Oracle's trying to lever a fat royalty check out of Google's BigBank. There'll be a lot of posturing, then a deal will be struck, and we'll move on.
I very much want to see Larry take his Java patents to court and get smacked down on abundant prior art. I'm really looking forward to the spectacle of increasingly erratic/comic behavior from Larry Ellison as the case moves through discovery, meaning closer to patent invalidation. Of course, there is the remote possibility he might win in court, which would be the end of Java in open source, including Android. Which would also be a big win. So either way, we the people win. I don't see much incentive for Google to make a deal.
Actually, I think Java is already done for in open source. Which as fate would have it, actually turned out to be the biggest application area by far, way bigger than its current servlet niche Hard to feel a lot of sympathy for bully boy Larry over that.
You imagine I was not fully aware of every detail you just regurgitated. The fact remains, Android still ties C++ to Java, needlessly. Which is stupid. And I am beginning to think that the same should be said of you, even though your heart is in the right place.
It is (as of 2.3 - Gingerbread) possible to implement apps completely in C/C++ without writing any Java.
But the C++ application still runs under Java so somebody is still stupid.
That somebody is beginning to sound a lot like you.
Sorry, it's not. I quote: "Of course, access to the regular Android API still requires Dalvik, and the VM is still present in native applications, operating behind the scenes".
So, months after being sued by Oracle, C++ is still joined at the hip to Java on Android. It should have been set free the next day. Stupid. Or more accurately, fucking stupid.
They could have avoided this potentially damning evidence by simply having one developer review the source code
It's not damning evidence because it has nothing to do with the patents at the center of the case. However it is worth remembering that this is SCO's lawyer we're dealing with here and he will no doubt attempt to spin it into something it isn't. SCOracle.
It's stupid, but not for the reason you suggest. Oracle's attack on Google's use of Java is based on patents. Copyright issues are peripheral and cannot prevent use of Java, they will at most further line the pockets of lawyers and require some clean room rewrites. To put it another way, copyright does not protect ideas, only the expression of them. Either Sun's expression of Java ideas is not the only one in which case a rewrite is possible, or it is the only possible expression in which case the expression is not a creative work and thus not protected by copyright. IANAL
That said, the stupidest thing of all would be for Google to continue to rely solely on Java for Android while C++ is significantly more efficient and significantly less of a patent minefield. Of course there are stupid people at Google, or more accurately, people who consistently do stupid things for whatever reason (as far as I'm concerned, a stupid person) and it comes down to, who calls the shots and how stupid is he?
Linus explicitly banned the "or later version" feature from kernel licensing, so that does not come into it. The point remains that however Linus wants to license the kernel is the way it will be licensed, so long as it stays within the bounds of reason, does not conflict with legal requirements and does not drive away more developer talent than it attracts.
There is a lot of bleating about what Linus can't do, and a lot of it is mostly just so much blather to justify a personal position. Nothing stops that personal position from changing if it becomes expedient, and if it does there will be more blather to support that. Life goes on, it's mostly forward progress.
What Linus *can* do is introduce the rule that intrusions of more strongly protected code are allowed in the kernel.
Basically, the Linux kernel can be licensed however Linus wants. He obviously needs to stick close to the implied contract with developers and obey the law, but otherwise it comes down to: are people going to keep downloading his code tree, or somebody else's? Foggy day in hell when the latter happens. Even Red Hat could not pull that off for more than a short time.
its VERY cool to be on that campus, eat free lunches (gourmet, really), collect free cool phones and toys and have super company name recognition.
The blush can come off it. For example, one of the benefits was $150 of free stuff from the company store, whatever you want. Thing was, all the cool stuff was always gone when you tried to get it, and certain people who figured out how to get in right when the new stuff showed up had mountains of it hoarded on their desks. There's an awful, awful lot of that sort of gaming going on all the time and it does get to you, unless you're too oblivious to notice. Perhaps the latter being a good survival quality, but not necessarily what you'd want for a top performing organization,.
