Google, Sun Headed for Showdown Over Android

narramissic writes "There may be trouble brewing between Google and Sun. Google has written its own virtual machine for Android, 'most likely as a way to get around licensing issues with Sun.' If Google used any of Sun's intellectual property to build Dalvik, Sun could sue Google for patent infringement. But here's where it gets interesting - Sun is a vocal advocate for open source and it would 'hardly appease the open source community to sue Google over an open source software stack.'"

To put it bluntly.

So reporter thinks that Sun might sue Google for forking Java all the while over looking the fact that Sun has GPLed Java and that other groups have produced versions of Java with out getting sued. Google and Sun both are saying that they are working together.
In other words a none story.

Re:Change the name.

Jonathan Schwartz's blog post seems to indicate that Sun would prefer to milk this for the publicity rather than cause a fuss over it. Whatever happened behind the scenes, I took that post as a white flag from Sun, basically saying, "Look, we're not on board for a bunch of reasons, but we've got no beef here, let's all try to get along and spin this to each of our needs."

Even if the VM is not officially Java, you're still ending up with a whole lot of development energy invested in Java, which is good for Sun. I really hope there's no way they are stupid enough to bring this to court just to make a few bucks...

Re:To put it bluntly.

GuI interfaces are usually done horribly in Java, because its easy to screw them up. The unresponsive Gui (see zend framework) often makes people think that Java is slow.

Unresponsive is slow. From a user's (and my) POV, I don't care if code executes in 10ms or 299ms if the GUI refreshes every 300ms. Why, because I use a program to do things, not to marvel at the effiency of the algorithim (unless I'm examining the code).

Additionally, a lack of progress bars leads to killing processes and restarting them, making them slower in reality.

Re:To put it bluntly.

Pretty much. But it's worth noting that many companies in Sun's position would sue Google. Not only did Google clone Sun's Java technology, they hired some of Sun's best Java people to do it. Of course, suing wouldn't accomplish much, but some ego-driven CEOs wouldn't let that stop them.

A bigger story - BSD libc + Linux

Well, I wouldn't quite say that it's a non-story. But IMHO there's a bigger story which has been missed. Namely, that Google decided to take a BSD-derived libc and include it as a part of their Android effort. This is running on top of Linux.

This is a blow aimed squarely at the Free Software Foundation, and RMS's efforts to establish GPLv3. Good luck in trying to square that one away.

Now, why in the world Google would do this is beyond me. IHMO it smacks of too much money, and too many engineers with not enough relevant things to do. But hey, if Google's goal is to try to minimize both versions of the GPL, well, I can think of no better effort.

Re:A bigger story - BSD libc + Linux

No, it was aimed squarely at having a smaller libc than glibc, according to the google guy who was hanging out on #android. It is an "embedded device" with space constraints, you know!

Does Sun make any money from Java on phones?

Anyone know how much a cell phone manuf has to pay Sun to include the J2ME VM in their product?

Re:Does Sun make any money from Java on phones?

I don't know for sure, but since it's Slashdot, I'll happily speculate. ;-)

Java is GPLed. A manufacturer is free to tweak Java for his machine and ship it... with the source code. Or, he can pay Sun a nominal fee for a non-GPL license and tweak to his heart's content, and keep his tweaks to himself.

This is precisely the dual-license model used for QT, and it works pretty well. Free software gets to use the technology for free. Proprietary software pays for a proprietary license, but they're charging their customers anyway. Everybody's happy. Well, except for BSD advocates... ;-) ;-)

Re:Does Sun make any money from Java on phones?

Sun has or is in the process of open-sourcing their implementations of JavaSE [java.net], JavaME [java.net] and JavaEE [java.net], as well as their JVM [java.net] and Java compiler [java.net].

Sun does make money licensing their Java code to third parties, but that isn't a requirement for providing Java support. The Java language specification is freely available, anybody can create their own implementation, but for most companies it is cheaper to reuse Sun's implementation than make their own. Sun even provides financial assistance for small businesses or open-source projects to take the Java compatibility test. Heck, they've even open-sources the test harness for the compatibility test.

nothing to see here

FTA:

While Sun declined to comment directly for this story, it pointed to some public statements from company executives. Jonathan Schwartz, president and CEO of Sun, wrote a blog post congratulating Google on the day of Android's launch. Notably, he refers to Android as a "Java/Linux" platform

where is the trouble? the article is pure beat-up.

the reason for dalvik is entirely technical. check out the youtube presentations, it makes it pretty clear that you develop in pretty much pure java, but the runtime needed a little more than the standard jme could provide.

move on..

Nonsense

Schwartz is sencerely all for oepn source, and he insists he's not interested in sueing anyone over patents. They might sue over license infringement of course, but in this case there is none. It's all Apache code. The only sore point is that Android doesnt include a complete and compliant Java stack (neither JME or JSE), only a subset, so they wont be able to certify it as a compliant implementation, and therefore it's technically not 'the Java platform', it just looks alot like it. Google knows this, so they've been careful in their videos to only say 'written in the Java programming language'. Google and Sun are friends. This will be good for Java. Sun will no doubt provide some tooling support in NetBeans. I see no chance of any 'showdown' here.

FUD

Sun and Google are good partners, and I don't see them getting into legal minefield over this issue. Heck, Sun has never been a litigious, two main cases being MIcrosoft (bastardizing Java) and NetApp (counter-suing them... in California vis-a-vis NetApp filing in lower Texas court).

