Oracle Clings To Java API Copyrights 207
An anonymous reader writes in with a story about some of the ramifications of the Oracle-Google lawsuit. "You could hear a collective sigh of relief from the software developer world when Judge William Alsup issued his ruling in the Oracle-Google lawsuit. Oracle lost on pretty much every point, but the thing that must have stuck most firmly in Oracle’s throat was this: 'So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API. It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical. Under the rules of Java, they must be identical to declare a method specifying the same functionality — even when the implementation is different. When there is only one way to express an idea or function, then everyone is free to do so and no one can monopolize that expression. And, while the Android method and class names could have been different from the names of their counterparts in Java and still have worked, copyright protection never extends to names or short phrases as a matter of law.'"
Unix (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you imagine if Bell Labs had sued for control of the Unix APIs? We'd never have GNU, Linux, or many other projects that rely on those.
It would be a different world.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
WTF does public domain have to do with the GPL?
Re:Unix (Score:5, Interesting)
We just had a test of this on a major GPL company. Trolltech was sold to Nokia for $153m. Their product was GPL / commercial and profitable, though $150m was grossly overpaying. Nokia LGPLed it which killed the 2 distribution model and thus Trolltech's way to make money on software. When Nokia sold Trolltech to Digia I think it was about $5m total.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
If it is any consolation Oracle has had problems with companies like Peoplesoft as well. They don't do well with merges it ain't just the GPL. If I had to guess I'd assume that primarily Oracle doesn't care about making the money directly. I think they were buying Sun's customer base a huge percentage of whom were Sun/Oracle so that they could switch them gradually to x86/Oracle rather than potentially losing them to x86/Postgres or AIX/DB2. I think the complexity of Sun caught them off guard.
But no qu
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They effectively did, by suing BSDI at the time and by their descendants suing Linux. They even claimed certain things in K&R's book on C programming were "AT&T Trade Secrets" and "encumbered". Indeed, that was a major thing with AT&T at the time. If you knew how to program in C, you were "encumbered" by AT&T trade secrets and they (sometimes) would try to claim anything you did or developed as a result really belonged to them.
That was a common attitude at the time, which is why compilers of
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Unix (Score:5, Funny)
While I agree with the ruling, Oracle didn't sue for control of Android.
No, their motive was simply the same as every lawyer in the copyright business: "All your moneys are belong to us".
Re:Unix (Score:5, Interesting)
One note on this idea that lawyers are about taking everyone's money - it is akin to saying that software developers are out to take money from anyone who is a client of their development skills. Lawyers are proxies - they themselves don't do anything at all.
They are like paid soldiers on the legal battlefield. Lawyers don't have standing to sue anyone themselves, nor can they bring suits without a client. The client is the one who is suing, and the client is the one who has a claim. Lawyers can be paid hourly, or flat fee, or contingency percentage. In other words, if the client is asking the lawyer to bring suit, and will pay 10% of the damages in fees, then the client has agreed to that.
The real question is: why are you so indignant that lawyers get paid to represent clients? Do you hate the adversarial court system? Then legislate to change it. Do you hate lawsuits? Them legislate change to how lawsuits are brought. The idea that lawyers get PAID (heaven forbid) to represent someone's interests should not be a shock to you. We pay for all kinds of services from waiters to janitors to tax accountants to represent our interests, but if it is a legal representative, OH NOES!
I have family members in the legal profession, and they are good people - I get very tired of hearing about how evil lawyers are. If anyone is evil it is the CLIENTS.
Re:Unix (Score:5, Insightful)
There are too many lawyers that are too willing to say or do ANYthing for money. At least whores have limits.
That's not to say all lawyers are that way (I know a few who I believe to be good people doing good things), but too many are. As officers of the court, it is their duty to keep crap out of the courtroom.
As for the rest, nobody ever lost their house because someone hired a waiter but they couldn't afford one so they got their own sandwich.
Lawyers are hardly the only problem, but they (collectively) have the power to stop it and don't. They are also the public face of the very troubles system.
