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Preliminary Ruling in Sun/Microsoft Case
Mihg writes "The judge in the Sun/Microsoft case over Java has issued preliminary rulings on 3 of the 10 issues in the trial. (Siding with Microsoft twice.) Basically, the rulings indicate that Microsoft has the right to author their own clean-room versions of Java without Sun's input, but none of their current products qualify as "clean-room." Read more at NEWS.COM "
As far as I can tell, Microsoft's winning or losing this case has nothing to do with your rights or my rights to write software under the law. It has little to do with the right to reverse engineer or to make clean-room implementations. It mostly has to do with how smart Microsoft's lawyers were in their contract negotiations with Sun.
as I understand it a clean room implementation is one which matches the specification of the origninal but does not use the original in any way. Therefore the developers can not even have seen the original Java code (and perhaps not even a derivative of the original Java code). This also rules out anything like disassebling a compiled version of the JVM and rebuilding from that. This was how the old i386 clones where produced - two teams one of which took the chips apart and derived their specifications and another who implemented a solution to the specifications that they where handed. In this way it doesn't really matter if you happen to use exactly the same code as the original if you can show that you developed it independantly. as usual my grammer probably ain't up to much but I think the contents there. Tom
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
This bodes well for the entire computing community as well as M$. Now the WINE project and other initiatives like it can use a precedent which M$ helped to set in order to shield themselves from M$ threats of litigation over their work. If WINE uses NO M$ code, then it's clean. All bets are off. WINE, Samba, Dosemu, and the like are all now protected from MS, by M$.
Thank you chairman bill.
LK
I read in a lot of the above comments that people were wondering if this allows for a GPL'ed version of Java to be developed.
I just thought I'd inform you guys that there are GPL'ed versions of both the Java Virtual Machine and the Java Class Library in development.
The Classpath website has more information.
Felix
arvind rulez
I hope I interpreted this incorrectly, but the last statement in the article seemed to imply that MS was attempting to force Sun to implement additional classes in order to bring MS perversion of Java into compliance and that the judge was actually considering this? I wish I could come up with a proper analogy on why this is a bad-thing tm, but Iam too flabergasted by the gall of this to even think clearly.
Rule 1 of programming for the masses:
Maintain backwards compatibility.
Besides - define compliance! As part of the Sun/MS contract, it's explicitly stated that the compatibility tests used must be PUBLICLY available.
Funnily enough, I don't see any publicly available Java Compatibility suites on sites anywhere.
Reading the stuff from the antitrust trial is interesting too - with Sun saying that they'd use the compatibility suites to force MS to implement anything they liked.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
As far as I understand MS already has a group doing a clean room version of Java and even if they don't HP does and we all know HP and MS are very friendly so if MS can't do their own quick enough they will just license it from HP, so this does not really set back MS that badly but it is good since it does mean they have to at least for now cease their products altogether or bring their products to compliance which they are definatly not happy about. As well even if they do use a clean room version they can not use the Sun Java logo which trust me makes a difference, so although MS will recover it does suck for them.
Microsoft can make a clean-room implementation of a Java Virtual Machine. Unless there is are patents on the JVM, this makes sense. A clean-room implementation uses no Sun source and infringes on no Sun copyrights.
I'm guessing (and hoping) that they cannot call such a clean-room implementation "Java". This isn't copyright, this is trademark. Sun has been very enthusiastic about protecting their Java trademark (remember when they were threatening online coffee shops?). I cannot conceive of any legal reason that Microsoft would be able to call it "Java" against Sun's wishes. They may be able to get the Java Compatibility Logo on it if they meet the compatibility tests. However, doing that puts their software back under Sun's control, and makes it hard to break real Java code.
They could use their new language (call it "Latte" for the sake of argument) to embrace and extend Java. In theory, Latte would be a superset of Java that would run exclusively on Windows platforms. In practice, this would depend on Microsoft's ability and desire to do bug-for-bug compatible clean rooms. They may want to make Latte slightly incompatible with Java, just to make sure that Windows "Java" developers would just break down and write Latte code.
Such a situation would be, IMHO, completely legal and absolutely disgusting. Latte arrives as a mostly-compatible replacement for Java, with extensions, and ships for Windows. Thus, you would have to download Java to run all Java apps or applets (thus forcing Web servers to choose between Java applets or Latte applets).
For Microsoft to pull this off, they have to slowly fork the Latte spec away from Java. Fork it too quickly, and you don't suck away from Java; Latte is treated as just "A new Microsoft language". Fork it too slowly, and you increase the time that the languages are compatible. This is a matter of timing, and I think that Microsoft is very good at timing.
