Oracle: Google Has "Destroyed" the Market For Java 457
itwbennett writes: Oracle made a request late last month to broaden its case against Android. Now, claiming that 'Android has now irreversibly destroyed Java's fundamental value proposition as a potential mobile device operating system,' Oracle on Wednesday filed a supplemental complaint in San Francisco district court that encompasses the six Android versions that have come out since Oracle originally filed its case back in 2010: Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, Kit Kat and Lollipop.
Groklaw Needed More Than Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a shame Pamela Jones shuttered Groklaw ... her insight into this case would have been invaluable.
We need to stop the dangerous idea that interfaces can be copyrighted before it becomes as much a bane on software as software patents were before Alice vs. CLS Bank.
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I don't see what alice has to do with this.
Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to stop the dangerous idea that interfaces can be copyrighted
I miss Groklaw too, but it's really too late for that. The Supreme Court upheld the earlier court's decision that interfaces can be copyrighted (or more specifically, declined to hear an appeal).
It's not the end of the world. Use of an interface for purposes of interoperability has been declared fair use. The Google vs Oracle case is still in court, trying to decide if Google's use of Java is fair use.
Of course, Java is under the GPL, so in most cases this is not even an issue.
Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the end of the world. Use of an interface for purposes of interoperability has been declared fair use. The Google vs Oracle case is still in court, trying to decide if Google's use of Java is fair use.
It's a serious blow to interoperability and to open source in general. Fair use is and affirmative defense, not an absolute right. It's very subjective. In order to even assert fair use, you have to be sued, refuse to settle, go to court, and convince a judge that the fair use defense applies... and then you have to actually litigate the case, with the risk you will lose, be out potentially millions in your own legal costs, plus damages, plus maybe paying the plaintiff's costs. This is a huge burden for anyone but a massive corporation to meet.
It is impossible to write a non-trivial Java application without extending or overriding some API "owned" by Sun/Oracle. This means that basically every Java application and by extension, every program that implements a public, non-open-source API or is written in a proprietary language exists at the sufference of the API/language creator. Maybe you could go to court and try to assert "fair use", but good luck doing that if you are not Google.
Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever (Score:5, Interesting)
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To be fair, anyone with less than that much in revenue isn't really worth suing in a copyright suit anyway.
Tell that to the RIAA. If Oracle claims copyright of Java, it would be fairly simple for them to start charging licensing fees. If they went after small shops, they could easily ask for $5k an executable and most shops would have to just pay it as it would cost more to fight it.
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Copyrighting interfaces is indeed a really bad idea, however I'm not so sure it's quite the bane you're thinking.
In Google's case, their problem was that they had already settled on using Java long before the troubles with Oracle came up, so it wasn't exactly feasible for them to switch to something else. They had already invested in Android, Dalvik, etc., so changing course midstream just wasn't worth it. However, suppose Google knew this was going to happen; instead of basing Dalvik on Java, interfaces
Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
If the API headers are the most valuable part of your software... you're doing something wrong.
Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever (Score:5, Informative)
And the difference between this and the MS Java case is...what exactly? Because the only difference I can see is Google pulled a name out of their ass, which means all MSFT had to do was call it "MS Coffee" and it would have all been golden.
The difference is trademarks. Microsoft called their unauthorized implementation Java(tm). You don't get to do that without passing Sun's certification process. MS never implemented the entire Java specification. They modified some parts and left others out (embrace and extend). So someone who wrote a Java program against the Sun JDK and brought it to the MS platform would potentially see it fail out of the box. Due to these issues Sun used it's trademark [javaworld.com] to sue for relief from having its brand damaged.
This is different from unauthorized implementations that did not claim to be official Java products. Indeed, prior to Sun open sourcing the HotSpot JVM, there were quite a few open source unofficial implementations: e.g. GNU Kaffe, Apache Harmony, GCJ, etc. Claiming ownership over interfaces/API is a new and treacherous behavior that came along with Oracle.
And what if somebody was to do this to Linux? After all they have access to the code, should be easy enough to just rip it off and take it proprietary by following the Google model, what would the difference be? None at all.