Re:Unix (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not the getting paid. Its the creating ways of getting paid by raping and pillaging society. Patent Trolls, Divorce Ninjas, Ambulance Chasers, Corporate Mercenaries, Political Lobbyists, and a whole zoo of lower life form crawling a full kilometer below the most disgusting social muck, all in the name of wealth and power. I'd take the dignity and straight up honesty of a hard working whore over such human toxic waste any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I don't have a problem with the majority of lawyers who are honest, hard working people many who believe in what they do. I have a problem with people whose morality is tied to personal expedience, and whose personal interests transcend any and all moral value. We hung people at Nuremberg, for committing atrocities, but at least they were in fact following orders or following some ideology albeit abhorrent. These people commit atrocities, sell future generations down the stream, gut civil rights, sell their soul and intellect to the highest bidder and remake our system of jurisprudence into a perpetual fart joke (an endless stinking noise we can all share in.)
I would gladly double all their wages if they would just grow a soul.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you been killed dead by pencil sharpeners? If so, please dial our number immediately, you may be entitled to reasonable compensation for your death. We here at Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe are trained in keeping your interest and payout for the pain and agony your death has caused. Pencil sharpeners have been shown to be virtual harbingers of death, cruelly subjecting innocent people to the business end of sharpened pencils. The FDA has issued a ruling requiring pencil sharpener manufacturers to fund a fun
Lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
Lawyers are proxies - they themselves don't do anything at all.
But they do. They perpetuate a system where you *have* to use an *expensive* lawyer in order to get justice or to protect yourself from legal attacks (which are usually more harmful than physical ones).
They are like paid soldiers on the legal battlefield.
No. Lawyers are akin to mafiosi operating a protection racket.
Lawyers don't have standing to sue anyone themselves, nor can they bring suits without a client. The client is the one who is suing, and the client is the one who has a claim.
Many countries have socialized medicine. Most countries have a socialized education system. As long as you must pay, often a sum that will bankrupt the average person, to defend yourself in court, justice is only for the rich. (Preemptive note: the "public defender" option is a fig leaf, it does not work, on purpose).
Lawyers can be paid hourly, or flat fee, or contingency percentage.
Guido can break your kneecaps, burn your house or rape your sister. I guess it's OK, as long as you have a choice.
The real question is: why are you so indignant that lawyers get paid to represent clients?
As a Canadian, I know that my basic health-care does not depend on the thickness of my wallet, and yet, doctors here still get paid. Plus, I do have an option to use a private clinic if I want to. I trust you're intelligent enough to compare and contrast.
Do you hate the adversarial court system? Then legislate to change it.
Legislators are lawyers. Good luck making them legislate against their own interests.
Campaign contributors and lobbyists are big businesses, who want to have an unfair legal advantage against those less wealthy. Good luck making legislators legislate against those who pay them.
Do you hate lawsuits? Them legislate change to how lawsuits are brought.
See above. Similarly: Do you hate the mob? Then change how it operates.
The idea that lawyers get PAID (heaven forbid) to represent someone's interests should not be a shock to you. We pay for all kinds of services from waiters(1) to janitors(2) to tax accountants(3) to represent our interests
1) I face no adverse consequences for choosing not to go to a restaurant. Everybody can cook a passable meal.
2) I am not forced to use the services of a janitor. The janitor union does not try to make maintenance as difficult and incomprehensible as possible to lay people.
3) I pay $20/year for a piece of software to do my taxes for me. I could use a free one which is no less good, but I find the paid version more convenient.
I have family members in the legal profession
So you are biased.
and they are good people
In your opinion. I am sure that many family members of the RIAA/MPAA/BSA feel the same (organizations chosen to avoid Godwining this thread).
I get very tired of hearing about how evil lawyers are.
The truth hurts.
Wrong in quite a few ways. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. You have to obey the rules to get the Java license, but your compiler, if it isn't being called java, doesn't have to obey them. dalvik.
2. The license doesn't require you implement at least one java standard. You have to implement a minimal functionality and can place your own in a different namespace. But you don't have to implement at least one java standard. But see #1 as to why this doesn't apply
3. dalvik was written because Google didn't want to implement java to their license, not because they couldn't.
Your assertion of google's jerkness is predicated on incorrect assertions.
Re: (Score:2)
Consider the many security problems Java has had wherever a browser plugin exposes it to the real world. Now consider how much more exposed an app on a phone can be.
Then you'll see why Google needed more freedom to maneuver than Oracle was willing to give them.
Re: (Score:2)
That's just dumb. The security problem is that the sandbox has too large of an attack surface. If you're using the OS to contain untrusted code, rather than the sandbox, Java is just as secure or insecure as C or Perl.
Re: (Score:2)
Who said anything about the OS? Java is supposed to support a sandbox well, but in practice it didn't work out that way.