Sun, OTOH, can counter this. It is probably easier for Sun to rev Java and pass patches to its paying partners than it is for Microsoft to rev a clean room. Sun could quickly, relentlessly rev Java to render Latte useless. Unfortunately, many customers will not care to keep up. Fast Java revs will drop Java's usefulness. This is thus a "scorched earth" strategy.
Anybody got better ideas?
--The basis of all love is respect
MS should be more concerned about how this appears to the public at large. It's okay for MS to violate copyrights but it's not okay for anyone else to violate THEIR copyrights. Even in smaller more subtle ways.
MS will prosecute someone who gives a copy of BOB(tm) to a friend or someone who uses a DOS disk from one machine to test another machine. Or someone who uses the same license of Office at home and at work. All the way up to the large pirates that ship thousands of CDs.
There's a difference between copyright infringement and copyright theft; and this had to go to court to prove that there was an infringement - not to mention the fact that there has been no final decision from the judge yet .
However, with piracy, that's a clear case of copyright theft. And if you advocate piracy, please, please, please go directly to hell.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Duh! Can we say Kaffe? Japhar? Can we say "Sun has explicitly stated that this is ok for a very long time, even when HP threatened to do the same thing"?
So, what exactly is new here? To me, the Judge just said "snow is white, grass is green, and MS can create Java clean room implementations". All three things are facts which have been known for a long time.
Another non-issue. Isn't that what the entire contract was about, the fact that Microsoft was licensing Java technology from Sun? So therefore it obviously follows that Microsoft products have Sun's Java technology in them?
This to me seems also like an extremely straightforward point. Sun only allows certain Java products to officially use the logo and Java trademark; these are ones that pass their compatibility tests at minimum, and most likely ones that are based on their actual intellectual property. Clean room implementations do not a priori fit this category, so they can't officially bear the Java logo or name. (Unless Sun of course decides to explicitly give them this right.)
So, if Microsoft follows Sun's rules, they can bear the logo and name, if they don't, they can't. This applies regardless of clean room implementation or not.
This also seems to be another clear-cut issue unaffected by Judge Whyte's rulings (except peripherally, meaning that determining Microsoft violated the contract with Sun also means determining Microsoft violated use of the Java trademark).
The only significant thing here is that Judge Whyte has decided that Microsoft violated the Java license by not passing the compatibility tests. Why the emphasis? Because this is what the trial is about in the first place! (See here.)
This trial was not originally about clean room implementations; it's been known from the beginning that is acceptable. It's only about whether Microsoft had a contractual obligation to comply with the full Java spec and Sun's compatibility tests. From that regard, Judge Whyte's "preliminary rulings" are equivalent to deciding the trial: Microsoft is guilty.
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
if the judge rules that microsoft can clean-room java.. wouldn't that same ruling apply to clean-rooming other "machines", even real (not virtual) ones? like, say, connectix VGS? or SNES9X?
/. story they got some letter from nintendo saying they were illegal, and they immediately ceased to exist.
a th/
or are these different situations? does the fact that Java is copyrighted and the Playstation is patented change anything?
or does java's liscensing terms specifically allow clean-rooming? or something? excuse my ignorance..
or are we just up against the basic truth that people like the SNES9X group simply don't live under the same set of laws as huge corporations with lawyers such as MS?
...
whatever happened to SNES9X, anyway? the way i understood it from the earlier
--mcclure111
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS THEFT
http://home.earthlink.net/~mcclure111/hamsterde
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
But there's another intellectual property type: trademarks. Of course Microsoft should be allowed to make their own clean-room version of Java, but will they be able to call it "Java"? Isn't this a lot like Mesa, which can't call itself OpenGL, or ghostscript, which can't call itself postscript? Isn't the best Microsoft can do is call it "Java compliant" or something like that?
The court expressly noted emphasized that its rulings and reasoning were only "tentative." Oral argument is set for June 24, 1999, and in each ruling, counsel was invited once more to try to change the Court's mind.
It is significant to note that the summary judgment of copyright infringement for Sun is not an insignificant blow to Microsoft, since it opens the door to an award of damages, but mostly since it may well result in an award to Sun of reasonable attorney fees and costs, which for this case will be substantial.