Sounds like bafflegab to me. The only thing clear is: Larry to the front, Sergey and Eric to the back. I'm just wondering if this will go further. Scuse me Larry, just saying what everyone's thinking.
Instead of doing this stupid thing a mechanism similar to OpenGL extensions would make far more sense. It has worked well for OpenGL, allowing vendors to innovate while providing application programmers a clear definition of what facilities are/are not available on a given platform. Yes, it requires the application programmer to implement fallbacks in some cases but this is not worse than the html situation today.
It is really, really important to be able to evaluate objectively the degree to which a browser implements html standards. This new brain addled flight of fancy flies in the face of that.
I've always thought the stewardship of html to be fairly idiotic and this just supports that point of view. Like you say, a perfect opening for Microsoft or whoever else chooses to be evil.
Florian has done amazing service for the anti-patent cause, and while I doubt he needs to bother submitting articles to Slashdot, I would not find it in any way inappropriate or unhelpful if he did, quite the contrary.
First, the report is not principally about platforms targeted but about types of criminal scams. But the secondary aspect is the one sensationalized by the reporter. Second, there is a big difference between "target" and "victim lying upside down on the floor waving its legs feebly in the air".
Well, but it's a fair question to ask. Personally I regard Google's legal team as very sharp, and unlike many other companies they are quite happy going for the throat with patent invalidation rather than seeking detent. And the trolls know it.
I didn't say anything about what he will/won't do, it's the fact that - like i said - he can't just re-license linux because there is code there that is not his to re-license. It's not just up to Linus.
If Linus wishes to declare that parts of the kernel can be relicensed with stronger patent protection so long as all the authors of *that part* agree, then it shall be so. The new license does not even have to be GPL v3 per se, it can be a variant explicitly written to be compatible with v2.
I have a child age 6 who is fond of telling me what can or can't be done, especially when it comes to picking things up or finding things. I typically view the stated claims skeptically.
It was "Yay, 2.1 in spring, no summer, no, wait, you'll get 2.2 directly at some point... oh hell we're having some unspecified trouble."
I tend to believe the unspecified trouble claim, for now. Probably Samsung just needs to learn to let go and enlist the aid of the community in adapting the generic distribution to their hardware. According to Rasterman Samsung is beginning to get it. Of course, there will be conflicting forces within the organisation.
In that case I can see it falling behind somebody else's tablet with the exact same specifications except for not being locked down. Some history: IBM originally attempted to keep the PC proprietary by copyrighting the bios and waving lawyers at anyone who would dare to use the same bios in a clone. then Compaq came along with a reverse engineered bios provided by Phoenix and after a few years was outselling IBM's PC (the beginning of Wintel really, but that's another story). I don't see a whole lot of difference between that and the current situation. The world in prefers open over proprietary when it has a choice, which it clearly does in this case.
(Later IBM tried to take the PC private again with its new, improved and proprietary PS/2 bus, and failed again.)
Unless all the developers of any code specifying a version number of GPL come around then he most certainly can't change the license, and given the response from a number of key devs that is unlikely to happen.
That survey is almost 5 years old. A lot changed in the interim. GPL v3 got widespread uptake, showing the mood of the developer community, and a number of companies have taken high profile and flagrant advantage of apparent loopholes in GPLv2. It's usually a mistake to speak in absolutes about what Linus will or won't do. There is nothing stopping change of license for *new submissions* in files where all authors of that file agrees. If Linus rules this is allowed, then it will be allowed. And bad actors like Motorola are just bringing that day closer.
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Oracle's trying to lever a fat royalty check out of Google's BigBank. There'll be a lot of posturing, then a deal will be struck, and we'll move on.
I very much want to see Larry take his Java patents to court and get smacked down on abundant prior art. I'm really looking forward to the spectacle of increasingly erratic/comic behavior from Larry Ellison as the case moves through discovery, meaning closer to patent invalidation. Of course, there is the remote possibility he might win in court, which would be the end of Java in open source, including Android. Which would also be a big win. So either way, we the people win. I don't see much incentive for Google to make a deal.
