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Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

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Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can like lambdas without wanting to go fully functional... just like you can like objects without wanting to go fully object-oriented.

Well, I'm not sure. First, assignments are evil[1], which means you should avoid setters. Second, inheritance is evil, for similar reasons (thick interface). Third, every time I saw mixins or class polymorphism, lambdas or sum types, would have been simpler, respectively. Once you like lambdas, functional programming becomes more attractive than a black hole. [1]: http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/articles/assignment

Sum types are not as dynamically extensible at runtime, or by third party libraries, as class polymorphism.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like lambdas, you'd probably like F# better: lighter syntax, types are inferred, and it looks like it's quite well supported by Microsoft. But of course, if you consider F#, you may want to use the more free and open Ocaml.

You can like lambdas without wanting to go fully functional... just like you can like objects without wanting to go fully object-oriented.

Note that both F# and Ocaml have object systems and have excellent support for imperative style programming.

http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/u3-ocaml/ocaml-objects.html#ad...

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#214
post #39

What an excellent occasion to try the homoglyph hoax attack on friends and enemies! (See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1571984 .) http://www.google.com/search?q=οraclе Your search - οraclе - did not match any documents.

Hm. A search for "other" using that o and e shows that there are a lot of websites out there using this trick, presumably to mask their spamminess / plagiarism from Google.

Off topic here though.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#215
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful. Hotspot compiling was introduced with the JVM.

There is prior art in Smaltalk and Self ... the Hotspot compiler itself is an old Smaltalk implementation that Sun bought, open-sourced recently by SUN btw ... http://www.strongtalk.org/

I'm pretty sure the prior art was just with Self. Smalltalk had polymorphic cache tables, but it was Self that was doing really aggressive in-lining of those caches (e.g. in-lining the method and all code the method called right into the cache). Strongtalk was a Smalltalk implementation of the result of the Self research (plus optional H&M type checking) but before they released anything they got bought by Sun to get the expertise for their up coming HotSpot VM.

So bottom line: Oracle may actually own all prior art via Sun (Self research was done at Sun).

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#217
post #119

My dream for wrestling my profession away from the lawyers and CEOs is the formation of a programmer's union. The union would mainly be concerned with issues like these patents. A strike would be called on any company that tried to use software patents. A strike would mean not only that the programmers of that company would stop working, but also all programmers nationwide would refuse to work on that company's produ…

If you drop the patent stuff and focus on fair pay I'm in.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#218
post #7

The biggest issue I see with Oracle's lawsuit is not with Android itself, but the future of Java as an open platform. The claims are pretty serious, and Oracle is going straight for the jugular. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out, but I've got to hope that Google will come out of this in good shape for the sake of Java. It's unfortunate that Oracle is interpreting Google's implementation of Dalvik and a Ja…

"It'll be interesting to see Oracle's stance toward other alternate JVMs such as IBM's." IBM could completely paralyze the entire computer industry with their portfolio. That they don't is a testament to how much money they earn in simply letting others do the "hard" PC stuff while they singularly engulf the big iron market. IBM was the only company that I know of that actually outlasted the US government in antitrus…

That's interesting. I wonder if Google could buy IBM and then have them drop the lawsuit?

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#219
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Oracle doesn't own any patents on the implementation of relational databases that they couldn't also sue Google over . . . The most engineer-ish thing to do is a back of the envelope calculation: 1. Estimate how much it'd cost to fight the suit. 2. Estimate the probability of winning. 3. Estimate the damages if you lose. 4. Estimate Oracle's ask for licensing the patents. If (1 + 2 * 3) < 4, fight, else settl…

ah, but reputation matters here... you don't want to have a reputation for being easy money for patent trolls. Additionally, as google doesn't seem to be a patent troll, it's probably also in their interest to set legal precedents that weaken software patents. I mean, obviously, this doesn't mean 'always fight' but it's another value you need to punch in to your equation, one weighing in on the 'fight' side. In my bu…

>ah, but reputation matters here... you don't want to have a reputation for being easy money for patent trolls.

Giving into Oracle (who owns Sun's patents which were vast and probably only topped by IBM in the industry) is hardly going to give one the reputation for being patent troll bait.

And doing what's best for the rest of the industry obviously isn't something Google cares about.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#220
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can like lambdas without wanting to go fully functional... just like you can like objects without wanting to go fully object-oriented.

Note that both F# and Ocaml have object systems and have excellent support for imperative style programming. http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/u3-ocaml/ocaml-objects.html#ad...

Note that OO programming in F# requires a lot of type annotations (even more than in C#, you need to explicitly upcast).
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