Moreover, the Court has shown what appears to be greater tentativeness in some of these rulings than in others, in each case asking specific questions for the lawyers to address during oral argument. Compare the Court's question on the "reverse-engineering" issues:
"Does a Runtime Interpreter, which does not incorporate Sun's intellectual property, but nevertheless "emulates" a Java Runtime Interpreter, constitute a "Product" under the [license agreement.]"
which indicates that the Court is still considering whether the license agreement would still require a "clean-room" Microsoft interpreter to pass the Sun tests, with the almost sardonic, almost rhetorical, questions on the tentative ruling granting Sun's motion for Summary Judgment of copyright infringement:
"1. Is it Microsoft's contention that someone could take the source code to Windows98, run it through a different compiler, distribute the resulting object code and not be liable for copyright infringement for such distribution?
"2. Is it Microsoft's contention that object code is not substantially similar to source code?"
Also, don't overlook the off-hand remark in Question 4 of the questions at the end of the "Right to Engage in Independent Development" opinion, where the court expressly noted by reference to Sun's patents that "In light of the above, it does not appear that Microsoft's [unlicensed] independent development rights relating to the Java Technology would be very broad."
While I agree with the commentary that the Court has done good for all (including, Microsoft) by suggesting that one doesn't need a license to perform a clean room, the Court did do Microsoft some harm yesterday, and might not have given Microsoft as much room as has been supposed to go forward in the Java arena.
Also, as noted by others, Trademark law may have an awful lot to say with how Microsoft will be able to characterize any independently developed product.
In response to some of the questions/comments above about GPL'd or free Java, here's a summary of what I'm aware of:
Compilers:
egcs - Now with Java support, compiles to native code, includes necessary runtime lib. I haven't tried it but I've heard it's good from those who have.
guavac - GNU Java compilers, compiles to java bytecode. Worked pretty well last time I tried it a year or so back.
Java Virtual Machines (to run bytecode):
kaffe - probably the best non-Sun JVM I've seen, includes JIT for many platforms. Released under a BSD-style license (which might mean that Microsoft could adopt it?)
japhar - LGPL'd JVM. I have no experience with this one.
Other Java related:
GNU Classpath - LGPL'd core class libraries
Kore - cleanroom core class libraries - for JDK 1.0.2, now obsolete and the code has been rolled into the Kaffe class libs
TYA - a GPL'd JIT compiler/vm for i386/linux
Mauve - non-Sun compliance test suite
There may well be more out there, its been a few months since I was following this closely.
-- Alastair
i think this is a Good Thing. regardless of what anyone thinks of microsoft. it looks like the courts have decided (in a preliminary ruling) that ms can rewrite java on their own, provided they don't actually use sun's source.
..
and that's exactly what we, as a community, need! am i right? we want to be able to rewrite existing non-free software. the question i have is: how does this play to the patent system? i don't know what patent laws are like, but does sun hold any patents at apply to its java technology? if so, how do they apply now, if ms is given a go-ahead to write their own java development platform?
it would be nice to think that now they _don't_ apply, if such things exist.
- pal
Not only can you not use Sun's source, but you cannot look at Sun's source to develop your own source. Those developers who have looked at the Sun source cannot be used in developing a clean room implementation because that would taint the clean room.
As for the preliminary rulings, the Sun win was much more important than the two minor and expected Microsoft wins.
Java 1, Sun 0. A year ago, it was difficult to see the difference between Sun and Java. But now a ruling has been made that's good for Java and bad for Sun, thus making a clear distinction. Anyone interested in this topic should visit the JavaLobby.
Will end the threats being made to companies who try to sell GLIDE API wrappers for their 3D boards ?
Or are there other precedents out there ?
Big win for Sun/Java.
In the beginning, there was a promise of true platform independance with Java. Microsoft saw this as a dangerous threat to their emerging server strategies. To see why, we have to examine the origins of Microsoft's server market...
Prior to NT (and even the NT-OS/2 debacle), Microsoft had wrapped up the desktop market. Every PHB, and most others had a Windows/DOS box on their desktop. Microsoft saw a lucrative server market that it wished to enter. Microsoft chose to play on fears of platform incompatibility to encourage blind adoption of homogeneous network solutions. This allowed them to leverage their massive desktop installed base to grow their server market.
There was a problem, however. Java came along. Java's not yet realized promise of true platform independance would kill the fear tactics supporting Microsoft's server business. Java would provide people with the option to choose heterogeneous computing environments. It would provide people with the option of choosing anb operating environment based on speed, reliability and security, instead of market share.