None. Linus owns the Linux trademark in many countries. Assuming someone didn't copy the source code and just re-implemented the APIs, it would be totally kosher as long as you didn't call it "Linux". How do you think Linux was allowed to exist in the first place? It's just an unauthorized implementation of a bunch of POSIX APIs, but because Linus didn't call his kernel a UNIX(tm) system or claim POSIX(tm) compliance, he didn't run afoul of trademark law.
Re:Groklaw Needed More Than Ever (Score:5, Informative)
The irony being that BEA bought JRockit because their JVM implementation was significantly better than Sun's on Intel, and Oracle bought BEA.
This is before Oracle bought Sun, so Oracle were themselves doing to Sun what they're claiming Google have done to them.
Fundamentally it all boils down to Larry Ellison and his company being cunts.
Profiting on the Backs of Others (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle (then Sun) could have created an operating system for mobile phones based around Java. But since Google did, they want to profit off of it? They should go to hell.
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I don't get it -- isn't Android programming primarily Java, with things like C relegated to support library status?
Sounds stronger than ever.
Re:Profiting on the Backs of Others (Score:5, Insightful)
By "irreversibly destroyed Java's fundamental value", Oracle means "we should be getting payments from Google because they're using a version of Java that they didn't license from us to make money." Everything else is fluff.
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Unless you're Nissan and you're hell bent on extracting a domain name that somebody owned before you even existed. Then you'll spend a shitload on lawyers fees only to lose and have your name dragged through the mud.
That said, never buy a Nissan car. Ever.
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That said, never buy a Nissan car. Ever.
Cars? I thought they made Cup Noodles [nissinfoods.com]
.
Re: Profiting on the Backs of Others (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe that's the unintended consequence of a write once, run anywhere language -- they were supposed to transcend the operating system. They never made a Java operating system because of that concept, and Sun really wanted to sell Solaris, too.
Re:Profiting on the Backs of Others (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with J2ME is that it's awful.
It's always been awful, I've always dreaded using apps on pre iOS/Android phones.
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It was not "pretty amazing". I have written J2ME apps. It was a disaster zone, mostly for policy not technical reasons.
Problem one: its conformance testing was crap and the licensing for the upstream implementation was expensive. So, guess what, phone OEMs made their own. And did it badly. EVERY J2ME phone was full of bugs, often incredibly basic and obvious bugs like camera APIs that leaked every image taken (take three photos in a row->OutOfMemoryError), or drawing APIs that crashed the device if you t
Re: Profiting on the Backs of Others (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft licensed the Java platform and trademark and then intentionally built an incompatible implementation, put the Java logo on it and claimed compatibility.
Android has never claimed to be a compliant Java platform, it merely lets you use the Java programming language and GNU's standard java library (gcj & libjava) to build apps for Android.
Re: Profiting on the Backs of Others (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft created libraries that were compatible with Sun's Java, and then added their own proprietary (and incompatible) extensions to pull developers away from the real Java. This was a deliberate move to make sure that developers had to target Windows and couldn't target ordinary Java (which could run on any other platform) By the way, this was the same motivation Microsoft had for creating Internet Explorer (that is, they didn't want developers being able to target a web browser instead of an operating system.)
The whole idea was to force end users to stay with Windows instead of anything else, as Microsoft wanted to maintain their monopoly status.
Android on the other hand wasn't attempting to do that. That is, it never made any effort to pull any developers away from the Java platform, nor was it ever intended to do that in the future, nor did they make any attempt at being compatible with existing Java applications. Sure, it would be easier to port Java applications over, but it's intended to be the same at all, whereas Microsoft's implementation was intended to be a drop-in replacement.
Furthermore, Sun won their case against Microsoft because it was proven that Microsoft did what they did for anti-competitive reasons; copyright infringement was never claimed at any point. And likewise, Oracle isn't making any kind of anti-compete claims towards Google.
Oracle is just saying "Hey, you created an interface with similar naming to something created by a company we purchased. Even though other companies have done the same thing numerous times and have never been sued before, we're going to shake you down because we happened to have noticed just how successful you are and we'd like to get on your gravy train without having contributed anything to it."