To have a prayer of making it work, Google needed to be free to modify the spec in a few critical places.
Re: (Score:3)
Or don't use the sandbox. It's an added feature that most languages do not have.
Re: (Score:2)
if your system has any local user to root exploit then exploiting it from a dalvik application is trivial. there's no separate permission for running local native code(as the sandboxed user created for the application).
I think you would be better off comparing dalvik to the numerous j2me implementations, which are often more secure and more transparent about which data the application is accessing - actually to the point that on most phones several API's are totally unusable because the user is bombarded wi
Re: (Score:2)
Consider how much worse it would be if it was vanilla Java.
But most of that malware is of the Trojan type. It claims to be one thing, but does another with the unwitting permission of the user. That is quite different from circumventing a security mechanism to do something that was forbidden.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I wish people would stop thinking this is about Java. Its about Java Mobile Edition.
Now Oracle (or Sun, whatever) released Java with a permissive licence that said you can use it pretty much freely, but they kept the Java ME version to themselves, if you wanted the phone edition, then you had to buy a licence form Oracle. Google didn't feel they wanted to give Oracle a percentage of each Android sale so made their own very-compatible version.
Much as I dislike Oracle, I don't feel Google played fair on this,
Re:Wrong in quite a few ways. (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly did any technology got stolen?
1) Dalvik is completely different from the usual Java VMs (Dalvik is register-based, while Java VMs are stack-based). That's how they got away with a VM that interprets (modified) Java bytecode without infringing any patents related to Java (as was confirmed by the "Oracle vs Google" case).
2) Android uses the exact same interfaces than Java, but that has been standard practice for decades (Unix, for example). No code between Android and Sun/Oracle's Java is the same, except for the stuff that must be the same to implement the same interfaces. The "Oracle vs Google" confirmed that's OK (as the summary says).
In the end, what happened is that Google didn't want to pay Sun/Oracle for a license to use Java mobile, so they implemented their own Java-compatible system (or rather, bought it from other people). That's how technology evolves. As someone else said here a few posts back: imagine if anyone wanting to do a Unix-like OS had to pay a license to someone. Where would we be now?
Re: (Score:3)
AFAIK, Dalvik was created before Google purchased Android. And the developers of Android developed Dalvik because Sun had screwed them over before when they were using the JVM on their previous projects.
Re: (Score:2)
I've built java apps without either. Not sure exactly why you're having trouble with it....
Re: (Score:3)
Let me quote RMS on that one
Re:Wrong in quite a few ways. (Score:5, Informative)
Stallman has defended right to fork long after XEmacs. At the time what he said was:
Re:Wrong in quite a few ways. (Score:4, Insightful)
Implementing your own system that meets your needs is not being a jerk. Asserting rights that you do not have is jerky behavior. Oracle is being the jerk in this instance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it is about being a jerk.
Sun was the jerk because they kept misrepresenting what Java was and what they were going to do with it in order to get industry support. They pulled out of standardization efforts and bullied other companies with outrageous legal threats, all the while running Java into the ground technically and having an army of contributors fix their problems for them under exploitative licensing terms. They had everybody by their balls.
Android Inc decided to implement their own version of
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not being dense I don't think Google was being a jerk. Google was doing what they thought was best. Google doesn't work for Sun. Just because Sun wants something doesn't mean Google is being for not doing it. I'm sure Microsoft wasn't fond of Open Office, that doesn't mean that Sun was being a jerk for not canceling the project because Sun objected.
I'm hard pressed to see what the difference is between what Google did when they created Davlik and what Sun did when they made Java from Oak.
Re: (Score:3)
Uh, sun praised google for the creation of android. You know that, right? http://theblitzbit.com/2011/07/26/sun-ceo-praises-android-take-that-oracle/ [theblitzbit.com] . Anything following Oracle's acquisition at that point is entirely moot. Note the date, as well.
You are incredibly biased and either accidentally or intentionally missing both a: facts and b: cognitive arguments being made by everyone else. Were you a sun developer or something?
Re:Wrong in quite a few ways. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Wrong in quite a few ways. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you'd done any research at all, you'd find that Google refers to it as Java all over the place.
The word "java" is all over the place in the name of the methods (e.g. java.lang.Number). Thus the "Java all over the place" doesn't play any role.
Dalvik is the VM, not the language.