Rather than encouraging and nurturing a growing technology, Microsoft set out to destroy it. Microsoft attacked the true purpose of Java, undermining its fundamental underpinning - platform independance.
What the courts are saying today is this is not acceptable. It is not reasonable for us to require a trademark owner (Sun) to allow a licensed user (Microsoft) of that trademark (Java) to use that trademark in order to undermine that trademark.
What is actually much more important to me is whether Microsoft can call their implementation "Java". I believe the plethora of security problems, portability problems, and bugs Microsoft has introduced into their product and shipped under the trademarked name of "Java" are a classic case of trademark dilution.
As someone who has to "sell" (at least to management) Java projects, that matters a lot to me.
I hope Sun hasn't give up the right to limit Microsoft's use of the "Java" trademark as part of their contract, and I also hope Sun will start enforcing the "Java" trademark against Microsoft.
Who cares whether Microsoft ships a language called "J++" or anything else. The harm is done if Microsoft calls it "Java".
This ruling is pretty good, allowing a company to clean room something another company developed. The problem is is that Microsoft is trying to takeoever java, now Sun had the right idea by suing MS, but it's just not goning to work. What needs to happen is that Java developers need to _not_ use MS Java and hooks. The developers need to use Java products that conform to the standard and that can run on all supported operating systems otherwise the whole idea of Java is lost.
"There's a difference between copyright infringement and copyright theft; and this had to go to court to prove that there was an infringement - not to mention the fact that there has been no final decision from the judge yet."
I'm a little unclear on this, please explain the difference between "copyright theft" and "copyright infringement", I thought the former was a more emotive term for the latter.
On the second point, any infringement of law, whether breach of copyright, theft, murder or treason can can only be determined by a court of law. As far as that goes Microsoft are in exactly the same position as anyone else.
MS will prosecute someone who gives a copy of BOB(tm) to a friend or someone who uses a DOS disk from one machine to test another machine. Or someone who uses the same license of Office at home and at work. All the way up to the large pirates that ship thousands of CDs.
But of course they play by another rulebook entirely that says that while they have the rights to prosecute, they hold those rights exclusively. I often wonder what colour the sky is in their little world.
--- http://foo.ca
no, they can't call it java compliant because it didn't pass the compability tests. possibly java compatible, or make up another cool sounding, but utterly meaningless bit of marketing-speak (don't know if you have these commercials in your area, but the sprint PCS commercial, where they talk about 'built from the ground up', listen to the phrasing, you could easily say 'built from the horizon to the side' or some other nonsense and it would mean just as little)
Somewhat off-topic: Remember this little bit of news?
Sun stands to make quite a bit on the Java hardware side of things in much the same way...
On one hand it's great because it means anyone can get a hold of the processor core and design embedded systems around it - fantastic in an Academic environment. Sun benefits from up-and-coming design community penetration and familiarity.
But then all those designers have become "tainted" through their exposure; good luck trying to do a clean-room version of the core...
I'm pretty much neutral on this; Sun stands to gain a lot, but so does academia...
--The more you know, the less you know.
Overall, I don't have a problem with third-party clean-room Java VMs and compilers.
What I DO worry about is compatibility. It's bad enough now that people joke about "write once, test everywhere". Introducing a bunch of "mostly" compatible VMs negates a big reason for using Java. I fear a support nightmare for developers trying to write Java applications ("Ok, it works fine under the Sun and Blackdown VMs, but it barfs on the HP").
I don't have much faith in the market weeding out incompatible VMs in this case. It seems more likely that the work will fall on the developers to make sure that their code runs even on bad VMs. It's too easy to say, "Well, PCBonehead Magazine says the Caffeine Overdose Java VM is the fastest. If your stuff doesn't work on it, that's YOUR problem."
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Copyrights (which Java is probably protected by) indicate that you can make your own knock-off as long as you don't use the original code. This is the reason that Mesa3D and Lesstif can exist. A patent, on the other hand, means that no matter what, you can't make a knock-off without paying royalties, wether you saw the original code or not.
The way I read this, the judge in the case said that MS is free to make their own knock-off of Java, which doesn't have to pass the tests the same way Mesa3D and Lesstif don't have to. But, the existing codebase that MS is using is tained by Sun code.
Where this will hurt MS is that they may have to scrap their entire Java group, since most of them have probably been tainted by seeing the original Sun code. That means that MS will have to start fresh and could cause a delay in getting their knockoff up and running. Probably on the order of at least 6 months.
Does this ruling give credence to an entirely free (gpl) version of Java?
As I read it, it does.
