still free to explicitly give those rights to the public domain

Why don't you look that up and see what lawyers say before you state it as fact?

Stated it as a fact without a "some people believe" or other weasely caveat makes it into a straight lie.

The very comment you replied to informed correctly that the Berne Convention says you gain copyright when you create the work. That is not in dispute.

And which law says you can place a work into the public domain? There isn't one. There isn't one, so according to the Berne Convention, there the copyright sits with the creator of the work, even after they said words that included "public domain."

There simply is no legal mechanism to place works into the public domain. It is not a real thing.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

If you put Google and Oracle on the same plane of existence your moral compass is broken and your judgement should not be trusted.

I'd sign my soul to google for a stick of gum rather than have to enter any business transaction with Oracle. I'd come out way ahead with the former!

Ask the same question of literally anyone who's had to deal with Oracle before and they'll tell you the same answer before you're done speaking.

Re:When evil battles evil

[green1]

And yet many people have successfully done just that. So I'd say it is you who have not researched it. Yes, you automatically get copyright on your works. But you are free to license that in any way you want. Including free for everyone with no strings attached.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. You can make a processor compatible with the Pentium 3. Any instruction set additions after that are still in the patent window.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Aighearach]

All the way back to the 70s, too.

Everything you thought was unencumbered would be a longtime violation.

Re:When evil battles evil

[sfcat]

Google copied the interface specification, wrote its entirely own implementation, and made it quite clear that it was NOT Java; but rather had a high degree of compatibility with certain parts of Java.

These cases could hardly be any more different. They are nearly polar opposites.

Given that, Google was really stupid about the whole thing. It should have started with the GPL'd Java, stripped out the parts not wanted for Android, then GPL'd the whole thing. Tada! A clean and completely unassailable (through copyright) Android. Plus many millions of litigation dollars saved.

That's not strictly true. Google did more than that. They copied much more than just the interfaces. Then all they had to do is NOT remove Oracle's name from the source code. Somehow that's the one thing that Google did. The secondary issues here are big but the core issue is one of utter stupidity (and seemingly ego) on Google's part. Other companies do this all the time without violating the license of the original code. Somehow, Google was unable to do that and scrubbed out Oracle's name everywhere and removed the Oracle license files. If they hadn't done that, this case either wouldn't exist or would be a very different case that Google probably would have won. I expect the courts to do what they usually do when they don't understand an issue. They will issue a very narrow ruling in Oracle's favor covering just own Google's stupidity and refuse to rule on all the other important secondary issues like can interfaces be copyrighted. And legal nerds will be disappointed but that's normal...

Re:When evil battles evil

[sfcat]

Exactly. It's funny because it's a repeat of the battle over Java vs J++ over 20 years ago.

Its not. MS was making an intentionally incompatible version of Java. Google wasn't trying to do and didn't do that. This is about Google not being able to follow basic legal advice. Its also a pretty damning indictment of problem's in Google's management as this is caused by simple ego and not some complex legal trip up.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

server side java is incredibly performant, you'd have to resort to profile guided optimisation of your C++ application, using your production workload to achieve the same level of performance (after 1000 to 10000 executions of the same code path).
The problems with java performance is with short lived application and the big memory overhead up to the double of the equivalent C++ application.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Aighearach]

Look up the legal debate on the issue, Dunderhead. Don't just assert opinion as fact, on the hope that you're right.

People have said those words. That doesn't mean their words overrule the Berne Convention. It doesn't mean their works are "in the public domain." They advertised an impossible promise. That doesn't guarantee you shit, but it sure as hell isn't a law that can supersede anything.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a very, very easy question. You may not like Google. You may hate Google. But if Oracle wins, it will have succeeded in warping copyright in a way which is utterly disastrous for every IT-related worker and company on the planet (including Oracle.) Not to mention the fact that, in general, expansion of copyright isn't good for anyone.

Re:When evil battles evil

[green1]

Who, you called me a name, that MUST make you right! You don't need to do actual research, you can insult people! I never said they could overrule the Berne convention, there's no conflict between being given copyright, and allowing the world to use it for free with no strings attached. All the laws state is that you automatically get the choice, and that without any action on your part nobody can use it in any way whatsoever. If you were right on this and people couldn't give away the right to use their creations, they also wouldn't be able to make money licensing work to others. Putting something in the public domain is as simple as issuing a license to everyone, for no money, with no conditions attached. This is legally no different from giving someone a limited license in exchange for money which is done millions of times every day. BTW, you didn't state which copyright cartel you're shilling for. That sort of disclosure would be appropriate in cases where you deliberately try to mislead people in this manner.

Re: When evil battles evil

[illiac_1962]

Yes they are leveraging the court's ignorance in an attempt to manipulate them with false dichotomies and rickety metaphors.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Aighearach]

Who, you called me a name, that MUST make you right! You don't need to do actual research, you can insult people!

I never said they could overrule the Berne convention, there's no conflict between being given copyright, and allowing the world to use it for free with no strings attached.

You're unable to continue thinking, because I called you a name. That calls for another one! LOL

You don't seem to comprehend that "Public Domain" isn't a name you can call something, it is an actual legal status of the work, and you can't use words to cause that legal status to magically appear; doing so, if successful, would violate the Berne Convention.

Insisting you're doing it for a good cause doesn't cause it to be the law. Only a fucking idiot would think that. See how easy it is to prevent you from thinking for yourself?

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Oracle's argument is utter and complete horseshit. The first release of Android came put 2 years before Oracle acquired Sun and Java. Sun certainly had no intentions of entering the smartphone market, which is why they didn't try to stop Google (that and they rightly believed that you can't copyright an interface). How the fuck does Oracle explain how that somehow affected their non-existent attempt to enter the smartphone market, or that Google implemented their own version of a language that Oracle didn't own at the time in an attempt to stop a company that wasn't trying to enter the smartphone market from entering it??? What in the actual fuck. Ellison needs to walk into fucking traffic or get ALS. Fuck that piece of shit.

Re:When evil battles evil

[green1]

Definition of madness: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

In this case, repeating falsehoods.

Sure, have it your way. All record labels, all movie studios, and all software companies will go out of business immediately. It is 100% impossible for them to make money as doing so relies on licensing their work to others, which as you clearly state is impossible under the Berne convention

Until you can show me the actual text of law that shows the exact minimum payment legally allowed to license work, it's clear that you don't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about. Licensing for free is exactly the same as licensing for money. If you can't do one, you can't do the other either.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

> There simply is no legal mechanism to place works into the public domain. It is not a real thing.

When copyright expires the works go into the 'public domain'.

Prior to the Berne Convention works needed to be registered in various countries to obtain legal copyright protection. Works not registered were not protected by copyright and thus were 'public domain'.

If you disagree with this then please explain what does happen to copyright expired works and what name you put on such items.

RAP

Re:When evil battles evil

[Aighearach]

You can't change the Berne Convention by calling it false. The United States Congress joined it in the 1980s. It is the Law.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation needed.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

> Android should have adopted C++ from the beginning, it would be the best platform to want to develop for by now.

No. Just No. C++ compiles to a specific CPU. This would have limited the way apps could be distributed and thus the progress that mobile devices could have achieved.

The best platform now for Android is Dart/Futter.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

There you go - java on mobile is a pure garbage.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

The only court that ever falls for this garbage is the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which is primarily made up of patent lawyers, so go figure, right? They're persistent little cockroaches, too, and keep coming back after the Supreme Court slaps them down.

May be time to bring back that old American punishment. Some people really deserve the whole tar-and-feather-and-run-out-on-a-rail experience.

Re: When evil battles evil

[TheRaven64]

x86-64 with SSE2 is just about coming out of patent. That's quite an interesting baseline, because that's still the target for a lot of binaries, but anything that depends on SSE4, AVX, or any of the other CPU features that Intel has introduced in the last 20 years likely have patents attached. If you're interested, Intel has a public graph that you can probably find of the number of patents on each CPU feature.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Dragonslicer]

You don't seem to comprehend that "Public Domain" isn't a name you can call something, it is an actual legal status of the work, and you can't use words to cause that legal status to magically appear; doing so, if successful, would violate the Berne Convention.

Based on a brief search on Google, the last bit isn't true. It looks like a country can have a mechanism for releasing a work into the public domain (e.g. The Netherlands) without violating the Berne Convention. I don't know, however, how many countries have such a law; for example, I didn't find anything that says the USA does.

Re:When evil battles evil

[HornWumpus]

What we need is the shakespearean punishment.

First we kill ALL the lawyers.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

People learn nothing I see.

"Both sides are evil, why should I vote for Democrats". Fat good that thinking is going. I am seeing the same in my province (Ontario) now who elected a terrible PC government.

You root for whoever's argument makes most sense on the basis of their argument, not on how evil or good or whatever they are.

Re:When evil battles evil

[green1]

I never called it false. I called your ridiculous interpretation of it false. There's a big difference.

As for law. I'm still waiting for you to show me the specific wording in the law that sets out minimum prices you can charge for a copyright license. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Re:When evil battles evil

[green1]

Even the US government you are stating signed this in to law doesn't believe your take on it, as they themselves specifically place items in the public domain (e.g. see the copyright page on the CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/contributor_copyright.html) which despite a publishing date of 2016, is explicitly in the public domain.

If you don't find the CIA authoritative on this matter, let's go to the Copyright Office itself, and look at the Federal Regulations as they pertain to software (from https://www.copyright.gov/title37/201/37cfr201-26.html):
Title 37 Part 201.26:
(b)(3) Public domain computer software means software which has been publicly distributed with an explicit disclaimer of copyright protection by the copyright owner.