I haven't followed the suit very closely, but in previous legal cases, Sun/Oracle not once tried to blur the line between "Java as implementation" (aka JVM and Java runtime library) and "Java as API or language."
Do not buy into it: there are two different things commonly referred to as Java: Java as language and APIs and Java as implementation of the language and APIs.
Implementation is copyrightable - language and APIs are not.
Re:Wrong in quite a few ways. (Score:5, Informative)
You're getting your facts wrong. Sun *approved* of Google's efforts, publicly and officially, in the forum of their CEO's blog.
Search (e.g., Groklaw [groklaw.net]) for Jonathan Schwartz's blog from November 5, 2007:
And it continues in that vein, referring to Android as a Java-based platform.
This is after much discussion between the companies. The context matters. Google weren't being jerks.
Read up on the Oracle's lawsuit at groklaw [groklaw.net] for more factual background and generally reasoned commentary on the Oracle suit.
Larry
Re: (Score:2)
I'll check out the info, thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
The jerkiness of Google is they went against the direct wishes of the creator of the project. Sun wanted to make sure that Java was compatible with Java anywhere, which is why they sued Microsoft for adding incompatibilities. Sun decided they wanted to make Java open source, but took measures to make sure any new implementation would be compatible. They did whatever they could to make sure it would be. Then Google decided to make an incompatible version, apparently to avoid the J2ME license issues, but for whatever reason, they made it incompatible. Not cool.
The creator of the Mp3 player probably never intended other companies like apple to add a bunch of DRM and make their Media Player incompatible with everything else.
Re: (Score:2)
you're quite wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The creator of the project (Sun) had promised to make Java an open ISO and ECMA standard. That's why people initially adopted it.
After several years, all of that turned out to have been a lie.
Just because Sun decides they own or control something doesn't mean they do.
Google didn't decide to make an incompatible version, Android Inc. did.
Android Inc did this before Sun released Java under an open source license.
Android Inc decided to do this because Sun had already screwed them once before on J2ME
Making Android compatible with J2ME would have made no sense; J2ME was a lousy design.
The only thing that's been "not cool" is Sun's long string of lies, their technical ineptness and mismanagement, and Oracle's attempt to establish API copyrights. Everybody else is just trying to dig out from under the consequences of their mess, deceptions and trolling.
Re:Unix (Score:5, Insightful)
Google couldn't get JSE to work on a phone, but could have implemented JME with little effort.
Not true. Google didn't implement JSE because many of the libraries in that standard don't make sense on a touch screen phone. They cut out a bunch of libraries and they changed the I/O library. JME has different rules than JSE. Oracle was protecting its mobile business and wanted a cut of app revenue.
Re: (Score:2)
License for what? What exactly do you think Sun/Oracle owns that Android should have licensed?
That requires them to pay money to Oracle. Furthermore, the original promise of Java was that it was going to be an open standard; Sun kept reneging on that promise.
Re:Unix (Score:5, Interesting)
They wanted control of what Android has become. They would have had it: Google tried to negotiate terms that would have given them that. But they wouldn't grant the licence necessary to let Android become what it has become. So Google had to do something else. It worked out for us. Android would not have been accepted as fast, nor progressed as fast, nor been as lightweight, if Sun had taken that deal. We wouldn't have as many of these amazing new things.
Personally after having followed the case and read through what Oracle has claimed here I am unwilling to use anything from their company ever again - no matter how indirectly derived or loosely controlled. It truly is despicable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am unwilling to use anything from their company ever again - no matter how indirectly derived or loosely controlled. It truly is despicable.
- I came to that realisation probably in 2007-8, when I saw the proliferation of their drones disguised as 'contractor architects', whose only real mission was to push Oracle solutions into every single aspect of every business they managed to stick their tentacles into.
It's too bad Oracle bought Sun, it should have been Google or IBM. The fact that Oracle is the owner of Java TM and the reference implementation of JVM is extremely unfortunate (and it's part of the reason there is so much misinformation o
Re:Unix (Score:4, Informative)
Apropos misinformation. The reference implementation of Java 7 is now OpenJDK:
https://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/entry/moving_to_openjdk_as_the [oracle.com]
OpenJDK is under the GPLv2. So I don't know how Orcale "own[s]" the reference implementation of the JVM.
