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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

#261

Post by loewenskind »

cnlwsu wrote: post #241
loewenskind wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I never bought into the whole "do no evil" bit, but I sure got sick of dealing with the army of people who did.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#263

Post by el_chapitan »

arghnoname wrote: post #257

Can someone remind me why Google didn't buy Sun when it was on the market? The culture seems like it would have been a relatively good fit and their use of Java related technologies (obviously now) would have made ownership of those technologies useful. Had they bought Sun and then sold off the hardware side of the business they would have bought a lot of solid engineers and IP.

In hindsight, it might have been cheaper to buy them outright than to litigate a battle like this. Then again, they're going to have some undisclosed settlement, so we'll never really know how it ends up.

I'm guessing they didn't buy them because of the business they were in. Selling workstations + Solaris was only part of their business. I think the services part of their work was bringing in more money towards the end. As far as I'm aware, Google doesn't do much in the services realm, which probably factored big into their decision not to buy.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#266

Post by protomyth »

Tichy wrote: post #237
wmf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to understand that Android doesn't use Oracle's open-source OpenJDK. An argument could be made that Oracle licenses the necessary patents only for OpenJDK and not for alternate implementations such as Dalvik. An argument could be made that Oracle licenses patents only for JVMs that are TCK-compliant, which Dalvik isn't. An argument could be made that Oracle licenses patents for GPLed JVMs but not for A…

What if I take the open source OracleJVM and change every line, so that it become Dalvik? Wouldn't it still be derived from OracleJVM and hence covered? The approach would only be possible because Dalvik is open source, too, of course.

Your implementing a different instruction set.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#267

Post by noarchy »

maweaver wrote: post #242
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.

I see your point, but I worry about this creating barriers for people wanting to get into our profession. As it stands, you can still get a job in this field without any formal education in it, as long as you can show you've got the goods. I'm quite fond of this fact, and there is some real talent out there that might get the door shut in their face if there were a wall of licensing.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#268

Post by jcl »

chmike wrote: post #166
tezza wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The million dollar question is why would anybody in their right mind do this?" A slice of Android sales revenue... Perhaps as high as US$1 per handset would be nice.

Isn't Android free ? The problem is more for mobile phone companies that may now have to pay a license for using it. This will hurt a lot.

The Android platform itself is free, but, as I understand it, important software written for the Android platform needs to be licensed by handset makers: the Google Maps app, access to the Android Market, etc.

Re: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android

#270

Post by openfly »

patrickaljord wrote: post #31
dangrossman wrote: post #23

Sun released the majority of Java under the GPL. How can you claim that someone you licensed the code to is infringing both its copyright and its patent? I'm looking forward to some more detail when Google publishes a response.

But Google's android does not use Sun's GPLed Java, it uses their own Java called "Dalvik" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)

I sincerely hope that this lawsuit results in dalvik being removed from android. They should never have used dalvik. It's an arm linux. They should have stuck to gcc toolchain like every other arm linux implementation out there. They are missing out on a wealth of development resources for no reason at all.
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