So you're the only person who seems to think that you absolutely must charge for licenses from all people, and cannot distribute work for free if you want to (despite millions of pieces of work that fall under that category)

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it was the 2010 SOTU address

Re:When evil battles evil

[jonwil]

Oracle is FAR more evil (both in this case and in general) than Google is.
And the harm to software development more generally if Oracle wins could be very bad.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Darinbob]

But then... I'm just trying to imagine what an Oracle Phone would have looked like. It would have made the Microsoft Phone look awesome in comparison.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Greyfox]

And Sun and Oracle would not have built a smart phone in any event. Sun wouldn't have done it because everyone with any vision left the company when it went all ISO-Processy after they hit it big. The only people who were left by the time they went bankrupt were useless twatwaffles who would sit in their cubes all day boasting about how they were ISO blackbelts and were going to some important convention next month. And Oracle wouldn't have built one because the bottom line on consumer devices doesn't have enough digits in it to justify risking an R&D project. If they wanted to get into the smartphone market now, they could build a thing on top of Linux just like Google did, and that thing would have a pretty low bar of entry on the suckage to be better than the iPhone and Android interfaces today, but they won't. And if they did, the interface would be ass, just like every other thing Oracle makes.

It's not like we haven't seen this exact scenario play out before. SCO was in the same boat back when Linux came out. People started asking why they should drop 4 or 5 digits on SCO licenses when there was that awesome free software over there that did exactly the same thing, only better because the GUI didn't suck (IIRC SCO was some variant of CDE or something that looked like it, and the early gnome/kde/enlightenment projects all put it to shame.) So right now companies are asking, in ever increasing numbers, why they should deploy an Oracle database when they could just drop Postgres or MariaDB in, and the vast majority of those companies can absolutely get away with doing that. And in the same history-repeating-itself fashion, Oracle seems to be pinning their future hopes on copyright lawsuits. Now they have much more money than SCO did back in the day, so maybe they can afford a better lawyer. Or at the very least they probably won't die off as quickly as SCO did. Although every once in a while Zombie SCO rises from the dead and reminds us that it's still here, so maybe not.

In any event, if they had any actually good ideas, they'd just STFU and go build something cool, but they won't, because they are not cool and they never have been. At least Sun was cool for a while back in the '80's. Not Jurassic Park cool, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Re:When evil battles evil

[drinkypoo]

The only difference I can see is that Google gave it a weird name while MSFT called it MS Java so by this logic MSFT would have been perfectly fine to rip off Sun if they would have called their version something like flexfair or some other BS name.

That's correct. M$ actually got dinged for violating their trademark and deliberately creating confusion in the marketplace by calling their non-conforming implementation "Java". You are entirely correct that if they had not called it Java, they would have been fine. But they did, and the court ruled that they did it deliberately.

Re:When evil battles evil

[drinkypoo]

People started asking why they should drop 4 or 5 digits on SCO licenses when there was that awesome free software over there that did exactly the same thing, only better because the GUI didn't suck (IIRC SCO was some variant of CDE or something that looked like it,

SCO had a non-CDE Motif desktop in the Unix product they called SCO Open Desktop. It still used the same Motif libraries as CDE, though. Motif has been open source all along, in fact Motif for Linux was delivered as source code. I'm pretty sure Caldera threw away SCO ODT and replaced it with a new and highly similar Motif-based desktop when they released Caldera Network Desktop, which was an early version of redhat bundled with Motif.

and the early gnome/kde/enlightenment projects all put it to shame.)

It's important to remember that at the time, the state of desktop environments for Linux was not very good. There were no complete desktop enviroments when Caldera Network Desktop came out in 1996. Open Desktop 2.0, which I believe was the first recognizable SCO Motif desktop, dates from 1992. There were no complete desktop environments on Linux even in 1996 — 1996 is when KDE was founded, and GNOME didn't come out until 1999. Back in those days, Enlightenment was only a window manager, not a desktop environment. It didn't have any file manager, and AFAIK it still doesn't have a good one. Actually, even CDE wasn't released until 1993, and when it came out it was the only non-proprietary desktop for Unix.

It's easy to laugh at SCO Unix from a modern vantage point, but at the time it was the most complete Unix commercially available for the PC. Before SCO Unix, it was SCO Xenix, and before SCO Xenix it was Microsoft Xenix.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Tablizer]

Isn't x86 and x86-64 just an interface? Why does it need to be licensed?

My understanding is that the names of the machine language commands and registers are copyrighted. One can make a compatible chip without IP infringements, but if your documentation uses the commands or register names, then you face copyright problems. The names of the parts are not really an interface because the actual commands and register names are actually just numbers in practice. In machine language, the "FU" register may be "23" as in register 23. "FU" is just a nickname for programmers to use for human-to-human communication.

Thus, if one wants to write technical documentation that uses the common nicknames, such as "Register FU" instead of "Register 23", they'd have to license the rights to use the names. Because there is chip competition, to get system designers and programmers to use your (cloned) chip instead of the original, you want decent documentation. There's where the license pressure comes.

I'm no IP lawyer, so don't quote me on this.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is FAR more evil (both in this case and in general) than Google is.
And the harm to software development more generally if Oracle wins could be very bad.

ORLY?

Between Oracle and Google, which one is working with the Chinese government to create totalitarian surveillance measures?

Between Oracle and Google, which one is an existential threat to personal privacy on a global scale?

Re: When evil battles evil

[aliquis]

Yeah US company case lawyers are the good guys.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't open source win and proprietary die in this case?
Hold on I need to get some popcorn...

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Both are evil for sure. Oracle slightly worse, sun license should have allowed Google to use Java freely (otherwise they would never have used Java). They are twisting the law by saying they would have created an Android competitor, which is total BS.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a copyright lawyer,but my understanding is that refering to names of registers would be fair use since it's functional and non-creative in nature. Actually, they're probably too short to copyright. You can't really copyright the names of stuff. You can sometimes do so, but not for technical instruments, that's usually the realm of trademark.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a citation.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

You were one of those few who kept trolling about SCO bankrupting IBM back then, weren't you?

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the people with the deepest pockets will, and they are not the opensores one.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Tablizer]

It could be a borderline case that could go either way, or at least take a long time to get overturned such that co's would rather just negotiate royalties instead of pay for more lawyers.

Even if one estimates there is say a 75% chance of winning, it could still take a lot of money to get to that eventual win. There's plenty of judges who fuck up technology cases.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

The peeps with deep pockets full of legal holes?

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is developer efficient, but C++ would almost always win out on raw performance given enough tuning.

Re:When evil battles evil

[tricorn]

They did not copy any of Sun's code. They started off with the Harmony version of the Java API, and followed the terms of the Apache license it was released under.

At the time they started, the Sun source code was not under the GPL. Sun wanted them to use Java ME, and wouldn't agree to let them use Java SE.

The license that Harmony was developed under allowed for development of an independent version of the Java API, under whatever license they wanted to release it as. The sticking point for the Apache Foundation was that the TCK, used to validate an implementation as conforming to the interface specification, couldn't be released as open source. Without that, you can't use the Java trademark on your product.

So Apache decided to just not get it certified as conforming.

Google never used the Java trademark. Their implementation of individual methods, and the documentation (as javadoc comments) was also found to be non-infringing.

What the CAFC found to be protected, that Google had copied, was the interface itself, the hierarchy of names and the structure of the relationships (e.g. class and interface inheritance). They also found that Google had infringed on the declarations from the Java API source code (which can only be written one way in Java if you want to describe the same API).

Re:When evil battles evil

[Lonewolf666]

A strict interpretation in favour of Oracle would mean that you could never use anyone's API to interface with them without violating their copyright (or paying royalties, etc)

Unless they have given you a license. Which is the case for virtually all Open Source projects, unless I'm badly misreading the legal situation. Competition wise, corporations that don't readily hand out such licenses might hurt themselves quite a bit.

This said, I'd still prefer if the Supreme Courts would throw out Oracle's argument. It would give everyone a safer legal situation.

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Oracle caused incalculable damage to my framerate in multiple games that ran Java so...

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

> server side java is incredibly performant

hahahahahahahahahaha

microservice, queues, copying dat, JVMs limited to 4GB to avoid GC stalls... have you ever worked in an enterprise?

Re: When evil battles evil

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, the Berne Convention is not the law in the US, so it really doesn't matter what it says or doesn't say. See 17 USC 104(c). All we care about here is what our own laws say (whether they are in agreement with Berne or not).

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Android wont die.

We can just rip out the infringing bits and replace them with openjdk

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong! And you are right!

Turns out public domain varies by country. In the USA it is a very real thing. In most EU countries, it does not exist.

Re: When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Public domain is a thing in US law and a first amendment right, so the Benie convention doesn't affect it since it would cause the treaty/implementing laws to be struck down as unconstitutional (yes the courts can invalidate/rescind treaties if they are unconstitutional!) .

Re:When evil battles evil

[Greyfox]

Sure, my first job was on a SCO Xenix box running on a 286. We installed an Intel Aboveboard on it for another megabyte of RAM. I got the card and a loose handful of RAM chips and was told to get to it. Good times!

IIRC I got my first PC in '91 or '92. Prior to that I had some somewhat more esoteric machines. The system had 4 MB of RAM and a small (40 or 80 MB I think) hard drive. I initially installed OS/2 on it, and slackware a little later on. Couldn't run X11 on it, though -- it had a VGA card but the system just couldn't handle the load of graphics. It was a few years later when I finally upgraded to a system powerful enough to run X, and by then early Gnome, KDE and Enlightenment projects were getting underway. Although I don't remember the exact timeline, around the turn of the millenium or so Loki games was porting some popular games to Linux, you could kind of run Ultima Online either via a native client or early Wine, and people were actually started to get interested in Linux.