Which by the way, what I just said above is typical Oracle behavior. When somebody comes along that does something similar to what they do, then they first try to buy it out, and if they can't buy it out, then they sue it out. Having said that, Oracle is every bit as much of an asshole company as Microsoft has ever been, if not more so.
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The reason they used their own bytecode was because of the Sun vs MS thing. Google wanted to add apis that where needed for modern android, but feared doing so would put them at odds with Sun, so they created a whole new bytecode system to avoid copyright entanglements.
Regardless, Androids about the only reason Java is still relevant. Sure theres the enterprise java thing, but even thats getting eaten away by web apps in more agile languages. Last job I had was at a government department where we where rewr
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Actually in that lawsuit, Sun brought up the emails uncovered in the DoJ investigation where a Microsoft exec (can't recall the name) specifically called out Java as a threat to Windows (the same email mentioned Netscape Navigator as a threat to Windows, and for the same reason.) This is why they won the lawsuit.
Sun did indeed try for copyright infringement, but that portion of the lawsuit was shot down, and the only one that stood was the violation of anti-compete laws.
Sun has argued in court that Microsoft viewed Java's "Write Once, Run Anywhere" capability as a threat to Windows, because Java reduced the incentive for software developers to write programs for the Microsoft operating system.
According to Sun, the version of Java distributed by Microsoft worked better with its Windows software. Such a move threatened Java's ability to provide a cross-platform development environment, Sun's lawyers said.
Microsoft has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and has maintained that it stuck to the letter of its licensing agreement with Sun. Any changes Microsoft made to Java merely allowed developers to take advantage of features specific to Windows, the company has argued.
The case has been watched closely, and Microsoft's dealings with Java were cited by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the U.S. government's antitrust case against Microsoft as evidence of the software giant's anticompetitive behavior.
Tom Burt, Microsoft's deputy general counsel for litigation, portrayed Tuesday's settlement as a positive outcome for Microsoft.
"Microsoft is very pleased with the successful conclusion of this litigation," Burt said in a statement. The agreement confirms Microsoft's ability to independently develop technology to compete with Sun's products, the company said.
Sun scored a victory in the case in November 1998, when Judge Ronald Whyte of the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, ruled that Sun was likely to win its case based on the merits and issued a preliminary injunction in Sun's favor. The injunction forced Microsoft to modify the Java technology it had distributed in its operating system, Web browser, and development tools so that it passed Sun's tests.
A U.S. Appeals Court overturned the injunction the following year, questioning the grounds on which Whyte had based his decision. Whyte reinstated the injunction, but based his order on California's unfair competition statutes rather than on copyright law, as Sun had requested. The ruling was seen as a partial victory for Sun.
http://www.javaworld.com/artic... [javaworld.com]
Fuck Oracle (Score:5, Insightful)
Java was never useful on phones until Google built something decent.
Sun/Oracle could never build a decent phone with Java, no matter how much money they pumped into it.
If you work somewhere that uses Oracle products or is considering an Oracle product, fight to the bone to get their shitware tossed out.
We need to end this company, it's a tumor in the software ecosystem.
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Don't you mean until Google bought something decent? Android does not originate with Google.
Re: Fuck Oracle (Score:3)
Well honestly the first few versions of Android weren't great.
I was an early adopter with the G1, etc.
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Java was never useful on phones until Google built something decent.
Sun/Oracle could never build a decent phone with Java, no matter how much money they pumped into it.
If you work somewhere that uses Oracle products or is considering an Oracle product, fight to the bone to get their shitware tossed out.
We need to end this company, it's a tumor in the software ecosystem.
Imagine an Oracle smartphone...
Innovate, not litigate (Score:5, Interesting)
irreversibly destroyed Java's fundamental value proposition as a potential mobile device operating system
Well there's the problem. Oracle thinks the language and runtime are a complete operating system. There's nothing stopping Oracle making a different OS that uses Java. In fact, the vast amount of libraries for Android out there should be easy to port. Next we'll hear how Microsoft destroyed the value of C as used to build an OS.
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That's an interesting idea.