Re:Unix (Score:5, Informative)
I don't care if Oracle released it under the BSD license. They claimed in this suit to have copyrights on max() and min() as if they invented that shit. It took a judge who was a programmer also to call them out on it or that stupid shit would have gone to a jury ignorant of the technology history. "I could implement that in 15 minutes" or some such he said. They claim to have various patents to prevent all of Java, Unix, Linux, Windows and every other thing involving technology everywhere in this universe and any alternates that subordinate all of the open source licenses they grant.
A company like that, their output is toxic. The safest course is not to deal with them or anything claiming to be derived from them at all. That means nothing from Solaris (not even ZFS or its derivatives), no MySQL (forks should be safe for now), No BTRFS, no Java - or anything even in the most remote sense related to Java. If they would sue over the API, what wouldn't they sue over?
It's a shame as Oracle has bought up some of the greatest stuff in IT - but perhaps that's the point. Uncle Larry isn't and has never been in the giving stuff away business and has no respect for the folks who are. He's found great success in the selling stuff business so when he finds givers in dire straits he takes their scalps and then scalps their customers too.
I have no interest in buying him another island. I've got useful stuff to do.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You mean, can you imagine of Bell Lab's hadn't sued for controll of UNIX. Bell did (well, it's parent, AT&T did).
No, Bell Labs didn't sue for control of UNIX.
BSD was sued by USL (UNIX Systems Laboratory, which at that time was a spinoff from AT&T) because there was UNIX code in BSD UNIX.
It turned out there was more BSD code in USL UNIX so BSD countersued and the matter was settled out of court.
Although that was a setback to BSD UNIX, it's questionable if that was Linux's most significant advantage.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
According to Linus Torvalds, it is the whole reason Linux even exists.
Re:Unix (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a myth from the BSD community. Absolutely the LAMP stack wasn't the BAMP stack. Possibly you can argue that Linux was ahead in 1994 because of the lawsuit but what about the 18 years since then?
There were niches like embedded where BSD was well established that they lost to Linux. BSD lost to Linux because:
a) They didn't care much about appealing to Windows power users who became the base of Linux. They focused on recruiting from the smaller Unix community.
b) They didn't have the GPL so they never got the industrial cooperation from hardware players that Linux got, contrary to their theories about licensing.
c) Their product is too damn hard to use, even today twenty years later.
Re: (Score:3)
That's a myth from the BSD community. Absolutely the LAMP stack wasn't the BAMP stack. Possibly you can argue that Linux was ahead in 1994 because of the lawsuit but what about the 18 years since then?
There were niches like embedded where BSD was well established that they lost to Linux. BSD lost to Linux because:
a) They didn't care much about appealing to Windows power users who became the base of Linux. They focused on recruiting from the smaller Unix community.
b) They didn't have the GPL so they never got the industrial cooperation from hardware players that Linux got, contrary to their theories about licensing.
c) Their product is too damn hard to use, even today twenty years later.
That like your opinion, man.
There's a million different ways to argue this, from "Stallman poisioned the well by using propaganda techniques to make people into GPL zealots" to "The Linux community had a structure that was better able to scale development and evangelization". The truth is that there were many different causes, and we'll almost certainly never know how important each was, and how much of this was basically random chance.
I can counterfact some of your hypotheses above, in case you're interes
Re: (Score:3)
Well written counter argument.
"Stallman poisioned the well by using propaganda techniques to make people into GPL zealots
That's very different than the lawsuit. And I think no question that Stallman, had a huge impact on making people believe in the GPL and changing people's mind. But if you look at the LAMP stack:
GPL: Linux, MySQL
BSD/MIT style: Apache, Perl
So at least by the early 1990s were it the case that the BSD/MIT licenses were far superior there were ways people could have seen it. Looking back
Reading between the lines (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it's very difficult to legally distinguish between a troll and a tiny operation with genuine innovation that has gotten screwed over by a large corporation with lots of lawyers, especially for the non-expert patent officer whose job it is to grant the patent.
Does it have a product? (Score:3)
it's very difficult to legally distinguish between a troll and a tiny operation with genuine innovation
Does it develop and license significant know-how related to its patent portfolio? If so, it's genuine innovation (cf. ARM).
Re: (Score:2)
Does it develop and license significant know-how related to its patent portfolio? If so, it's genuine innovation (cf. ARM).