SCO was a complete UNIX for a PC, yes, but if you wanted all the stuff that makes UNIX UNIX, you had to spring for a fair bit of additional stuff. IIRC a C compiler and TCP/IP were both neighborhood of $1500, and I think I recall that they wanted $600 or something for nroff/troff. My first job was cheap so I ended up doing a software project for them with shell scripts and foxbase. I did get UUCP up and running on the machine for a while though.

Re:When evil battles evil

[green1]

Do you really think Microsoft will happily hand over a license to Wine? or LibreOffice?
I doubt the various free SQL servers would have much luck getting licenses either.

Sure, open source software would happily grant licenses, but more often than not the open source project is on the other side of the equation, relying on interoperability to survive.

An order like this would cripple most of those projects.

Re:When evil battles evil

[drinkypoo]

I got Xenix for my 286 (on 5.25" HD floppy) from someone on the dev team. By the time I got a 386, Linux was a thing, and I installed Slackware from a bunch of 3.5" HD floppies...

Re:When evil battles evil

[Anonymous Coward]

A copyright is supposed to protect a PARTICULAR EXPRESSION of an idea, or so I was taught in an ethics course.

Interfaces express no ideas and therefore from what I was taught in that course(IANAL) they're not even remotely copyrightable. That said it appears that copyright has become INCREDIBLY mutable in the c. 20y since I had that course, covering apparently even sentence fragments... beyond belief.

Java's too slow for first post

[Anonymous Coward]

See. No java here.

Re:Java's too slow for first post

[Anonymous Coward]

So close. Use less Java next time.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they hope nobody in that court will know that Oracle can just make it's own Linux/Android based smartphone and get into the market. Or they could make their own OS because they are soooo much better. They should hire JetBrains to do their sequel because Kotlin is a way better language than Java, and runs on the same JVM.

Re:Wow

[MightyMartian]

I'm fascinated to hear what products Oracle had in the works that Google wrecked by re-using Java library headers.

Re:Wow

[ZorinLynx]

Yeah, I'm a bit confused here. I don't recall Oracle or Sun ever trying to break into the smartphone market.

And frankly knowing Oracle I'm so incredibly glad they didn't.

Re:Wow

[DarkOx]

Well while I don't agree with Orcacle's theory that interfaces can be subject to copyright. I would agree with the assessment Google by creating their own JVM essentially drove Oracle out of the mobile market place. J2ME Was pretty widely used in what we think of as the pre-smartphone era.

I don't see any reason why it would not have become the defacto application platform going forward, except for entrants like Google with resources enough to implement their own JVA not wanting to pay Oracle for theirs.

Remember when blamer said "developers..developers..developers.." same thing applies here its not like Google chose Java as their implementation language for Android because the syntax is so sexy and everyone love it. They picked it because a lot of people know it. J2ME would have probably continued as a force without Davlik and just got some sexy new interface libraries to bring all the existing mobile phone developers and desktop java developers over.

Re:Wow

[AmiMoJo]

Java was the most popular language for mobile apps before Android came along. Nokia's Symbian OS in particular had many Java based apps, and the industry could see where things were going: apps that run on phones, TVs and laptops, basically everywhere.

Symbian was crap though and apps were generally terrible. Android quickly took over, and how Android apps so in fact run on phones, TVs and laptops.

Oracle is arguing that they could have been a major player if Android hasn't used their API, but in reality Java failed because it and the Symbian OS and the non-touch phones it ran on were all shit.

Re:Wow

[bill_mcgonigle]

J2ME's UI options and system services were terrible for mobile.

Android, for all its warts, was substantially better. Java just happened to be a decent language for the time that could be hooked into the Android stack.

If it had been Swift or Python or Ruby it still would have pantsed any J2ME phone offering. Java isn't all that special. Look at iPhone - lots of people learned Objective-C just to use its mobile stack and in that case Apple itself showed how non-optimal a language that is by developing Swift.

Oracle is attempting to mislead the Court.

Re:Wow

[minkwe]

Tough luck. The courts are not there to make sure one company's profits are protected at all cost. Even if it is true that Google drove them out of the mobile market, it still doesn't mean APIs can be copyrighted. The case in court is not about whether Google hurt Oracle's feelings or not.

Re:Wow

[DarkOx]

Apple did not make native apps a choice for iphone until after the product was released. The chose obj-c because that is was OSX was being built with and that is what all the smart people they had pulled in from Next knew. So the choice of obj-c was very much one about developers..developers..developers it just so happened to be internal developers when that call got made.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, "most popular language for mobile apps" is misleading. C was the most popular language for mobile code.

But C didn't have sandboxing capabilities, etc. Fault isolation and data protection in native code relies on a memory protection unit, which was too complex/expensive to be included in dumb phone processors.

So downloadable "apps" mostly used Java which had some inherent security features based in a mandatory type-safety system.

But "smartphones" have always had better hardware, and in particular they've had MPUs, so there was no reason to use (slow, bloated) Java except for portability. And in the early days of smartphones there were only 3 or 4 processor architectures in use, and any OS that had more than one had enough smarts built into the app deployment systems (for example, ActiveSync for WinCE) to pick the right binary for the phone.

So Java never had a foothold on honest-to-God smartphones before Google introduced Dalvik and Android -- only on feature phones. So you may be able to make the statement true by adding enough qualifiers -- "the most popular language for MMS-downloadable applets on feature phones" -- but that was a doomed niche.

Re:Wow

[DarkOx]

Did I say it was? Oracle is not entitled to the mobile market. Like you I disagree with the premise that interfaces can be subject to copyright. If the court however finds otherwise; than damages will have to be figured. If we are forced to presume by the courts finding that interfaces can be copyright; than all I am saying is Oracles argument that Google cost them the mobile space probably does follow, and Google will in that instance be required to pay dearly.

Re:Wow

[minkwe]

Java was the most popular language for mobile apps before Android came along.

It still is. Android is an operating system not a programming language.

Oracle is arguing that they could have been a major player if Android hasn't used their API.

The case in court is not about which player is major or minor or how much profit Oracle would have made if Android did not exist. The case is about whether APIs can be copyrighted. If you are allowed to copyright APIs then you are also allowed to copyright a file format.

If they had a patent on it, it would be a different discussion but I don't see how it can be copyrighted.

Re:Wow

[dromgodis]

I don't know Symbian native development but I work with developers who say it was pretty decent at the time.

However, in my experience J2ME on phones was a horrible developer experience. The implementations were terrible, incompatible, incomplete, hard to get decent documentation for, even harder to get developer support for, easily crashed some phones (hey Siemens) etc. Write once, work nowhere. Nokias Symbian phones were the most pleasant ones I got to develop J2ME apps for. Yeah, it was still crap.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

J2ME?

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of products. Tons! Sadly, all records and beta products were destroyed in a warehouse fire.

But please! Take Oracles word on it.

Re: Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't see how it can be copyrighted."

I know what you mean but in our post-rational society the law can be changed at the whim of alarmingly few people, leaving the rest of us to protest and picket our way back to something that works.

If APIs become eligible for copyright, it will be a huge mess with all existing software but Oracle and friends won't win like they think: imagine if a large body of useful interfaces were licensed under GPL... Development costs for non-free software will skyrocket.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google included J2ME options, or any other properly licensed combinations, we wouldn't be hearing about this. Instead, they excluded a whole bunch of stuff their license required them to include. This is why Microsoft lost - the broke license terms, and this is why Google is losing.

Re:Wow

[dargaud]

Oracle is attempting to mislead the Court.

No shit Sherlock ! Understatement of the year. Anybody with 10 minutes of reading on the subject can see that, so why haven't they been thrown out yet, with prejudice ?

Re:Wow

[Aighearach]

Android is an operating system not a programming language.

And it might actually be just a Linux distro.

Re:Wow

[pjt33]

J2ME's UI options and system services were terrible for mobile.

Careful. You may be committing the common and understandable error of thinking that J2ME = J2ME CLDC. There was a less stripped down framework called CDC which had a couple of profiles with UI based on AWT. IBM had an implementation for PocketPC. It would have been a suitable basis for something which went beyond feature phones if a company with the right vision had taken it on in about 2003.

Re: Wow

[illiac_1962]

Python!? ROFLMAO. What a steaming pile of holy shit.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

> they excluded a whole bunch of stuff their license required them to include.

That is complete nonsense because Android/Dalvik/Google never had a J2ME licence, so they couldn't break the terms of the licence.

Licences to develop using Java SE are freely available. OpenJava is freely licenced. Dalvik does not infringe on any Java VM.

What this is about is that Android uses their own Dalvik libraries by using API names such as: String.parseInt. Most of this in Java is reusing names from other languages.

Re:Wow

[bigpat]

I would agree with the assessment Google by creating their own JVM essentially drove Oracle out of the mobile market place.

That's utter horse shit. Google adopting Java was the one thing that kept Java alive and growing. Java was well adopted on the server side, but that was it.
The JVM had a half ass implementation on dumb flip phone mobile devices before the smartphone market took off.

If anything it was Oracle's idiotic move to sue Google for using Java that killed Java as an option on other platforms. Why would other platforms use Java if Oracle is just going to turn around and file a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Oracle shot themselves and Java in their own ass.

Too bad Google didn't buy Sun Microsystems.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Google would have been a better steward of the Java language and runtime.

Captcha: abolish

Re:Too bad Google didn't buy Sun Microsystems.

[Anonymous Coward]

True ... but there is no way I would have put my money anywhere near that stuff

America has forgotten.

[Anonymous Coward]

You provide a good product/service. People buy it.

That's how it works.

Re:America has forgotten.

[green1]

That's not how it works.