However, there *definitely* would be issues raised by Sun over this issue. You can fork and modify their Java implementation all nilly-willy you want but you CANNOT call it Java unless it passes *all* the certification tests.

So unless Google certifies their implementation, it cannot be called Java, and if Google doesn't - there *would* definitely be issues. Sun doesn't take bastardization of Java lightly!

How about an Android for this Web ?

A bit offtopic...

How about Google bringing decent Java performance on the Web ? Possibly with OpenGL ES like for Android.
Java on web browsers has possibly gotten worse with years. Sun loaded it so much with useless crap and didn't even try to get a proper way to vsync an applet (very important if you are trying to make a media application/game that requires the basic concept of frame-rate).

Current multi-media web dev is relegated to Flash, but I'm sure that there are many skilled programmers out there that would be glad to have a lean Java VM & API working in web browsers. Sun gave up long time ago, Google could take over and make it ubiquitous.

Slashdot is being sensational

The article that Slashdot links to is headed: "Google and Sun may butt heads over Android." Key word: "May".

Then Slashdot modifies the headline to say: "Google, Sun Headed for Showdown Over Android."

Question is: Does anyone of these reporters work for either company in order to have this seemingly serious situation? I doubt it.

J2ME

IMHO, Android fills a void in Java Mobile applications by providing API to build richer applications (lcdui, in particular, is limiting) - more useful for Smart Phones which contain the ability to provide these types of functionalities. If J2ME filled every void, Android as an API wouldn't be needed (though Android as an OS could still fill a void). According to the article, JME requires a licencing fee. Android does not - this precludes building on the existing platform (unless, of course, Sun actually did waive the fee). Regardless, isn't it possible that this is a fragmentation where the positives outweigh the negatives?

Ahhhh, Slashdot

Title: "Google, Sun Headed for Showdown"
Summary: There MAY be trouble brewing between Google and Sun...
TFA: Google COULD get in trouble with Sun, according to some analyst (but both parties declined to comment)
Reality: Move along, nothing to see here...

Achilles Heel

I really think Google needs to look at more than one development language to target Android applications. Being only centered around Java is bad for more reasons than just a potential lawsuit. It locks out so many developers who are eager to contribute to the platform.

danger too

same guy @goog wrote the Danger jvm. Oh I see! Get the one with the bigger bankroll, got it! Thx.

honest to god

I read this for a second as "Google, Sun Headed for Showdown Over Asteroid", and thought Google *might* be overreaching - .

Pug

headline is kind of cool

A number which is 10 followed by 100 zeros in a cage match against a hydrogen fusion reactor which accounts for 99.8% of the mass of our solar system. The whole thing happened over a misunderstanding regarding a robot designed to have human features.

Dalvik source available?

So has google released the source code to the Dalvik VM? Any links?

Don't forget Sun's largest customer segment

Sun's biggest customer segment is the telco market.

Don't be so sure that Sun is willing to potentially work against them. If I had a wireless company or division, don't think for a second that I wouldn't pull weight with Sun to get them to put some heat on Android.

We dont want no showdown !!!

We want cooperation. at&t and the others are already trying to lay waste to telecommunication and internet. We have some alliance to stand against them.
Br. Cooperation instead of competition

Android? Dalvik?

I'm not terribly out of the loop when it comes to development technology, but have never heard of Android (in this context) nor Dalvik. Come on, editors, would ensuring a four or five word summary of what the heck these are, really be that hard to enhance the article, and avoid a few wikipedia lookups to simply read the news???

Thanks...

Summary of the story

There could be trouble between Google and Sun, according to someone. Google's Dalvik has advantages, according to some people, but it also has disadvantages. According to a developer not working for Google or Sun, it is possible that Google didn't pick Dalvik for technical reasons, although we don't know. There could be trouble for Google, say some people, because of 'intellectual property' Google may or may not have used, although we don't know what that 'intellectual property' might be. Stefano Mazzocchi says he doesn't know what Sun would do, but he is curious. Nobody working for Google would comment. Nobody working for Sun would comment.

Next week: why some people say that Microsoft could be in unexpected difficulties if it launches its own Linux distribution, which many observers have seen as likely, although others disagree.

Dalvik is really a a

Folks I already covered this.. Dalvik is an emulator VM as on OHA devices the esmertec JVM is deployed which as a Sun IP license held by esmertec. Google can get around Sun's IP as long as it does not claim the Dalvik emulator VM is not java or the java platform. Although, yo9u have to consider it a major goof on Google's part as esmertec does in fact have a JVM emulator and there also exists emulators that are full foss such as microemulator. Major goof in having th issue muddied as there is no conflict with Sun IP as long as Google does not claim that Dalvik is java and most j2m MIDP emulator interfaces have been open source by Sun as in UEI for example. When you want answers as a mobile expert Fred Grott Mobile expert http://www.jroller.com/shareme [jroller.com]

Dalvik is _not_ Open Source

Sun is a staunch advocate for open source, so it would hardly appease the open source community to sue Google over an open source software stack

The Dalvik VM is not open source. Not only is it not open source, there has not even been a spec published for the Virtual Machine. Which is handy for the mobile phone companies because they can place their proprietary code inside the Dalvik VM and thus control the way the APIs are used. (Because you can only access them from Java code).

Sun Digs Android

At least, that's what Jonathan Schwarz says in his weblog post [sun.com] on the topic.

Re:w00t!

The chicks, money and fame will be there soon.

Re:w00t!

Are these first posts automatically added by slashdot when the story is posted?