That's a fairly good negative proof, but the absence is hardly a good positive proof. After all, most companies are in the business of using their own innovations not licensing them to third parties. Nor do small companies have a patent portfolio, they may have patented one or a few key innovations that their business model revolves around that would be their unique selling point. And demanding it be in actual use it is a lot harder for small innovators that are looking for funding/production/partners/custo
Re: (Score:2)
How about "No, it doesn't, because before they finished development MegaResourcedCorp had been selling their unlicensed product for 6 months, and had been given other patents that prevent anyone (including the original inventor) from producing a competing product."
Re: (Score:3)
Their are penalties for frivolous lawsuits. The problem is there is a huge range between bad lawsuits and frivolous. The bar is high for frivolous.
As an American I'd like to see more suits have to pass a quick summary judgement on viability. And much stronger restrictions on changing the initial fillings.
Google should have bought Sun (Score:5, Interesting)
Google worst decision was to let Oracle buy and cannibalize Sun. It would have saved us and them from all these nonsense. Also Google's philosophy is so much closer to Sun's: great engineering and giving back to open source. The only thing Google is different than Sun is that they know how to profit from their products.
Heck, if they didn't want to spend all the money on their own they could lead a group of companies to buy out the IP of Sun.
It's really a pity that Oracle got a chance to buy Sun. I couldn't have imagined a worst end for such a great company.
Re:Google should have bought Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
Was it a mistake? Oracle has blown huge sums of cash in acquiring and then attempting to defend and monetize Sun's IP. And what have they got for all of it? Linux is still carving into Solaris and Sparc market share. Java was already leaving Sun's hands long before Oracle bought it.
Oracle bought very little for a lot of money, and now they're left arguing a spec is the same as an implementation.
I expect Ellison to join Ballmer in the stupid executive's retirement home. Both have fucked up hugely.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure wish I could fuck up as rich^H^H^H^Hbadly as them.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure wish I could fuck up as rich^H^H^H^Hbadly as them.
Royalties from legacy products. Innovation? Oracle & Microsoft are in the same boat, scrambling for a life preserver. People aren't going to keep paying for Oracle and Windows if they're replaced by something that everyone else adopts (like they did Oracle and Windows...)
Re: (Score:2)
What is competitive with Oracle for large relational databases other than DB2? Oracle financials, Peoplesoft, Siebel, JD Edwards...
I think they are fine for now.
Re: (Score:3)
PostgresSQL. If you're using the non-standard PL/SQL stuff in Oracle you're never getting out though.
Re: (Score:2)
Postgres is a comparable to about Oracle 8 in terms of features, there are still very good reasons to use Oracle. Besides my point was that even if the database business does die they have many many more products now.
Re: (Score:2)
From what I've seen, the rest of their products are quite poor. I always joked that they should stick to databases, but even that has significant competition now.
Re: (Score:2)
No. There is nothing like Peoplesoft or Siebel. Oracle financials is excellent. I would never describe those as poor.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure wish I could fuck up as rich^H^H^H^Hbadly as them.
Royalties from legacy products. Innovation? Oracle & Microsoft are in the same boat, scrambling for a life preserver.
Yeah, maybe Oracle and MS are scrambling for a life preserver, but Ellison and Ballmer certainly aren't. Sure, their companies woes might mean that there will be an upper limit on how many Gulfstreams they can buy, but I'm sure that 99.9% of Americans wouldn't mind the difficulties of going into the "stupid executive's retirement home."
Re: (Score:2)
Was it a mistake? Oracle has blown huge sums of cash in acquiring and then attempting to defend and monetize Sun's IP. And what have they got for all of it? Linux is still carving into Solaris and Sparc market share. Java was already leaving Sun's hands long before Oracle bought it. Oracle bought very little for a lot of money, and now they're left arguing a spec is the same as an implementation.
Not to mention with this case they pretty much settled it if Google starts going after desktop java with an enhanced Dalvik for laptop/desktop replacements. What would be nice though is if the Linux devs could get their hands on a GPL-compatible version of Solaris so they could integrate ZFS and some various other goodies, but I suspect you'd have to pay dearly for that.
Re: (Score:2)
ZFS is open source. Turns out it sucks on inexpensive (x86 quality) hardware, in ways that are unfixable even by smart people. Apple lost years proving that.
But http://zfsonlinux.org/ [zfsonlinux.org]
But Oracle's BTRFS plays the same role and is even better.
Re: (Score:2)
The suposed problem you are referring to (ZFS reliability on cheap USB hardware which ignores cache flushes) was in fact well known, and easily fixed. It just took a long time, as no one sane would run ZFS on USB hardware to start with. All Apple proved was that their engineers had a very shallow understanding of ZFS.