You hire lawyers and politicians to make it legally impossible for people to go with a competing product, then you launch your own inferior product and wait for the money to roll in.

THAT's how it works.

Competing on actual merit is so last century.

Re:America has forgotten.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how it works.

You hire lawyers and politicians to make it legally impossible for people to go with a competing product, then you launch your own inferior product and wait for the money to roll in.

THAT's how it works.

Competing on actual merit is so last century.

You left out "Engage in regulatory capture to lock out competition".

Re:America has forgotten.

[green1]

You left out "Engage in regulatory capture to lock out competition".

I thought I covered that with hiring politicians.

Re:America has forgotten.

[Anonymous Coward]

green1 opined:

That's not how it works.

You hire lawyers and politicians to make it legally impossible for people to go with a competing product, then you launch your own inferior product and wait for the money to roll in.

THAT's how it works.>/p>

Competing on actual merit is so last century.

I apologize, green1. I intended to mod your post +1 Funny, but my stupid Bluetooth mouse misfired, and it wound up being modded down as -1 Flamebait, instead.

If I had not already spent 8 points (mostly) upmodding other posts in this discussion, I'd've just posted under my own ID to undo my blunder in your case - but I'm unwilling to penalize the 8 other posters to correct the error I made in yours.

My bad ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

--

Check out my novel ...

API... not code

[Anonymous Coward]

Precedence... Google might look to a certain OS MS-DOS that copied the API of CP/M.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that I prefer to be abused by Google to being abused by Oracle. So I might be biased.

Re:API... not code

[jabuzz]

Don't worry IBM are quietly rubbing their hands in glee. Should Oracle succeed, they should expect to find themselves in court for ripping off IBM's SEQUEL back when they where Relational Software. It's a bit of a silly game for Oracle to play IMHO.

Re:API... not code

[bongey]

Technically IBM through the sub Red Hat, came out for Google. Microsoft I think is coming out for Oracle to be evil. IE don't use java because Oracle will sue you, use .NET instead.

Re:API... not code

[jfdavis668]

I was thinking the very same thing.

If you have to license an API -- make your own

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like a list of the # of entity's that have actually paid Oracle a license fee for a single Java API. I betting the number approaches ZERO.

Oracle-phone, wot? No thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it come with $100 a month voicemail contract, etc etc?

There can only be one?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, basically Oracle's argument here is that there can only be one Java "based" smartphone OS? Interesting...

Could you imagine....

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

A smartphone developed by Oracle?
I've been fortunate enough never to have crossed paths with Oracle's infamous licensing terms, but I could picture it now:

Every time you used your phone for any purpose whatsoever, you'd have to pay a fee to Oracle.

Re:Could you imagine....

[Kernel Kurtz]

A smartphone developed by Oracle?
I've been fortunate enough never to have crossed paths with Oracle's infamous licensing terms, but I could picture it now:

Every time you used your phone for any purpose whatsoever, you'd have to pay a fee to Oracle.

This was my first thought also. WTF would by an Oracle phone? Google, for all their faults, at least provides some value. Oracle is just a douchey company with little redeeming value at all.

Re:Could you imagine....

[nikhilhs]

> Java licenses are free to developers, but companies incorporating the technology into their platforms are required to pay, Oracle said.

> But Google rejected a deal for the proper Oracle license because it didn't want to meet Oracle's demands for Java compatibility—it didn't want Android apps to run on other platforms, Oracle said in the brief.

> That strategy ultimately prevented Oracle from licensing and competing in the developing smartphone market.

But seriously, what was their phone strategy? They weren't developing their own mobile phone. Android was released in 2008. Oracle didn't buy Sun until 2010. I guess Sun had this one: https://www.engadget.com/2006/... They released over 2 years ahead of Google. Over a year ahead of Apple And then nothing.

Were they just planning on nickel and diming platforms for Java usage?

Re:Could you imagine....

[squiggleslash]

To give some context, I think they're talking about J2ME. J(2)ME was a "popular" (that is, widely preinstalled) platform on cameraphones in the early 2000s. It's true that it pretty much died once Android got started, but that's because cameraphones died. I don't think Sun/Oracle ever made a serious effort to produce a smartphone OS, and if they had J2ME would probably have needed serious revisions to be taken seriously.

But that'd be an interesting alternate history, something like Android but with a JVM instead of Dalvik and Solaris instead of Busybox/Linux.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! CAN'T UNTHINK! CAN'T UNTHINK! *gibbers helplessly in corner*

Re:Could you imagine....

[Anonymous Coward]

A smartphone developed by Oracle?

If there was ever a need for the turd emoji, this is it.

Re:Could you imagine....

[Anonymous Coward]

A smartphone developed by Oracle? I've been fortunate enough never to have crossed paths with Oracle's infamous licensing terms, but I could picture it now:

Every time you used your phone for any purpose whatsoever, you'd have to pay a fee to Oracle.

Incorrect - you have to pay a fee for:
- Looking at the phone - regardless if you own it or not
- Holding the phone in the wrong position
- Having a consultant tell you how to hold the phone in the correct position
- Holding the phone in the correct position
- Breathing on the phone (which violates the TOS of purchase and requires a separate contract to support)
- Turning on the phone

The terms conditions and fees for actually using the phone I'm pretty sure would overflow and break the Slashdot database if we tried to list them all in a single post. I'll stop here.

Re:Could you imagine....

[Anonymous Coward]

Horse shit. There's no way it would be that simple.

You'd first have to pay an annual service fee, 8 year contract minimum, for the privilege of paying Oracle use fees.

You'd also need to pay them use fees for everyone on your contacts list, because they'd be considered users too.

Re:Could you imagine....

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time you used your phone for any purpose whatsoever, you'd have to pay a fee to Oracle.

And, you will need a license for every person you could possibly call or text using that phone ... Oracle will give you a special deal of $1 per person on the planet.

That would be consistent with the rest of their licensing.

Re:Could you imagine....

[Aighearach]

A smartphone developed by Oracle?
I've been fortunate enough never to have crossed paths with Oracle's infamous licensing terms, but I could picture it now:

Every time you used your phone for any purpose whatsoever, you'd have to pay a fee to Oracle.

Also, for not using it when they thought you should have.

Re:Could you imagine....

[sfcat]

A smartphone developed by Oracle? I've been fortunate enough never to have crossed paths with Oracle's infamous licensing terms, but I could picture it now:

Every time you used your phone for any purpose whatsoever, you'd have to pay a fee to Oracle.

This was my first thought also. WTF would by an Oracle phone? Google, for all their faults, at least provides some value. Oracle is just a douchey company with little redeeming value at all.

Hahahahahaha, no...If I want my data lost and my queries to fail, I look to Google. If I actually want performance and accuracy of the result, then I use Postgres or Oracle. Google is a good search engine and once upon a time they made great software. 2008 was a long time ago and almost everything coming out of Google these days is crap. As bad as dealing with Oracle business folk is, at least I won't get hung out to dry by their software (well maybe but far less than with Google). Something I absolutely can't say of Google who seems to be trying to prove that HP isn't the worst possible software vendor.

Re:Could you imagine....

[HornWumpus]

Do you realize how parallel a human brain is?

Oracle would figure out a 'reasonable' core count for the human brain and charge license fees based on that number times the (number of people your address book can hold + 1).

Then after a year, they would 'realize' they had 'made a mistake' and triple that core count.

Woe to the user that exceeded their max address book size without informing and paying Oracle, and don't forget to pay double or triple for any schizo people you know.

Re:Could you imagine....

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time you used your phone for any purpose whatsoever, you'd have to pay a fee to

That's how a "cloud service" is defined.

No, I think it was Oracle

[bob4u2c]

Oracle believes Google destroyed its hopes of competing as a smartphone platform developer with the Java platform,

The only ones who destroyed their hopes of making a phone people would buy was Oracle. They have done a great job of getting their name out there in the market and setting expectations. The problem of course is that their name and those expectations are not well regarded. So if I were in the market for a phone and went into the store and saw an Oracle one I would definitely pass it up. But then again I was never of the normal, so maybe its just me.

Buy Oracle

[Ann Coulter]

Google can delist the customers of Oracle from the search engine as well as use other tactics to devalue Oracle's stock price. Once Oracle is cheap enough, Google can simply buy majority shares and dismiss the lawsuit. Oracle does not have similar tactics at its disposal.

Re: Buy Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies like eBay are the customers of Oracle.

Re:Buy Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that even with as toothless as the current FTC is regarding antitrust these days that Google delisting Oracle would swiftly bring about an antitrust suit.

(Not that I think Oracle should win the lawsuit - quite the opposite, as a matter of fact - I just think that Google delisting Oracle would be the legal equivalent of pouring gasoline over their own heads and lighting themselves on fire.)

Re: Buy Oracle

[viperidaenz]

eBay would just do an Amazon and migrate away from Oracle.

patent troll

[sdinfoserv]

So it's devolved to the level where Oracle is little more than a gigantic patent troll so Larry can have a bigger sailboat. F#ck them all, Larry, Oracle and that spyware company, Google..

Re:patent troll

[drinkypoo]

So it's devolved to the level where Oracle is little more than a gigantic patent troll so Larry can have a bigger sailboat.

They're a lot more than that. They also have a bunch of lawyers just for suing their customers.

Re:patent troll

[Dragonslicer]

So it's devolved to the level where Oracle is little more than a gigantic patent troll so Larry can have a bigger sailboat.

Did you fall asleep in 2005 and just wake up?

Re:patent troll

[msauve]

ORACLE: One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

they should team with MS

[kiviQr]

That would be glorious - Oracle phone running Java Applet with MS Clippy.

I must have missed it...