If so, I think that's great! I really like Java as a language, but feel that it has been held back by Sun's treatment of it as a product...
Being able to code in a language I enjoy, with a clear conscience is close to nirvana.
DISCLAIMER: Just because I like Java a lot, doesn't mean I hate other languages.
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
There is an important distinction between reverse engineering and clean room methods. Reverse engineering usually involves trying to reconstruct the code of a compiled piece of software from the machine code itself, mimicking low-level functionality. Clean room methods, however, involve trying to emulate functionality without effective access to the compiled program being emulated.
Consider the WINE project. WINE is an attempt to provide the function calls in Windows programming for a UNIX machine. Windows programming is well documented as to which functions provide what functionality and so on. So in theory the WINE developers could work without a windows computer in sight and still produce an excellent implementation of Windows function calls. This is an example of clean room tactics, and actually the fact that WINE is clean room is precisely the reason why M$ hasn't sued the pants off them already.
Compare this to Microsoft's own tactics in incorporating Java into IE. Microsoft entered into a contract with Sun to share Java code, but to preserve Sun's intellectual property (the code itself). Microsoft went against this agreement, using Sun code in their proprietary implementation of Java, hence the lawsuit. You could call this the most blatant form of reverse-engineering; instead of trying to reconstruct code from machine language, they took the code itself!
In any case, you should be mindful of the distinction. In most contexts where patents are not an issue, clean room methods are legal while reverse-engineering is illegal.
Aren't you dead?
Here's how it works:
A "clean room" implementation involves two teams of people. The first team goes meticulously over the original code, specs, etc. and documents it all, but does not include any actual code in the documentation. This document is then passed on to the second team, none of whom have ever seen the original code (and must create legally valid documentation to that effect). This team then rewrites the code on the basis of the first team's documentation.
This way, except for those rare cases where there's only one way to code something, you have code that was written by people who could not possibly influenced by the original code, hence it's "clean."
This is nothing new. Phoenix (the BIOS company) got started by making a clean room BIOS based on the IBM XT BIOS. Frankly, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.
If I read it correctly, in this case the judge is saying that Microsoft can create a clean room version of Java without Sun's code, support, blessing, or compatibility tests. They will not, however, be able to use the Java trademark or claim their product is associated in any way with Sun. IANAL so this may be wrong or incomplete (they might, for example, be able to claim that it passes Java compatibility tests, assuming it does).
And yes, there could be a GNU clean room Java if anyone was sufficiently motivated to create one. I seem to remember seeing a Java front end for egcs but since I'm not a Java programmer I didn't follow up on it.
Caw caw
I'll side with the last group of people. The idea that you would need "permission" from a third party to distribute software you have written yourself is absurd. As a programmer, I see that this severely limits the ability to make good implementations. Suddenly, our laws would have turned against us, limiting our freedom.
Luckily, this doesn't seem to be the case now. Although we shouldn't loose track of what we're dealing with. This is only a tentative judgement on three issues and while it's good to focus, I think the other issues might be just as important.
There's two places I'd like to ask you to go to, which doesn't relate precisely to the topic at hand, but which talks about programming freedom.
I hope I interpreted this incorrectly, but the last statement in the article seemed to imply that MS was attempting to force Sun to implement additional classes in order to bring MS perversion of Java into compliance and that the judge was actually considering this? I wish I could come up with a proper analogy on why this is a bad-thing tm, but Iam too flabergasted by the gall of this to even think clearly.
I don't get this ruling. As everybody here has already pointed out, a "clean room" project is one where the clean room project is designed to create a functionally identical product that does not infringe on the intellectual design property of the original company.
The classic examples (already cited) were the IBM BIOS and the Intel x86 designs. Competitors created "knock-offs" that were functionally compatible.
Sun's already allowing this kind of clean-room effort. I think HP is already working on a version. The catch is that you have to be able to prove to Sun that you are functionally compatible in order to use the Java brand name. And Sun is charging quite a bit of money to perform the functional compatibility tests.
Perhaps the judge is saying that Microsoft can use the brand name of Java without passing the functionality compatibility tests, as long as they are actually compatibile. (In other words, Sun can't charge Microsoft money for the privilege of using the name.)
If, on the other hand, the judge is saying that Microsoft can do whatever it wants with Java, as long as it doesn't use Sun's source code; this stinks. It means that Microsoft will continue its "not quite compatible" track, and 100% Java programs may or may not work on Windows. (Which is exactly the kind of FUD, M$ is trying to create.)