Could Bell Labs and Bjarne Stroupstroup take Oracle to court for using C/C++ without a copyright license in their products? Perhaps they use an implemention from a vendor that isn't the original one and thus don't have a license from the original author.
Think of the Billion$ they could make at Oracle's expense!
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Well there's the problem. Oracle thinks the language and runtime are a complete operating system.
Yeah! I demand they call it "GNU/Java"!
Jython (Score:3)
Can you imagine a interpreter of perl or python written in Java where no native option possible?
Yes, and it's called Jython.
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Java was not designed for low battery power devices with hard real-time constraints
You might want to look at the origin of Java. It grew from the Green Project, which aimed to build a system for battery-powered devices with about 1MB of RAM that needed interactive UIs and to control other devices.
JAVA FTW (Score:5, Funny)
Java...[garbage collection] is the .[garbage collection] best .[garbage collection] programming .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] language for .[garbage collection] mobile devices .[garbage collection] .[garbage collection] because it is .[garbage collection] faster .[garbage collection] then C++ and .[garbage collection] more .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] deterministic and .[garbage collection] .[garbage collection] .[garbage collection] nev .[garbage collection] er .[garbage collection] drops .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] user .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] input.
I like Java .[garbage collection] becuase .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] it's write .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] once, .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] and it runs .[garbage collection] .[garbage collection].[garbage collection] provided you have all .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] the libraries, the .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] correct java interpreter .[garbage collection].[garbage collection].[garbage collection] and enough .[garbage collection].[garbage collection]
javax.servlet.ServletException: Something bad happened
at com.example.myproject.OpenSessionInViewFilter.doFilter(OpenSessionInViewFilter.java:60)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
at com.example.myproject.ExceptionHandlerFilter.doFilter(ExceptionHandlerFilter.java:28)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
at com.example.myproject.OutputBufferFilter.doFilter(OutputBufferFilter.java:33)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.handle(ServletHandler.java:388)
at org.mortbay.jetty.security.SecurityHandler.handle(SecurityHandler.java:216)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.SessionHandler.handle(SessionHandler.java:182)
at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.handle(ContextHandler.java:765)
at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.handle(WebAppContext.java:418)
at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:152)
at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.handle(Server.java:326)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handleRequest(HttpConnection.java:542)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection$RequestHandler.content(HttpConnection.java:943)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseNext(HttpParser.java:756)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseAvailable(HttpParser.java:218)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handle(HttpConnection.java:404)
at org.mortbay.jetty.bio.SocketConnector$Connection.run(SocketConnector.java:228)
at org.mortbay.thread.QueuedThreadPool$PoolThread.run(QueuedThreadPool.java:582)
Caused by: com.example.myproject.MyProjectServletException
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that's NOTHING. I can get even more spew at COMPILE TIME with C++, bee-yatch!!
Re:JAVA FTW (Score:5, Informative)
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or one could use a non-obtuse language that doesn't have Turing complete preprocessor macro system, and make less errors from the start
Re:JAVA FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
Though, as an aside, that just reminded me of the equally-as-pathetic amount of Stockholm Syndrome exhibited by C++ programmers on Stack Overflow:
http://stackoverflow.com/quest... [stackoverflow.com]
You don't need it! They're useless! If you use it you're not a good programmer! Why would you want C++ to be like other languages?!
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Maybe you should use C++ before posting stupidity like this. If you mean to say C++ doesn't have built-in stack tracing you'd sound less stupid. Getting a stack trace, like many things in languages built before JAVA is a matter of including some other code and turning on a feature of your compiler. I get stack traces just fine in my exceptions.
C++ has mountains of capabilities in libs/code outside the standard, JAVA has it all packed into the standard - what's the big deal?
conclusion: languages are tools
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1997 called. They want their overused Java meme back.
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1997 called. They want their overused Java meme back.
I take it you've never used Eclipse?
Some days I'm lucky to be able to type three characters before it goes off and spends 30 seconds garbage collecting again.
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On a mobile device, garbage collection is fast, unless you are using up more than ~60% of RAM. Then it starts to get slow. So you have two options, either have unused RAM, or wait around for slow garbage collection.