Actually, I think Java is already done for in open source. Which as fate would have it, actually turned out to be the biggest application area by far, way bigger than its current servlet niche Hard to feel a lot of sympathy for bully boy Larry over that.
Sounds much like you're trolling. Copyrighted files can be distributed if the copyright holder allows it.
For which files, exactly?
You imagine I was not fully aware of every detail you just regurgitated. The fact remains, Android still ties C++ to Java, needlessly. Which is stupid. And I am beginning to think that the same should be said of you, even though your heart is in the right place.
It is (as of 2.3 - Gingerbread) possible to implement apps completely in C/C++ without writing any Java.
But the C++ application still runs under Java so somebody is still stupid.
That somebody is beginning to sound a lot like you.
Sorry, it's not. I quote: "Of course, access to the regular Android API still requires Dalvik, and the VM is still present in native applications, operating behind the scenes".
So, months after being sued by Oracle, C++ is still joined at the hip to Java on Android. It should have been set free the next day. Stupid. Or more accurately, fucking stupid.
It is (as of 2.3 - Gingerbread) possible to implement apps completely in C/C++ without writing any Java.
But the C++ application still runs under Java so somebody is still stupid.
They could have avoided this potentially damning evidence by simply having one developer review the source code
It's not damning evidence because it has nothing to do with the patents at the center of the case. However it is worth remembering that this is SCO's lawyer we're dealing with here and he will no doubt attempt to spin it into something it isn't. SCOracle.
It's stupid, but not for the reason you suggest. Oracle's attack on Google's use of Java is based on patents. Copyright issues are peripheral and cannot prevent use of Java, they will at most further line the pockets of lawyers and require some clean room rewrites. To put it another way, copyright does not protect ideas, only the expression of them. Either Sun's expression of Java ideas is not the only one in which case a rewrite is possible, or it is the only possible expression in which case the expression is not a creative work and thus not protected by copyright. IANAL
That said, the stupidest thing of all would be for Google to continue to rely solely on Java for Android while C++ is significantly more efficient and significantly less of a patent minefield. Of course there are stupid people at Google, or more accurately, people who consistently do stupid things for whatever reason (as far as I'm concerned, a stupid person) and it comes down to, who calls the shots and how stupid is he?
Linus explicitly banned the "or later version" feature from kernel licensing, so that does not come into it. The point remains that however Linus wants to license the kernel is the way it will be licensed, so long as it stays within the bounds of reason, does not conflict with legal requirements and does not drive away more developer talent than it attracts.
There is a lot of bleating about what Linus can't do, and a lot of it is mostly just so much blather to justify a personal position. Nothing stops that personal position from changing if it becomes expedient, and if it does there will be more blather to support that. Life goes on, it's mostly forward progress.
What Linus *can* do is introduce the rule that intrusions of more strongly protected code are allowed in the kernel.
Basically, the Linux kernel can be licensed however Linus wants. He obviously needs to stick close to the implied contract with developers and obey the law, but otherwise it comes down to: are people going to keep downloading his code tree, or somebody else's? Foggy day in hell when the latter happens. Even Red Hat could not pull that off for more than a short time.
its VERY cool to be on that campus, eat free lunches (gourmet, really), collect free cool phones and toys and have super company name recognition.
The blush can come off it. For example, one of the benefits was $150 of free stuff from the company store, whatever you want. Thing was, all the cool stuff was always gone when you tried to get it, and certain people who figured out how to get in right when the new stuff showed up had mountains of it hoarded on their desks. There's an awful, awful lot of that sort of gaming going on all the time and it does get to you, unless you're too oblivious to notice. Perhaps the latter being a good survival quality, but not necessarily what you'd want for a top performing organization,.