[SpeedRacer]

Oracle was in the smartphone market?!? When the heck was that?

Re:I must have missed it...

[Tough Love]

Maybe they had a database app, with per-core licensing.

Re:I must have missed it...

[thegarbz]

Not the smartphone as you know it, precisely because you only know iPhone and Android. But J2ME basically was the underlying platform for every other phone in the world.

The fact that it was a bucket of shit not withstanding.

Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle's argument is: I couldn't go to the party because Google was already there wearing the dress I wanted to wear?

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't present at the science fair because Google copied my project idea.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't go to the gun show because google brought some shell casings that worked like mine.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

JavaME was on mobile phones years before android was a thing. Google only cobbled together its own "Java" implementation from a few open source projects so it could avoid paying for JavaME licensing or any of Suns patents.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention making that dress "cool". Google creating a huge ecosystem of apps written in your language harms your entry into the smartphone market how exactly? Instead of starting at square one against two entrenched competitors they could implement the GAPPS APIs and make it extremely easy for devs to port Android apps to their new platform.

Oracle is so full of Sh1t

[Anonymous Coward]

to think that they could be a major player in the smartphone market.

that's absolute BS

[Anonymous Coward]

As any technical person who isn't some kind of gaslighting piece of shit knows.

causing incalculable harm to its business

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I'm sure they'll figure out a "calculation" for the judgement.

Coulda woulda

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoulda

FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is the good guy here. They are trying to protect copyright against a company that that has the power to publicly destroy anyone. If Oracle loses, it will be the end of all open sorce software.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is shit, and their java is a piece of garbage.
They want my sympathy - they need to create a product I'd want to use.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, oracle, the company that destroyed multiple successful oss project is the true oss protecot. Fuck off larry...

Re: FALSE

[lord_mike]

You have it reversed. With the new standard tht APIs are copyrighted, it will kill open source software.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

How much google paying you people to post FALSE claims on Slashdot.Org? This is riduculos. Oracle support open source 100% and always had. Google wants full control of all the internet and you libtards suport them?

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck over WINE and emulators to PWN THE LIBS much?

Re: FALSE

[slack_justyb]

With the new standard tht APIs are copyrighted

Minor correction, can be copyrighted. Not every API that comes into existence automatically becomes copyrighted unless the author says so and even then if they only enforce it.

I don't agree with the idea that APIs can be copyrighted, but, what I do and don't agree to means nothing in the legal system. That said, I don't see this as something that kills open source software. Not giving something a legal definition leaves it in murky waters. With APIs being something that can be copyrighted, it's easy for projects to require the APIs be copyleft/GPL/BSD/etc. Copyrighted APIs become an issue for people who've done projects with APIs with less than clear legal language, which was the case since APIs were pretty much just assumed to public domain/just how things work. And trust me I would love to see APIs having that legal distinction, but they don't and you work with the reality your handed.

A lot of the modern APIs in major use today are already open sourced and apply either a copyleft/GPL/BSD requirement to the licensing of the API. Hell, even Java today is GPL API via the OpenJDK. And OpenJDK's special exception that was irrevocably granted by Sun before they gave up Java, is how Google to this day keeps Android alive. Google was once upon a time not down with going GPL and wanted to use Apache License. Which you cannot convert simply relicense a GPL project to Apache License project, which was the entire argument that Oracle made in court against Google.

I don't like the notion of copyrighted APIs anymore than the next person, but I do see that APIs being copyrighted isn't the death knell for future projects. But I totally see it as a submarine issue for projects from the past. Much like how patent submarines were once used before a change in the patent law.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice rhetoric from google! How much does they pay for spreading FALSE things on Developers.Slashdot.Org today?

Re: FALSE

[Dragonslicer]

Minor correction, can be copyrighted. Not every API that comes into existence automatically becomes copyrighted unless the author says so and even then if they only enforce it.

Your correction is incorrect, at least in the United States. Creative works are automatically protected by copyright from the time they are created; no additional action by the author is necessary. Unlike trademarks, copyright (as well as patent) protection is not lost for failure to actively defend it.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

More lies from paid google astro turfers. Sad day for Developers.Slashdot.Org that truth is buried by anti-freedom corporations and goverment censorship.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Minor correction, can be copyrighted. Not every API that comes into existence automatically becomes copyrighted unless the author says so and even then if they only enforce it.

Copyrights don't differentiate whether its an API, written work, music piece, etc. If it is copyrightable, it is automatic, until the creators opt-out.

Re: FALSE

[slack_justyb]

Your correction is incorrect, at least in the United States

You are correct on this. That is Trademark that requires legal defense and Copyright requires overt act to release to public domain.

That said, in the United States, I believe the majority of what I said still applies. Modern APIs are more explicit about the licensing requirements for the API and GPL et al convey an open agreement for the APIs. Additionally, Copyright in the US permits fair use as well. While I wouldn't want to attempt playing within that domain, new projects convey fair derivative use of APIs be it in explicit terms for non-standard licenses or in some of the more commons ones we've come to know. Additionally, I think people are more aware of APIs usage today than they once were.

Again, the biggest problem I see with copyrighted APIs is prior projects that implemented "fuzzy" in legal terms APIs. So that being said, I don't see copyrighted APIs as a hindrance for future open source projects. However, I will reaffirm that my preference here is APIs not being a copyrighted thing.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

thankfully you are not an astro turfer.. postsing the same thing to every comment your comapany disagrees with?

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Minor correction, can be copyrighted. Not every API that comes into existence automatically becomes copyrighted unless the author says so and even then if they only enforce it.

Your correction is incorrect, at least in the United States. Creative works are automatically protected by copyright from the time they are created; no additional action by the author is necessary. Unlike trademarks, copyright (as well as patent) protection is not lost for failure to actively defend it.

Almost right. The SCOTUS, I think, just ruled that copyrights are not enforceable until the until the Gov't paperwork is completed. The long standing practice of assuming that everything created is copyrighted and immediately enforceable, has been shot to hell.

Re: FALSE

[Dragonslicer]

Almost right. The SCOTUS, I think, just ruled that copyrights are not enforceable until the until the Gov't paperwork is completed. The long standing practice of assuming that everything created is copyrighted and immediately enforceable, has been shot to hell.

Can you cite to the Supreme Court case? The Berne Convention says that works are automatically protected by copyright.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

no, i am an concerned citizen. many other people I know are really very concerned about google trying to destroy the companies they dont like. google also uses its power to slander great politicians by spreading fake news. google wants to control the world and will stop in nothing to finish that. many people are talking about stopping them and i hope it works for the sake of all freedom of speach and the second amendment.

Re: FALSE

[Solandri]

What OP probably meant to say is that copyrights do not need to be enforced. The owner of an API copyright can simply state up-front that they will not be enforcing the copyright, and everyone can use the API freely without restriction. Which will cause people and companies to gravitate towards these open APIs instead of closed ones like Oracle is trying to make JAVA into. And eventually, the only APIs used between companies will be open ones whose copyright is not enforced.

Raising the question of what the hell was the whole point of making APIs copyrightable? When the only form of API which can self-perpetuate in the market is the kind which foregoes the protections offered by copyright?

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle have been slowly fucking up Java ever since they got hold of Sun Microsystems.

Oracle WebLogic is shit. It violates RFC 5246 all over the place (an 11 year old spec, by the way), obviously put together by a bunch of half-assed monkeys, yet somehow Oracle is still a multibillion dollar coporation succeeding in the marketplace. I can only put it down to indoctrinating the C-level types with the "Oracle is Good" mantra.

Re:FALSE

[Darinbob]

Oracle has the power to publicly destroy almost everyone as well. Oracle has destroyed a lot of open source projects, and if they win the right to prevent anyone from using an API means that this would destroy even more open source.

Re: FALSE

[Darinbob]

And it's highly suspect in the first place that an API actually can be copyrighted. That's like copyrighting a table of contents. At the very least, fair use implies you can freely use an API.

I sometimes pass this building in Silicon Valley that has a banner in the window saying "We Love APIs". Which I have thought every time that the building must be full of morons. An API is like saying "I'll meet you at 2:30 in conference room B".

Re: FALSE

[Dragonslicer]

And it's highly suspect in the first place that an API actually can be copyrighted. That's like copyrighting a table of contents.

Just to clarify, I don't disagree with this point. I only wanted to correct the mistaken statement that additional action is required by an author to get copyright protection for a work that is eligible for protection.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no, Oracle sells shit shingles for gold bricks and expects you to ask for seconds when you tell them it tastes like shit. Fuck them, fuck Google too, but really, REALLY fuck Oracle. You must really love the taste of Larry's dick, you keep sucking it so hard.

Re: FALSE

[brantondaveperson]

That's like copyrighting a table of contents.

It really isn't like that at all. An API, its design, data model, guarantees and so-on, is actually the hardest thing to design. Once designed, the implementation is relatively straightforwards. The main different between Android, and iOS, for instance, is that Android's APIs are horrible, and iOS's are really nice to use. This is an API design issue, it's nothing whatever to do with the underlying implementation.

Or look elsewhere, at a less divisive example. Microsoft's WIN32 API is terrible. Everything is a handle, one ends up having to cast things all over the place. The message queue takes only a couple of integers as payload. There's no support for basic things, like JPEGs. And hands up anybody that's ever tried to use their DirectShow media APIs. Oh, that's right, you can't. You've long ago chewed your own arms off in frustration.

That's poor API design. It's massively important, and very hard to get right. For the record, I don't believe that Java's APIs are particularly nice. An likening an API to a "table of contents" is disingenuous at best.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just in the United States, in every country that has ratified the Berne Convention - which is to say, 176 countries.