On a larger server (like, ~30GB of RAM, not uncommon these days), garbage collection can take up to 10 minutes. A lot of people with clusters of Java servers have automated processes to detect and remove boxes from clusters while they are doing garbage collectio
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javax.servlet.ServletException: Something happened
Oracle/SCO (Score:2)
People are reverse engineering their shit, and Google is destroying value. This is a pretty sure sign that Oracle is going down.
Ooops, misread the headline (Score:5, Insightful)
At first, I read that as "Oracle Has 'Destroyed' the Market For Java"... which, of course, seemed quite plausible.
RIP SUN
Re:Ooops, misread the headline (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I had a couple of Sparc Stations in the 90's and admined SunOS and Solaris on those and some enterprise server systems, but
Fuck Sun, they favored proprietary server systems that lined their sales-reps' pockets with cash while the world changed around them and then sold all of their knowledge lock stock and barrel to Oracle, simply because Oracle users were their largest remaining customer base
I feel the same way about DEC, who flushed thirty years of Alpha architectural superiority down the drain because they couldn't sell their way out of a wet paper sack
We get what we deserve because we let the free market reign supreme where the most cut throated business-people win and the rest go down the drain
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When Alpha was introduced they laid out thirty years of growth for the platform, primarily because they designed for the long run. When HP was replacing Alpha with Itanium, they had to suppress Alpha benchmarks because it made their 'enterprise' chip look like the garbage that it was
FWIW all RISC chips sucked at integer division, to quote:
"When integer multiplication is cheaper than integer division, it is beneficial to substitute a multiplication for a division."
https://gmplib.org/~tege/divcn... [gmplib.org]
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At first, I read that as "Oracle Has 'Destroyed' the Market For Java"... which, of course, seemed quite plausible.
Too late. Sun already did that -- at least if we're talking about Java as a mobile platform. I spent years tracking J2ME as a potential target for our apps. Java may not have been all things to all people, but back in the day (late 90s early 00s) personal basis profile would have been ideal for what we were doing. Even MIDP would have been a good match.
The problem is that there never was *a* standard J2ME implementation; J2ME was only a set of specifications. Implementations came from third parties and the
Really??? (Score:5, Funny)
Oracle, please look in the mirror (Score:3, Insightful)
The contenders for biggest enemies of Java are:
1) Micro$oft - Effectively killed the JavaBean web plugin market with their own lackluster JVM via EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish).
JavaBeans is the technology that has the biggest negative view on the net and rightly so. If Microsoft had not done such a good job killing it, Java would likely be in a different light today as more energy would have been spent making JavaBean libraries better while the real engineers at Sun still had control of the source.
2) Oracle - They just do not get open source or anything that came from Sun.
Google has popularized Java way more than Oracle could ever imagine.
"You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end" - B. Cantrill
Ask.com has destroyed the market for java (Score:2)
Sorry... to what market are they entitled again? (Score:2)
Quick message to Oracle: Between the security officer coming off as, at best, a self-entitled, over-inflated executive believing her services are better than her customers deserve, and now the company claiming they have a "right" to market share, I think the psychology of the company is becoming quite clear. It isn't that their products are poor (which they are not), it is that they seem to believe that they deserve their piece of the market by divine providence.
Please note, this is opinion, and only my own
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Oracle's products are extremely poor.
Re: Sorry... to what market are they entitled agai (Score:2)
I have bought them and Oracle products suck. For developers and end users.
Cry me a river (Score:5, Interesting)
Sun wanted to sell hardware, and they designed Java to run well with their hardware. Sun's ideal was the network is the computer. Java is/was a client language that could run on a lot of platforms, with in Sun's mind a Sun server at the other end. Didn't quite work out that way. Sun was going belly up, Oracle bought the carcass. Sun gave Java away. You can't put the jinni back in the bottle.
Java was worthless when Oracle bought Sun. They're engaged in revisionist history trying to milk a dead cow.
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Uh most of the world's business and web software ran on Java when Oracle bought Sun.
It was a huge reason why Oracle bought Sun in the first place, gave them some leverage over IBM, Google and other companies.