Per the release, its about streamlining
Sounds like bafflegab to me. The only thing clear is: Larry to the front, Sergey and Eric to the back. I'm just wondering if this will go further. Scuse me Larry, just saying what everyone's thinking.
I haven't heard anything to make me automatically suspicious of him.
I have but let's see how it goes.
Instead of doing this stupid thing a mechanism similar to OpenGL extensions would make far more sense. It has worked well for OpenGL, allowing vendors to innovate while providing application programmers a clear definition of what facilities are/are not available on a given platform. Yes, it requires the application programmer to implement fallbacks in some cases but this is not worse than the html situation today.
It is really, really important to be able to evaluate objectively the degree to which a browser implements html standards. This new brain addled flight of fancy flies in the face of that.
Where they write "living" I read "nebulous".
I've always thought the stewardship of html to be fairly idiotic and this just supports that point of view. Like you say, a perfect opening for Microsoft or whoever else chooses to be evil.
Florian has done amazing service for the anti-patent cause, and while I doubt he needs to bother submitting articles to Slashdot, I would not find it in any way inappropriate or unhelpful if he did, quite the contrary.
Google doesn't have a lot of patents, so anyone that patent trolls them risks Google spending tons and tons of dollars to get that patent invalidated.
I'm looking forward to watching Larry Ellison get this treatment over the Java troll.
First, the report is not principally about platforms targeted but about types of criminal scams. But the secondary aspect is the one sensationalized by the reporter. Second, there is a big difference between "target" and "victim lying upside down on the floor waving its legs feebly in the air".
Well, but it's a fair question to ask. Personally I regard Google's legal team as very sharp, and unlike many other companies they are quite happy going for the throat with patent invalidation rather than seeking detent. And the trolls know it.
I didn't say anything about what he will/won't do, it's the fact that - like i said - he can't just re-license linux because there is code there that is not his to re-license. It's not just up to Linus.
If Linus wishes to declare that parts of the kernel can be relicensed with stronger patent protection so long as all the authors of *that part* agree, then it shall be so. The new license does not even have to be GPL v3 per se, it can be a variant explicitly written to be compatible with v2.
I have a child age 6 who is fond of telling me what can or can't be done, especially when it comes to picking things up or finding things. I typically view the stated claims skeptically.
It was "Yay, 2.1 in spring, no summer, no, wait, you'll get 2.2 directly at some point... oh hell we're having some unspecified trouble."
I tend to believe the unspecified trouble claim, for now. Probably Samsung just needs to learn to let go and enlist the aid of the community in adapting the generic distribution to their hardware. According to Rasterman Samsung is beginning to get it. Of course, there will be conflicting forces within the organisation.
I can still see them locking it down
In that case I can see it falling behind somebody else's tablet with the exact same specifications except for not being locked down. Some history: IBM originally attempted to keep the PC proprietary by copyrighting the bios and waving lawyers at anyone who would dare to use the same bios in a clone. then Compaq came along with a reverse engineered bios provided by Phoenix and after a few years was outselling IBM's PC (the beginning of Wintel really, but that's another story). I don't see a whole lot of difference between that and the current situation. The world in prefers open over proprietary when it has a choice, which it clearly does in this case.
(Later IBM tried to take the PC private again with its new, improved and proprietary PS/2 bus, and failed again.)
Oh wait, there are two newspeakers now.
He says he can't. Different thing entirely.
Unless all the developers of any code specifying a version number of GPL come around then he most certainly can't change the license, and given the response from a number of key devs that is unlikely to happen.
That survey is almost 5 years old. A lot changed in the interim. GPL v3 got widespread uptake, showing the mood of the developer community, and a number of companies have taken high profile and flagrant advantage of apparent loopholes in GPLv2. It's usually a mistake to speak in absolutes about what Linus will or won't do. There is nothing stopping change of license for *new submissions* in files where all authors of that file agrees. If Linus rules this is allowed, then it will be allowed. And bad actors like Motorola are just bringing that day closer.