Re: FALSE

[slack_justyb]

I only wanted to correct the mistaken statement that additional action is required by an author to get copyright protection for a work that is eligible for protection.

To which I am happy to have been corrected, might I add.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Please either overdose on what you are smoking or stop.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for your concern, illiterate idiot, errr citizen. Now, go tell your boss to tell his contacts at Oracle to tell their bosses to tell Larry that hiring you wasn't a very smart use of the money they stole from Oracle customers.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point was the Murrican fear of Soshulism.

You should not have public goods in the US, because that is Marxo Stalinovich Lening rearing his ugly head and screaming "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" from his temple-grave in the Moscow.

Therefore stigginit!

Re: FALSE

[cpt kangarooski]

To be precise, copyrights are vested upon creation, but lawsuits to enforce the copyright may not be brought until the US Copyright Office issues a registration for the copyright or denies it (in which case the suit will also have to argue that the denial was wrong).

The case is Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC, and the link is to the unanimous opinion of the Court.

Re: FALSE

[cpt kangarooski]

Correction, the link is https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-571_e29f.pdf and whoever runs the site now is a son of a bitch, who hasnâ(TM)t programmed it to figure out what to do with smart quotes from mobile devices and who doesnâ(TM)t offer a chance to preview the post from the mobile interface. Hopefully this works better.

Re: FALSE

[cpt kangarooski]

However, it is possible to have an API - or anything else - that is uncopyrightable if it is not sufficiently creative, or if the merger or scenes-a-faire doctrine kick in.

Re: FALSE

[Dragonslicer]

Interesting. Thanks for answering that.

Re: FALSE

[Dragonslicer]

Thanks for clarifying that. Yes, everything I said certainly only applies to works that are eligible for copyright protection in the first place.

Re: FALSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you cannot copyright a collection of facts, etc.

Should have left the Iron Curtain hanging

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when you open the gates to socialists, marxists, and outright communists.

Decades of infiltration by collectivists has toppled the individualist, entrepreneurial culture of the United States.

Re:Should have left the Iron Curtain hanging

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "Traitor's word salad" is full of moldy croutons you uneducated Republican faggot. The Republicans have killed the middle class INTENTIONALLY you boob.

Now they've got you whining like Glenn Beck lol! You wouldn't know a real problem if its extra chromosomes were already in your brain since birth, retard GOP.

Re:Should have left the Iron Curtain hanging

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony of your comment is scrumptious.

Re:Should have left the Iron Curtain hanging

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for providing the dictionary for detecting leftism bots.

Thank you!

[AVryhof]

We should make Google a Thank You card for keeping Oracle out of the Smartphone market.

Re: Thank you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of the fuller employment we would be enjoying, though, if Oracle was employing legal thugs to enforce Oracle licensing terms at the level of consumer smartphones.

Hand your phone to your kid to play a game? Whoops, better buy another client license from the Oracle dood looming ominously out on the sidewalk.

What about Blackberry?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wrote Blackberry Apps. They were all java. How come Oracle didn't sue them? Ohh....there's no fame, glory and money to be won. Gotta take on the big fish.

Re:What about Blackberry?

[bob4u2c]

I think it was just about the money. Fame and glory they could make up later, how they saved java from the evil hands of Google. All praise be Oracle!

Oracle should thank Google.

[e70838]

Oracle has caused a lot of harm to java with this litigation, with its bad handling of security issues and its general bad governance. The fact that Google has made so much effort to use java in android is a testimony to the qualities of this language.

Re:Oracle should thank Google.

[Aighearach]

And by "qualities" we're talking about, millions of jr. level programmers around the world already know it, and so they can spew out Appy Apps.

APIs are not copyrightable - Courts got it wrong..

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff said.

Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, JAVA

[Locutus]

When Google came on board with Dalvick, Sun was having a grand time putting JAVA in the browser and on the server. Those wanting to put it into embedded devices, it's original intent, were ignored by Sun Microsystems. As HP about that since they wanted to license JAVA for use in their printers but Sun would not address their requests for licensing. HP had to do a clean-room implementation which they called Chai or something like that( as in the tea ). No doubt there were many others since we all know HP is no small printer manufacturer and landing them would have been a large deal.

But somehow we are to expect, or the judges are, that it was all Google's fault? Java on mobile phones, back when phones were not very smart, was a mess with many different layers of API's to follow. I forget what they called that mobile version of JAVA but each phone vendor had different application stores and different application requirements.

Apple showed that the market for downloading applications on mobile devices was viable again( remember Palm did it years before ) and Google just followed their lead. Had the phone vendors considered their Sun JAVA mobile API's sufficient they could have competed but they were stuck with what Sun provided and it was not really so good for the rich smartphone OS which was becoming the norm.

Oracle purchased Sun thinking they'd leverage JAVA everywhere but Sun left the mobile market and focused on the server side and browser...

LoB

Dog ate my homework

[cloud.pt]

No seriously, that might as well be the excuse from Oracle. They are pretty much saying "since Google used this language/API that we wanted to patent troll AFTER they forked it and already had Android all rolling, we pretty much can't be on that market, because the way we WOULD be on that market was to do nothing more than demand royalties from Google by using this technology that we simply purchased without actually thinking through that it was OPEN SOURCE BEFORE".

I could say this is funny. But it is actually way more than that.

Re:Dog ate my homework

[bluefoxlucid]

Oracle's Java is actually just open source OpenJDK compiled with Oracle's name on it.

Yeah, right.

[Qbertino]

We all remember those beautiful sleek end-user friendly and exciting products from Oracle, before evil Google came along and destroyed de poor liddle Oracle and their beautiful consumer products lineup.

Sooo mean, sooo sad.

What stopped Oracle forking Android?

[presidenteloco]

and taking "back" control of the mobile platform.
Maybe it would have had to rebrand it. e.g. Orafix, Mava (mobile java),..., what have you.

Nothing stopped Oracle from pulling a CyanogenMod move, but backed by Oracle's money.

Nothing except lack of willpower, imagination, and skill.

Re: What stopped Oracle forking Android?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

When you lay people off regularly to maintain an environment of fear, the truely talented go elsewhere, or avoid you entirely. Meanwhile those left are more concerned with survival than innovation.

Re:What stopped Oracle forking Android?

[UnknownSoldier]

I think the bigger question is:

If Google was able to bring out a Smart Phone what stopped Oracle from doing the same before Google in the early 2000's? Seems like Oracle is whining about not being able to ride on the coattails of a competitor AFTER the fact. Notice how Oracle bought Sun AFTER Android was released.

Timeline for those that forgot the details:

*Java came out in 1995.
* Google announced Android in 2007 and shipped the first device in 2008.
* Oracle bought Sun in 2010.
--
The Lie of Islam: God commanded his children to kill one another.

Re:What stopped Oracle forking Android?

[Altus]

And a good way to make money. Google makes money off android with data gathering, use of google services for more data gathering and then ultimately advertising. What is Oracle going to do? Charge phone manufacturers for use of their OS that is identical to googles? They aren't set up to make money off of something like android.

Re:What stopped Oracle forking Android?

[Lehk228]

there was mobile java before android it was unmitigated hot steaming shit

Re:What stopped Oracle forking Android?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what Sun explained what Java should be used for in 1995, small platforms such as mobile phones, watches, etc.
They didn't even think it would be useful on the server side.

Re:What stopped Oracle forking Android?

[Darinbob]

Oracle didn't want to be in the smartphone market. They just wanted to get X% of all smartphone sales by requiring fees of everyone who uses Java.

Re: What stopped Oracle forking Android?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle believes Google destroyed its hopes of competing as a smartphone platform developer with the Java platform

That is some really good stuff Oracle is smoking.

Java already owned the smart phone market

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Apple turned "smart" into "we have an app store", Java was already the only player in the smart phone market. Back then they were called "feature phones" for some reason, but basically they supported Java apps, only. Sun/Oracle had their chance. Just like Microsoft, with their PDA phones. Sore losers, the lot of them. Not that I like the winners, either: fuck 'em all.

Oracle?!

[pi_rules]

I'd be more inclined to buy a phone branded Etch-A-Sketch than Oracle.

Re:Oracle?!

[gweihir]

Nice!

Solaris Phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was Oracle going to come out with a smartphone based on the Solaris operating system? Because they bought that, too, when they took over Sun Microsystems. Java wan't theirs until they acquired it in the bundle. Based on what they have done with Java, they were just acquiring the right to sue.

Re:Solaris Phone?

[gweihir]

Slowlaris on a phone? Could the ideas get any worse?

Re:Solaris Phone?

[Aighearach]

I thought the problem was that it was slow on x86, but worked fine on RISC platforms? Phones are mostly ARM.

That wouldn't be the problem. The problem would be, where would apps come from, and where would security come from?

Re:Solaris Phone?

[gweihir]

Solaris is pretty slow on anything. And it has a really bad network stack and that is after it was cleaned up.

Re:Solaris Phone?

[Aighearach]

Doesn't Oracle already have the old BSD network stack, though?

J2ME

[JBMcB]

Funny thing is, J2ME was pretty big business pre-iOS and Android. Probably had the largest market share of any mobile platform, at least up there with native Symbian apps. Oracle did basically nothing with it, as they bought Sun primarily for enterprise Java and server hardware. Then, when Android blew up, Oracle finally realized they could make some money off of a mobile Java platform, but it was too late. They had done nothing with J2ME and it was so far behind anything else as a platform the only way they could monetize was to sue.

Android running on SPARC?

[mnemotronic]

Oracle had such overwhelming success with SPARC chips, how about a SPARC T4 in a smartphone? It could also act as a handwarmer. Let's see Apple top that!

Re:Android running on SPARC?