Re: (Score:2)
All Apple proved was that their engineers had a very shallow understanding of ZFS.
I wouldn't say that - they have an independent company now continuing the project and many people like it.
Steve Jobs killed the project because Jonathan Schwartz blabbed to the press that Apple was going to embrace it, and nobody punks Steve Jobs, or ELSE!
Re: (Score:2)
Apple doesn't have a filesystem strategy today. They have had this problem since OSX 10.5. Steve Jobs might have an ego about getting punked, but he wasn't crazy.
Re: (Score:2)
Apple supposedly had problems with their internal drives, where it mattered. As for shallow understanding of ZFS they hired several of the world's leading experts on it for their port.
Re: (Score:2)
But Oracle's BTRFS plays the same role and is even better.
Wow, you haven't deployed either of them at scale, have you?
There's still frequent data corruption going in btrfs land and you'll be in for major pain if you try to host a VM storage file on it. They did recently fix the abysmal fsync performance, which is good, and a cursory fsck is available now. The kernel folks are still figuring out how to do cache devices in the dm stack and send/receive are still experimental.
The benefits to btrfs being what
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, you haven't deployed either of them at scale, have you?
Nope, parroting other's opinions.
Since Oracle is still selling ZFS, it would be hard to see why they would put significant resources into creating a free alternative at this point.
AFAIK BTRFS is better for Oracle and more feature rich. Ultimately it is not to Oracle's advantage that Z-OS, I-OS (the IBM one) and AIX are the OSes for very large storage. That's how they could lose to DB2 / Netezza.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe if Sun and Motorola had merged, and made a good Solaris/Java-based phone/tablet platform?
Re: (Score:2)
Of course they could spend their money on any number of products that they want to keep out of competitors hands. Now, I'm the farthest thing you can be from a businessperson, but even I find it hard to imaging that it's a good practice to do this. Wasting tons of money on something just so the other guys don't get it just seems... wasteful.
Of course, even Google has succumbed to wasting large sums of cash on patents and the like, so perhaps they're not as smart as we hoped....
Touch down for common sense! (Score:2)
And, while the Android method and class names could have been different from the names of their counterparts in Java and still have worked, copyright protection never extends to names or short phrases as a matter of law.
That's it. Who disagrees?
Re:Touch down for common sense! (Score:5, Informative)
"Droid" is a valid Trademark vs. "GetCurrentTime()" being an invalid Copyright.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Trademark's not the same as copyright derp.
Try again.
Ann Droid vs technical documentation (Score:4, Insightful)
Oracle kicks off its legal arguments with the tale of a mythical writer, Ann Droid who copies the titles and some sentences from a Harry Potter book and publishes her book. Oracle then argues that we would not accept that.
BUT, API's should rather be compared with writing an anatomy book. We all would have chapters like 'Introduction, digestive tract, neural system etc.'. So if the argument of Oracle hold, no_one_can write another anatomy book (or most technical books).
Dictionary (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
A glimpse into the world as seen by Larry Ellison
If I were Daniel Webster, I'd be kicking myself for not trying to copyright English....
Re: (Score:2)
The BBC [wikia.com] should sue Oracle.
Looks like a win for progress (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Does this mean... (Score:2)
Does this mean that mono is protected from Microsoft's .net in the same way? Not trolling, just seriously asking.
Re: (Score:2)
doubt it, Microsoft never asserted copyright claims to the .NET API words, they do however claim to have a shed-load of patents that they won't use against mono should be become successful, honest.
Patent law being a lot more screwed than copyright law is, I wouldn't count on it.
Trademark (Score:2)
Why didn't Oracle sue over the Trademark instead? It worked for Sun against Microsoft.
Re: (Score:2)
Why didn't Oracle sue over the Trademark instead? It worked for Sun against Microsoft.
Google was careful to not call it Java.
oracle can't see the future (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Don't despair. All the lawyers got paid a few metric assloads of loot. That's trickle-down economics in action. Working for the people.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps to the standards of ordinary people. However the real metric assloads of loot come from settlements in class action suits.
Re:Oracle is based on copyright violations then... (Score:4, Informative)
Just in case anyone believes this:
Oracle founded 1977
DB2 first version 1983
Re: (Score:2)
R was a research application it wasn't commercial. Oracle was very very different. There wasn't any code in common.