Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

marketwatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 345 posts

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#51

Post by hugh4life »

tzs wrote: post #10

Google should switch to C# and Mono. Besides giving them a better language and VM, it would cause the most amusing set of rants from the anti-Mono crowd. Win/win.

No... if anything they should buy out D... or use or create another high level-level low-level language like vala, ooc, etc(I don't like Google Go, though I have my own problems with vala and ooc), the reason D hasn't taken off is it's weird development process and license that miscarriages development on everything but the actual language.

Mono still has the sharecropper problem to it, that I thought Java got rid of...

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...

http://twitter.com/timbray/status/21023407881

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#52

Post by aneth »

tzs wrote: post #16
squidsoup wrote: post #5

This article is a bit light on detail - can anyone explain how the development of Android infringes on Oracle's IP?

If they were talking about Oracle's patents, it would make sense. It's the talk of it being copyright infringement that has me confused. Android is basically, as far as I've read, a Linux kernel, with Google's own user space on top of that--their own equivalent of libc and their own windowing system. On top of that, they run their own JVM, which they wrote themselves and which is NOT even compatible with Oracle's at…

> So, unless the Java compiler itself takes code from Oracle's compiler, it is hard to see what in their would contain copies of Oracle code.

This is about patent infringement, not copyright. Whether or not code was copied is irrelevant.

UPDATE: Sorry, maybe both are at stake. The author of this article seems sadly ignorant of the difference between patent and copyright, as he seems to use them interchangeable. So who knows....

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#53

Post by hugh4life »

Google just bought Instantiations... and Google is getting to release their GUI designers for Swing, SWT, and GWT...

http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/eclipse4-released

""""" "You said..."it is expected that GWT Designer will make an appearance via the GWT Blog in the coming months"

Actually, we are in the process of Googlizing all of our products; not just GWT Designer. They will all be made available again fairly soon and the announcement will be made on the GWT blog. """""

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#55

Post by jancona »

noonespecial wrote: post #13

It just goes to show that whatever company-de-jour promises about enforcing the patents that they are granted today, all bets are off when they fall on hard times and are acquired tomorrow. Serious about openness? Skip the "patent and promise" dance and just release the damn thing BSD.

How would BSD help? It doesn't include a patent license.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#56

Post by jancona »

pohl wrote: post #47
tzs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were talking about Oracle's patents, it would make sense. It's the talk of it being copyright infringement that has me confused. Android is basically, as far as I've read, a Linux kernel, with Google's own user space on top of that--their own equivalent of libc and their own windowing system. On top of that, they run their own JVM, which they wrote themselves and which is NOT even compatible with Oracle's at…

One thing missing from your list: the standard java libs like java.lang.* etc. Are those google's implementations?

They're from the Apache Harmony project, not from Sun's Java.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#57

Post by jimbokun »

ori_b wrote: post #46
avar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving out software under the GPL v2 does not mean that you grant others a patent license, that isn't within the scope of the GPL v2.

That's not true. See section 7 of the GPL. In part: For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program. However, it seems Sun can relicence the software under whatever they want, and the…

"However, it seems Sun can relicence"

You mean Oracle, of course, and that seems to make a big difference.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#58

Post by CamperBob »

mhansen wrote: post #38
shasta wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle may claim that Google infringes on all those patents, but they'll never sue. Patents are just a nuclear deterrent. Edit: Wow, -7 and dropping. I guess I should have included a sarcasm symbol. Spoiler: My point was that patents do get used, and this argument about them just being for defense is nonsense.

The first sentence in TFA: Oracle Corp. said Thursday it has filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google Inc.

The article is by some moron journalist who doesn't know that there's a difference between patents and copyrights.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#59

Post by alec »

macemoneta wrote: post #18

As background, from WikiPedia: "On November 13, 2006, Sun released much of Java as open source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). On May 8, 2007, Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code available under free software/open-source distribution terms, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright." If Sun willingly made the code GPL licensed, an…

Considering that Sun released Java before the GPL v3 was finished, I assume that it's under the GPL v2. v2 doesn't have the same patent guarantees that v3 does, and these guarantees were an important reason for creating v3. Specifically, the GPL v3 specifically prohibits this sort of "make it free software and then sue over the patents". The GPL FAQ claims that in some countries, releasing software under the GPL v2 constitutes a patent license, but I don't think that applies in the US.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#60

Post by jamesgeck0 »

ori_b wrote: post #46
avar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving out software under the GPL v2 does not mean that you grant others a patent license, that isn't within the scope of the GPL v2.

That's not true. See section 7 of the GPL. In part: For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program. However, it seems Sun can relicence the software under whatever they want, and the…

So you're saying that it grants users of the GPL code an exception from the patent owned by the original developers?

In that case, wouldn't the exception only be extended to Google if their implementation of Java was not independent from Sun's implementation? Because Devrak was derived from Apache Harmony, it might not share any code with Oracle Java.

Post reply on HN