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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

#241

Post by cnlwsu »

loewenskind wrote: post #219
lsc wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I am sad that over the last year or so this has gone from a quiet fact of it being a corporation to a in-your-face "Google: do no evil unless you can make money". I guess each generation needs a company to fantasize about being a righteous white knight.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#242

Post by maweaver »

guelo wrote: 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…

I'd rather see us become licensed professionals, like CPAs, with a large professional organization (like the AICPA) to lobby for us on issues like software patents, etc.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#243

Post by loup-vaillant »

barrkel wrote: post #212
loup-vaillant wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For the particular cases I saw, runtime extensibility never mattered. (Do you have one where it does?)

And extending a third party sum type is not very hard:

  data LibType = Zero
               | One Int
               | Two Int Int
  
  data MyType  = ZeroOneTwo LibType
               | Three Int Int Int
(It of course implies that you use MyType instead of LibType in your code.)

Finally, if you really want to extend a sum type, no work around allowed, you might want to look at Ocaml's variant types.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#244

Post by loup-vaillant »

bruceboughton wrote: post #201
gaius wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are called structs ;-)

Not everyone accepts that the object systems in Java and .NET are fully object-oriented.

Considering that no definition of "object-oriented" is accepted by everyone, I'm not sure your criticism is valid.

My suggestion: drop the term "object-oriented" altogether, and refer to more specific features.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#245

Post by Andys »

chmike wrote: post #157
patrickaljord wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sun licensed Java under the GPL which gives access to all of the patents on Java. But Google uses its own Java, not Sun's GPL licensed one, maybe they should have gone with the GPL instead...

Why didn't they do it ? Is it because of lack of ARM support ?

It was too bloated, among other things

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#246

Post by koenigdavidmj »

gaius wrote: post #198
btilly wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the sort of stuff that Smalltalk implementations were doing before Java existed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation#Histor... for more. (I wonder whether Sun's patents were filed for Self?)

sigh A patent isn't an idea. It's the specific method for implementing an idea. If there is a way to get the same end result using a completely different method, the patent doesn't apply.

Yes!

And the first few claims generally paint way over the lines. It's in the later claims that you talk about the unique stuff that you did.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#247

Post by nickik »

jchonphoenix wrote: post #160

The most worrisome factor in this lawsuit is how this will impact java as a language and a platform. If Google loses this lawsuit, java as a language and platform could easily die. Many companies would refuse to use it, just to be on the safe side and avoid litigation from Oracle. Oracle probably doesn't realize the massive damage it has done to the java platform just by going forward with this suit. Due to the loomi…

Why should java as a platform die? Most people use the Sun JVM and you will still be able to use that others like IBM have contracts with Sun. So no problem there.

So if the JVM goes closed source it still wont go away because the support of Sun/Oracle will stay the same.

It would have a big impact but not as big as you discribe. I would still take the JVM because the the languages are better and I don't want to be bound to windows spezialy for servers.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#249

Post by sp332 »

sp332 wrote: post #99
gojomo wrote: 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.

Maybe it would work better with a tag like this: οrасlе http://www.google.com/search?q=οrасlе

Update: Nope.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#250

Post by parenthesis »

noelchurchill wrote: post #12

Aren't Larry Ellison and Steven Jobs best friends?

A source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/ar...

"Ellison's best friend … Steve Jobs … did double duty as the wedding photographer [at Ellison's wedding]."

Also Ellison was on Apple's board for a few years after the second coming of Jobs.

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