[cb88]

Sparc is Scalable Risc Architecture... the fact is it probably would have worked for phones just as well as ARM as they aren't all that terribly different. The T4 is a massively multithreaded machine so of course it gets hot. An S7 only uses under 400 watts active power for an 8 core 4.3Ghz 16GB ram system.... so that's not out it of reason for a chip like that. 400/8 = 50 W at 1 core 4 threads, 4.3Ghz... at half the frequency it would probably be in the 10-20W range already with very little power management.

Typical Smartphone active power is around 4-5W, and 0.5-1w idle... applying the same power saveing techniques to Sparc as to ARM would probably result in about the same performance. Add to that that they probably would have built in java hardware acceleration in addition to the Sparc core.

I'm a big fan of old Sun hardware, Oracle is evil though :/ sad days....

Absurd argument

[angel'o'sphere]

No one stops Oracle to take Android (or would they need to pay a license fee?) and sell their own Android device.

However if they put their Oracle database on it, I would ski :P

Re: Absurd argument

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont understand. Google has used Java contrary to license terms. They have excluded libraries and functions that they were required to include in their license terms. IBM and many others have created own Java, but observed license terms. Microsoft didnâ(TM)t, and has lost in court and had to pay. Google disnâ(TM)t and will lose in court and will have to pay.

Re: Absurd argument

[angel'o'sphere]

You dont understand. Google has used Java contrary to license terms.
No they have not ...
If you think otherwise give an example.

WORM

[Anonymous Coward]

Java was originally Write Once Run Many - WORM. Tell me why java broke and things like AWT and SWING ceased to work once the Android platform was introduced?

Re:WORM

[viperidaenz]

What are you talking about?

All Google did was build their own platform using the Java language and API. They didn't take or change any code.

Re:WORM

[HornWumpus]

Are you implying that SWING worked before Android?

Back when MS was forced to ship a copy of Sun Java, I thought they should retaliate by also shipping a copy of SWING and using it to render Sun's logo at startup.

Oracle good at complaining

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that Oracle is good at is whining about who has actually used their tech to good use when they can't. I still wonder why Oracle is still around?

Re:Oracle good at complaining

[gweihir]

Too many companies that made abysmally bad strategic IT decisions and not cannot get rid of Oracles crap. My students tell me they expect Java to be dead within a few years (due to the upcoming fees by Oracle), but it will be decades until all legacy stuff is gone.

Re:Oracle good at complaining

[viperidaenz]

Except Google started using Java when it was still owned by Sun Microsystems.

Oracle is still around because it has lots of money. Money from entrenching itself in a lot of large companies.

Re:Oracle good at complaining

[HornWumpus]

Oracle's database is good, not worth the money, but a good solid product.

Everything else they make/sell is _useless_ shit that makes SAP look good.

No fine would be sufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Googleâ(TM)s reckless vandalism has to stop. It is unbelieveable US regulators have let Google Amazon Facebook and others perpetually flaunt laws, seems like EU is the only entity globally that holds them to account, if only in a small way.

Settlement

[Anonymous Coward]

Google should just buy Java from Oracle and take it off their backs. Everyone would be happier that way. Oracle has buyer remorse anyways.
Google has had success with it on Android so just pay them to stop bothering you and reopen Java to the world.

Phones by Oracle? Gods preserve us!

[gweihir]

And I say that as an atheist. Oracle is the proverbial Evil Inc. that only cares about fucking its customers over.

Simple choice: root for Oracle.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you value privacy and a smartphone market not being monopolized by a single player, root for Oracle.

Oracle is an evil, greedy, nasty company with an ugly PR history.

Google is an evil, greedy nasty company with a history of good PR.

Oracle makes money selling crappy products to trapped customers.

Google makes money surreptitiously strip-mining the privacy of its suckers, errrr, users.

If Google wins, they continue on their path of being an existential threat to privacy on a global scale.

If Oracle wins, there's a chance that Google's near-monopoly stranglehold on the smartphone market - and the privacy strip-mining on a global scale that enables - will be weakened. There's no way Oracle gets control of any market in any way like Google currently has.

Any transfer of money in any final settlement is irrelevant - it's a transfer of money from evil to evil.

Remember - Google is the one trying to help the authoritarian Chinese government subjugate the Chinese people. Google is orders of magnitude more evil and more dangerous than Oracle.

Re:Simple choice: root for Oracle.

[shentino]

Google is being blatantly honest that they're censoring for China.

If it was anyone else they probably would have done it quietly and we'd never have found out about it.

In this case I see that Google is doing the censorship under protest because otherwise the powers that be in Beijing wouldn't let Google operate at all, so they're doing it while giving the authorities the biggest middle finger they can without putting themselves in jeopardy.

And to be quite blunt I would rather have Google give openly censored results than have someone else filling the void who would not only hide that they're censoring, but likely trace anyone even searching for it and hand the results over to the authorities for persecution.

Oracle put itself out of the market

[WCMI92]

Oracle's crap software and their high pressure sales goons put them out of business.

Re:Oracle put itself out of the market

[Locke2005]

As a former Oracle employee, I heartily agree with you! Actually, the technical implementation of their database wasn't that bad, but their marketing department was full of crooks. I.e. I had a manager that pulled down his $40k quarterly bonuses by billing customers for contract work that wasn't actually done... I wonder where Ken Ross is now...

Dying companies sue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of deciding to innovate, Oracle decided to sue. Lawsuits are always a good sign that a company is dying or dead and that bankruptcy proceedings will follow soon after. In this case, even if the Supreme Court somehow decides in Oracle's favor, it's unlikely the extra cash will do them any good.

Oracle hasn't innovated anything of note in a while. They look pretty dead already.

Android running on Java has always been kind of silly. Java is a dumb language. It's got 500 different ways to do the same thing when you go to do anything, but only one of those is the current "correct" way. And it doesn't help that Google likes to deprecate half of the Android API every major OS release. My Android Java code is littered with black lines in Android Studio. I don't have the time or patience to do it "the new way" because in 6 months the new way will also be deprecated. One time I even had Google deprecate an API within minutes after I had finished writing and testing code that used that API. Fortunately, Google rarely removes APIs - they just deprecate them. I gave up on writing clean Android code years ago. Java is a dumb language and encourages bad software to be written. Look no further than Android and Google's highly aggressive deprecation policies as proof of that statement.

Re:Dying companies sue.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is quite insightful and indicative of a remark I make frequently. Software development is not engineering. It is not science. The mathematics of computing have been largely stable for decades. Even the AI/ML hotness isn't new. The miracle is in the hardware development and ability to squeeze out supply chain efficiencies. No, today software is art and as everybody knows, art is subject to fashion and whimsy. The framework fashionistas have killed what used to be a pleasant task of solving real problems. Instead we have the freaks of JavaScript and Java which have become nightmares to work in. Yes, if you don't program everything is Node-esq async callback promise shit then you suck. And lo and behold did not Java adopt the same shit because "threads are too hard". Javascript is an illegitimate bastard language that is as LBGQTOSMFP+_+_ that a language can get. It doesn't know what it wants to be so it tries to be everything at the same time. It's shit, and Java proper has followed suit. Fuck oracle, fuck google and fuck you silly art fags that keep screwing up otherwise useful tools by insisting on putting curtains, wallpaper and placemats everywhere.

There's no mechanism for that

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way to cede to the public domain apart from waiting for 75 years after the author dies, so there is no way to give those rights to the public domain. Anyone who does can have their stuff bought out and then the new owners reverse that decision, since there is no way to legally issue anything other than "I will not sue you for this", when the "I" has just changed.
Not even estoppel can stop it, that only stops it being past infringement and wilful, so any future copies and the lower non-wilful "damages" are limited by this, nothing else.

Re:There's no mechanism for that

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way to cede to the public domain apart from waiting for 75 years after the author dies, so there is no way to give those rights to the public domain.

The folks that created SQLite beg to differ with that interpretation.

Re:There's no mechanism for that

[green1]

There are many, many, people who have successfully done so. Your disagreement with their choice does not make it any less valid. You legally get copyright, but you are free to license it any way that you want, including free for everyone with no strings attached.

Re:There's no mechanism for that

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anyone who does can have their stuff bought out and then the new owners reverse that decision,

The new owners may well change the way that they licence the product, but that does not revoke the existing licences unless the licence already issued states explicitly that it can be arbitrarily cancelled for any or no reason.

The new owner may prevent existing licensees getting newer versions but he cannot prevent the existing licenced version continuing to be used or even redistributed if the licence allowed that.

Re:There's no mechanism for that

[green1]

The US government disagrees with you:

Federal Regulations as they pertain to software (from https://www.copyright.gov/title37/201/37cfr201-26.html):
Title 37 Part 201.26:
(b)(3) Public domain computer software means software which has been publicly distributed with an explicit disclaimer of copyright protection by the copyright owner.

That means that you can in fact explicitly place something in the public domain. Once you do that, you can not go back on those people who have used that version. Now there's nothing stopping you from distributing a new version under a different license, but that's not the same as reversing the decision on the original.

What stopped oracle from "competing"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't aware they even tried to be part of this "smartphone market" thing.

So I would surmise the thing that held them back was themselves, not anyone else's doing. Though I frankly can't imagine anyone wanting an oracle phone. It'd charge you per CPU and require a service contract to function at all.

Re:What stopped oracle from "competing"?

[TheRaven64]

Not Oracle, but Sun has a lot of history in closely related spaces. The original Java platform (back when Java was called Green) was the 7*, a handheld computer that ran a modified Solaris that supported execute in place and ran happily with a 32-bit SPARC and 1MB of RAM. The vast majority of pre-iPhone smartphones and featurephones included J2ME, which (unlike J2SE) required a license fee from each phone maker.