Re:Cry me a river (Score:4, Interesting)
Oracle had (and still have) much reliance on Java and Sun hardware for their server & middleware tiers. They simply could NOT let it die along with Sun or, worse yet, let it pass to a competitor.
Disclaimer: that's as far as I will comment on that issue, as I am an Oracle employee. Though I have nothing to do with the Java or Sun group, the native mobile apps I develop eventually touches Java code, server side. It's everywhere.
Keep up, or fall behind (Score:5, Interesting)
The tech industry, just like every industry, improves as people discover new and better ways to do things. If you can't keep up Oracle, you fall behind. And since you've chosen to litigate instead of innovate, you have fallen behind.
No one is guaranteed profit.
Let me rephrase that. (Score:2)
Oracle ... Now, claiming that 'Android has now irreversibly destroyed Java's fundamental value proposition as a potential mobile device operating system, ...
I'll check for the latest news... (Score:2)
I wonder if I can use the Oracle for Android app to keep up to date on the lawsuit against Android...
http://www.appszoom.com/androi... [appszoom.com]
Oracle confuses language and operating system (Score:5, Insightful)
Java is a programming language, not an operating system. Examples of operating systems are Linux and Unix.
Nothing could have "destroyed Java's fundamental value proposition as a potential mobile device operating system" because the value proposition of Java as an operating system is zero, and always has been. It's like the value proposition of an orange to be an apple.
Oracle's nonsensical claim might be merely a case of lawyers or managers showing their ignorance of the computing subject domain or just being sloppy with their terminology, which is not uncommon. However, it gets worse.
A proprietary software package may have a calculated expectation of market share and profit if there is no competition, but this is not the case with programming languages because they always have competition from countless other languages. It is especially not the case with open source programming languages because they typically enjoy multiple implementations, and these make captive markets almost impossible to maintain.
It seems therefore that Oracle's market expectations were based on a flawed analysis.
That mistake would have made any market expectations unsafe, but any expectations were dealt a further blow by Oracle's highly abusive attempt to copyright SSO in their litigation against Google. This must have alienated practically everybody who knows anything about programming, and the likelihood is high that many Java programmers who had other languages available must have abandoned Java like the plague to avoid potential SSO copyright liability.
In other words, if anyone killed off interest in Java, it was probably Oracle themselves.
IBM will provide OS/2 (Score:3)
Java is not an operating system (Score:3)
I don't see how this argument is any different than "Apple's used of an operating system has destroyed the market..."
BTW Oracle, the Android OS is not built in Java. At it's core it is a Linux kernel. There just happens to be a Java-like API and VM for running applications.
Whoracle is Full of It (Score:3)
If Java was profitable, wouldn't Sun been profitable in the first place?
Wh Oracle is Full of it. (Score:3)
If there was a good market for Java, wouldn't Sun have been been profitable in the first place?
(Let's see if that title is acceptable for the filters.)
Oracle didn't need any help destroying Java (Score:5, Insightful)
So we ended up using another VM called Skelmir which was a clean room Java, roughly analogous to Java 1.5 SE albeit missing some stuff mostly in the javax & sun namespaces. Performance was better, it was cheaper and it was possible to develop normal Java code with a reasonable expectation it would work on the STB. I'm sure the same sentiment was felt everywhere. Companies resented being charging an arm and a leg for a piece of shit runtime which was barely fit for purpose.
As for why Google succeeded where Oracle failed... It's because they offered more or less a full Java SE API and a rich mobile API that allowed developers to write apps without making compromises. It didn't really matter that the byte code was compiled into something else because they also provided excellent tools that integrated with Eclipse to take care of all that.
I don't believe for a second that if Google hadn't used Java as their API that Oracle would have triumphed. Not in the slightest. If anything Google did Oracle a favour by using their language and therefore keeping it relevant for portable devices.
Java fanboy here (Score:3)
Java fanboy here.
Java is the new COBOL. that's a status very few general purpose languages have reached. It runs everywhere, can do crazy stuff and banks have embraced it. I'll not jump ship for a long time.
But calling Java "a potential mobile device operating system" is bat shit crazy.