This is the main reason that Sun was unhappy with Android. They'd been receiving royalties from pretty much every phone to be able to use Java and then suddenly Google came along with a Java implementation that didn't require anyone to pay Sun. Worse, as with Microsoft's J++, it wasn't a fully conformant implementation of Java - it did both subsetting and supersetting, so arbitrary Java code doesn't work on Android and arbitrary Android Java code doesn't work on other JVMs.

Re:What stopped oracle from "competing"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dalvik isn't Java, and Google has never claimed it is, nor hat it's compatible. So much for your theories.

Re:What stopped oracle from "competing"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Java was never called "Green". Java started out as a project named Oak but Gosling and Kim Polese renamed it Java before it was released.

Google didn't even reimplement most of the API....

[Anonymous Coward]

They took the 95 percent completed Harmony 5/6 libraries, reimplemented by the Apache Foundation and hundreds of paid and volunteer developers, and finished the remaining 5 percent or so after Sun open sourced Java. So this is even more questionable than Oracle is making it out because it was already 'second source software' before Scroogle ever got ahold of it.

The fact that they made a better hammer than the original hammer-maker is entirely down to Sun and Oracle's lack of vision. Or google's for that matter, since Android was bought, not developed in-house.

Thanks, Oracle!

[Locke2005]

Suing Google for using Java for Android pretty much guarantees the death of Java!

Re:Thanks, Oracle!

[nadass]

There's the saying, "Bite the hand that feeds it!" (Also the slogan used by The Register, but their "it" is I.T.)

Re:Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, J

[sconeu]

I forget what they called that mobile version of JAVA

I believe it was, oddly enough, Java ME (Mobile Edition)

Should have left the Iron Curtain hanging

[Anonymous Coward]

Censored comment:

This is what happens when you open the gates to socialists, marxists, and outright communists.

Decades of infiltration by collectivists has toppled the individualist, entrepreneurial culture of the United States.

Those bastards at Google!

[Trailer Trash]

They did the same damned thing to my company. I tell you, if it weren't for them and their Java rip-off, everybody would be making cell phones.

Re:Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, J

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple showed that the market for downloading applications on mobile devices was viable again

Quite the opposite. Apple didn't want to ship a SDK and have 3rd party developers write apps for the iPhone. They pushed for web apps only (and their own native ones of course). They did end up giving in and shipping a SDK. So it wasn't Apple showing that the market existed, the market was so overwhelming that Apple had to join in even as it held it's ears and claimed it wasn't important.

There were plenty of app stores and app platforms that pre-dated the iPhone that were doing just fine. Apple reluctantly joined in too.

Re:Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, J

[nadass]

Java on mobile phones, back when phones were not very smart, was a mess with many different layers of API's to follow. I forget what they called that mobile version of JAVA but each phone vendor had different application stores and different application requirements. Apple showed that the market for downloading applications on mobile devices was viable again( remember Palm did it years before ) and Google just followed their lead. Had the phone vendors considered their Sun JAVA mobile API's sufficient they could have competed but they were stuck with what Sun provided and it was not really so good for the rich smartphone OS which was becoming the norm.

J2ME (Java 2 Mobile/Micro Edition) was their primary mobile platform, and it was successfully deployed in may places. BlackBerry OS was built upon JME itself (before Java 1.0 got to Java 1.2 aka "Java 2").

Along those lines of Oracle's current claims, the future success of Java as a mobile platform/ecosystem was somehow stunted by Android OS... and not the continued failures and feature deficits of the underlying Java ME platform and their existing commercial mobile OSes. If I recall, the Java ME platform had such a lousy stench to it that Apple quickly dismissed its usage in creating iOS (so it was in the running but tripped on its own insufficiencies).

I agree, LoB, that Oracle's purchase of Sun (and thus Java) was not primarily for mobile ambitions because Sun quick the mobile market before talks began! Sun needed an exit strategy and Oracle came with open arms.

Re:Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, J

[nadass]

I forget what they called that mobile version of JAVA

I believe it was, oddly enough, Java ME (Mobile Edition)

It was Micro Edition (embedded) before it picked up the temporary marketing rebrand of Mobile Edition.

Re:Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, J

[Anonymous Coward]

two words: Fuck Oracle.

nuff said.

What utter bullshit

[viperidaenz]

If Oracle had the vision at the time, Google using the same platform for app development would have helped them significantly.

Re:What utter bullshit

[Tough Love]

Google could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by just dropping Java in favor of C++. It's not like app development would have slowed down at all. They can still do that and it would still be a win.

I needed a good laugh

[nightfire-unique]

It's been a tough week, and I needed this. An Oracle phone. A successful Oracle phone.

Thanks guys. ^_^

Re:I needed a good laugh

[Tough Love]

Don't laugh, it would be 100% waterproof so you can use it on your yacht.

Re:I needed a good laugh

[RhettLivingston]

The government would love it. All communication would of course be via SQL queries using blobs in the world's largest Oracle DB. Everything 100% recorded all of the time.

Re:I needed a good laugh

[nightfire-unique]

Eh, waterproofing is overrated. :p

Bigger boats don't tend to ship much water.

Re:I needed a good laugh

[Tough Love]

Never sailed a yacht in heavy weather, hmm? If you meant, a harbour yacht doesn't ship much water then you'd be right. But that's not what we're talking about

Re:I needed a good laugh

[nightfire-unique]

Haha. As a matter of fact, I live aboard a 46' ketch with about 5,000NM under her keel, singlehanded. I do avoid heavy weather to the best of my ability, but of course I've "seen some shit." Nothing worse than ~50 knots sustained.

In heavy weather, I'm never on the foredeck, and the cockpit is relatively well protected behind a dodger. I've never had a problem with my Note 3, which isn't waterproof. Knock fiberglass. :p

Had an actual Java phone at one point

[rsilvergun]

cheap phone and it felt that way. My provider loaded a breakout clone on it. Really simple, just ball, 10x10 colored blocks and a paddle. Kind of thing that make the Atari 2600 a household name in the late 70s/early 80s.

It was dog slow. Unplayably so. I mean, I know it's a cheap phone and all, but come-on. It's a clone of Atari breakout.

Re:Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, J

[viperidaenz]

Sun was in financial trouble.
Oracle had to buy it out to stop their competition acquiring Java. All their corporate products are built using it or embed it.

Having to call their flagship product "Oracle Database, powered by Microsoft Java" would be bad for them.

hard to believe Oracle = smartphones

[swschrad]

for instance, how's it going to work putting an antenna on a SunServer and carrying it on the bus to talk to your significant other.

Re:Oracle-phone, wot? No thanks!

[viperidaenz]

Nah, they'd let you use it as much as you want, but every year they'd come in an audit your usage and send you an invoice.

Their database licensing model is to let their customer install it on as many machines as they want, when ever they want, without asking for permission. They then send an invoice based on how many cpu cores you're running it on.

Kind of like a loan shark or a drug dealer.

Not what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

An Oracle phone?

Good thing this wasn't ever a thing as, all consumers would be required to have a live-in Oracle support agent in their homes for supporting the software, and consumers would be charged an arm and a leg just to use the phone.

Re:Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, J

[medv4380]

I believe they purchased Sun because they used Java for interacting with their Database, and the last thing they wanted was someone buying Sun and hitting them as they hit their customers. Once they had it they tried to do exactly what they thought others would have done had they got the asset. Had Sun been healthy I don't see Oracle being interested in it at all.

Larry wants a free lunch

[Tough Love]

Let's all feed Larry.

[Clarification] Re:When evil battles evil

[Tablizer]

Clarification: "Before, copyrights were mostly limited to implementation."

Microsoft Android tax ..

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this relate to the Microsoft Android tax, that MS is extracting from the hardware makers. Seeing as Microsoft holds patents in relation to Android? ref

The modern SCO vs Novell

[Rick Zeman]

Where's PJ to explain this to us when we need her?

Re:Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, J

[brantondaveperson]

There were plenty of app stores and app platforms that pre-dated the iPhone that were doing just fine.

Well, I suppose 'doing just fine' is a statement that's opening to interpretation, but I can't think of any that fit my own personal definition of that term.

Oracle needs to share their drugs

[RonVNX]

Whatever they're on is amazing!

Oh how I miss those Oracle phones!

[Anonymous Coward]

They were an art of true beauty! We were all so mesmerized by it. But then came along evil Google and copied it! Badboybadboy!

Can you imagine a phone designed by Larry? A large red box, clunky UI, with a slot on the side to insert your credit card. Every use is directly debited. No card no phone. And sometimes it just fails and displays a glaring ORA-00019 message " session slots exceeded" which only disappears the following day. Oracle claims this is a quality assurance feature. :)

Okay Oracle, show you were developing a phone.

[sabbede]

If Oracle wasn't seriously planning to make phones, their argument collapses. And they'd have to show it would have had a chance in hell of selling. Microsoft couldn't survive in the phone market, why would Oracle?

Re:Oracle purchased a poorly managed technology, J

[strikethree]

Those wanting to put it into embedded devices, it's original intent, were ignored by Sun Microsystems.

This is patently (lol) untrue. I recall seeing Java implementations running on smart cards in 15k of RAM back around the 2k time frame.

Licensing was likely a serious issue, but there was Java in embedded spaces, so it was not "ignored". There was some other reason... likely had to do with money.

Oracle is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Google knocked Oracle out .... thankfully ... if not we will be still in the era of Mobile Java shit. And Apple would have just killed everything else. So it is for the good of mankind. Still google is evil so fuck google and fuck Oracle.

Incalculable?

[tyme]

I agree: the amount of money they could have lost trying to sell an Oracle Smart Phone is incalculable