Re:Oracle's monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because J2ME was such a brilliant mobile platform.
Re: Oracle's monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and what exactly did Sun do with that?
Oh yeah, there is JavaFX, which still requires an OS to run on
That is where the disconnect is
Re: Oracle's monopoly? (Score:2)
Lol javafx!
Re: Oracle's monopoly? (Score:5, Interesting)
sony-e had a working prototype all java(with I suppose their own os underneath). basically android was a clone of that.
but what sunoracle fucked up in the mid 00's was being too slow in developing j2me extensions(and the 'all java' phone os that they kept in different projects for years and years) and just badly managing how they could be used(four security dialogs for creating a file in a folder on the sd card each with two clicks from the user, for example - NO MATTER WHAT SIGNING YOU PAID FOR), thus the market for android was there when android emerged.
as for j2me, the process a new API went through to be an approved API was just stupid. the end result was api's that had always some flaw on them or were just unusable from the day 1, like the j2me 3d _scene_ descriptor shit, which was just a wrong, wrong way to go about it on the hw and use it was launching for(like, the api might have been ok for making some animation suite or whatever, but shitty for making games).
there was a market for a java development based smartphone os all right.. they just dragged their feet on it for way too long, so that market hole is now filled with android.
they just didn't care about it enough to make sure that the shit they were certifying and dictating how it should be was usable at all.
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Android doesn't use Java. Android used to use the Dalvik runtime environment. In Android 5 they introduced ART (Android Run Time) to replace Dalvik.
Dalvik and ART work like Java in that they execute compiled bytecode, but they are separate implementations and are not compatible with Java bytecode.
You can write your own source code in the Java language and compile it to Dalvik/ART bytecode.
Oracle is mad that Google made something that worked similarly to Java, but is not Java and isn't bytecode compatible.
Re: Oracle's monopoly? (Score:5, Interesting)
They didn't make something that worked similarly to Java - that would have been OK, C# is similar to Java after all. They made something that was *identical* to Java. If they didn't want to be sued they should have made their own API and their own language
What it comes down to is should APIs be copyrightable. Google created their own implementation of the Java API, if companies are allowed to copyright APIs then you can kiss WINE goodbye immediately, anyone wanting to implement an existing API would also be in trouble, and you might not even be able to create a program that even accesses an API without explicit permission.
To come back to your metaphor just because something implements the IDuck interface doesn't mean it's the same kind of duck [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3)
1) Is a thing copyrightable? Does the author own the copyright? The answer is clearly (according to the Supreme Court) that APIs are copyrightable.
We've been round this set of houses before in the 80s and 90s with DR DOS and IBM and Phoenix BIOSes. Every time someone has tried to claim that APIs are copyrightable, and courts have agreed, the inevitable problems crop up. Hence:
2) Is there a fair use defense? This must be answered after question 1 is answered.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The very reason someone else uses the same API is, by definition, interoperability. At the very least It is done to allow the same code to be recompil
Re: Oracle's monopoly? (Score:4, Informative)
In general, no. Unfortunately, Oracle owns the rights to Java. That means that Google must comply with Oracle's terms within the limits defined by law. Doubly unfortunately, that means that everyone with a vested interest in the situation is going to have to watch a drawn out soap opera as the case winds its way through the courts.
Re: Oracle's monopoly? (Score:5, Informative)
That means that Google must comply with Oracle's terms within the limits defined by law.
But Google doesn't use Java, they use Dalvik/ART, which aren't written by Oracle and therefore don't have Oracle's ToCs attached to them.
They do happen to be compatible with Java, but if you are allowed to copyright APIs (which is what Oracle are pushing for) then that would be absolutely insane for the IT industry, as you wouldn't be able to implement an API (or possibly even access an API) without the permission of whoever wrote that API.
Re: Oracle's monopoly? (Score:4, Informative)
but if you are allowed to copyright APIs (which is what Oracle are pushing for)
You are allowed to copyright APIs. This case went through the appellate court, which ruled that APIs are copyrightable, and to the supreme court, which let that ruling stand.
The case has moved on, and is now trying to determine if Google has a fair use defense. But there is no doubt that APIs are copyrightable under current law.
Re: (Score:3)
But it's not resolved because if it's fair use to re-implement an API then everything's fine. The problem is if APIs are copyrightable with no fair-use exemption to use/re-implement then that's an issue, because anyone who writes a compatibility layer or service that adheres to a 3rd party's standard is just one copyright claim away from ruin despite the actual implementation being an original work.
Re: (Score:3)
Spare us your notion of freedom.
Re: Oracle's monopoly? (Score:4, Informative)
You can install an APK without that. Blame the developers for not releasing free apps directly as an APK.
In that case, it's no different than Windows 8 or 10 or even OS X. There's an app store, but you don't have to use it.
Re: (Score:3)
"Install an APK"? Wait, I didn't think you could edit your hosts file without rooting the phone.
Re:Oracle's monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle are the ones that have destroyed Java since nobody trusts Oracle and their licensing.
Re: (Score:3)
No shit. If not for Android, maybe Nokias or Microsofts efforts would have been more successful, but Oracle has managed to create enough antipathy that people will go out of their way to avoid them by now.
Re: (Score:3)
Hardly surprising really - after being repeatedly shafted by Oracle, anyone who has had dealings with them would probably rather not have a phone at all than be dependent on an Oracle product.
Witness the way that their take over of Sun was seen as a step backwards - its not like Sun was revelling in a great reputation for its ways with customers.
I suspect their motto is:
"Let's be evil".
Re: (Score:2)
Darl is the equivalent of Larry's inbred idiot second cousin
Do not predict Larry's failure because Darl failed
Re: (Score:2)
Larry doesn't want to sell, he wants a percentage of the action
Re: (Score:3)
Google didn't see the point.... previously, Sun offered to license Java to them for 100M, but Google decided they would make a their own clean-room implementation that wouldn't be called Java in the first place, and so would not have to pay them anything. Later, when Sun was floundering and about to be bought, why would Google want to buy the company for access to a technology when they had already decided that they would go in a direction where they wouldn't need to pay licensing fees for that technology
Re: (Score:2)
Java is no longer the carrot/bait to get users to buy Sun computers. Java is far more important than commodity hardware and Sun took too long to realize that or monetize Java's value like Oracle is trying to.
Frankly, IP laws are quite lax if Google can simply take major parts of Java, reimplement the remaining parts, and pay Oracle exactly $0.
Re: (Score:3)
Java is no longer the carrot/bait to get users to buy Sun computers. Java is far more important than commodity hardware and Sun took too long to realize that or monetize Java's value like Oracle is trying to.
Frankly, IP laws are quite lax if Google can simply take major parts of Java, reimplement the remaining parts, and pay Oracle exactly $0.
Your recollection of history is quite lax. The VM patents Oracle asserted against Google were all defeated. All Oracle had left was the SSO of 37 Java API's. If the SSO of a subset of an API collection can be copyrighted then the US software industry is in for a world of hurt.
Personally, if Oracle wins on copyright, I hope IBM goes after Oracle.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Google/Android should replace Java with C# (Score:3)
Yeah because why only have a legal battle with one evil software compnay, when you could battle two at the same time! Just to show off how much of a silicon badass you are.
Cmon Oracle and Microsoft, Google will fuck your shit up 2 on 1!
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Google/Android should replace Java with C# (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Is that why Java rules the enterprise and Microsoft is relegated as a distant outsider? Java pretty much dominates enterprise development. C#? Not so much. Just ask the London stock exchange for experience with Microsoft and C#.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that why Java rules the enterprise and Microsoft is relegated as a distant outsider? Java pretty much dominates enterprise development. C#? Not so much. Just ask the London stock exchange for experience with Microsoft and C#.
Since the London Stock Exchange switched to Linux/C++, your comment is irrelevant to this discussion.
http://www.computerworlduk.com... [computerworlduk.com]
Re: (Score:3)
There are people happily using Java with 300 gigabyte heaps. Look at the Azul Zing JVM for examples of this. Also: they're using it in ultra-low latency financial trading apps. Just because you haven't seen this sort of thing personally doesn't