Oracle Seeks $9.3 Billion For Google's Use Of Java In Android (computerworld.com) 343
angry tapir quotes a report from Computerworld: Oracle is seeking as much as $9.3 billion in damages in a long-running copyright lawsuit against Google over its use of Java in Android, court filings show. Oracle sued Google six years ago, claiming the search giant needs a license to use parts of the Java platform in Google's market-leading mobile OS.
The two companies first went to trial in 2012, but the jury was split on whether or not Google's use of Java was protected by "fair use." Now they're headed back to the courtroom for a new trial scheduled to begin May 9, where Oracle's Larry Ellison and Google's Eric Schmidt will be present. Currently, the sum Oracle is asking for is about 10 times as much as when the two companies went to trial in 2012.
pure profit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:pure profit (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why Sun was actually an investment worth making. They hope to make more off of lawsuits with Sun's IP than they paid for Sun.
Oracle's business model at this point is based off of extracting as much money out of existing customers and through lawsuits as possible. They reached the saturation point in the database market long ago.
Re:pure profit (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the public documents at the time of the purchase they purchased SUN primarily for the hardware division, they apparently valued the software assets very little.
Re:pure profit (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you expect them to state that they were going to be an IP troll in a public document?
Re:pure profit (Score:5, Informative)
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That would be absurd. Especially since everybody knew Sun's hardware adventures had been going downhill, hard.
Re:pure profit (Score:5, Informative)
I thought it was absurd at the time but go back and read the interviews, it's right there in black and white. Oracle believed it needed a hardware division to counter IBM and HP who could offer complete hardware/software packages. When Oracle purchased sun, hardware was one aspect of their business they didn't have and they were losing support contracts to IBM and HP because of it. Executive management believed that purchasing SUN would give them the missing piece of the puzzle and allow them to more effectively compete.
In today's market it would be insane due to the rise of the cloud and the dramatically lower costs is offers but when Oracle purchased SUN the cloud was in it's infancy and had made very few inroads into enterprise computing.
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Oracle believed it needed a hardware division to counter IBM and HP...
I think it is more than the hardware, though. Sun's hardware is certainly on a par with HP and IBM, and in my experience comes at a better price than those (I used to buy servers from all three some years ago, in a previous life); but Sun also come with Java, and Solaris, which has a few amazingly good features, like predictive self-healing and ZFS. I know, people keep predicting the imminent demise of Java, but the big players actually still believe in it in a big, if somewhat discreet way: Oracle's databa
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... and it shows by how they've been maintaining them.
Zing!
Re:pure profit (Score:4, Informative)
I actually worked for Sun in the 90s and their IP portfolio is impressive. Employees were encouraged to file patents by increasingly large monetary incentives. This lead to Sun owning the patents on pretty much everything. You want to do addition? Sun had that patent. You want to express a complex number? Sun had that patent. You needed a new air conditioner in your house? File some patents.
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Re:pure profit (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps. But, the point still remains that my name stands on patents that seem to cover things like addition, complex numbers and even the general idea of algorithms. My name is literally on a patent that could be used to sue someone that had the audacity to add two numbers. That's how fucked up our system is.
Re:pure profit (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oracle has much more than just a database, though. I would be surprised if their database is more than a fraction of their revenue.
Perhaps, for some very large value of "fraction." They don't break out what software is what, but software and the support to go along with it is still definitely the lion's share of their business.
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From what I understood, Oracle were already invested heavily in Java before they bought Sun, and so in buying Sun, they were protecting their own products and stoping the ability of someone else doing what they are now trying to do to Google.
They are just following the golden rule of business "Do unto others ..... but do it first."
Re: pure profit (Score:2)
What about IBM . . . ? (Score:2)
Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't a lot of IBM software based on Java . . . ? Like, anything with the name WebSphere on it . . . ? What is going to happen when Oracle tries to shake down IBM . . . ?
Oracle ain't no SCO . . .
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IBM paid Sun/Oracle to license the technology, they have no worries.
Re:What about IBM . . . ? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that Google re-implemented Java, and tried to release it under different terms than the GPL. Since it is a derivative work, Google needed to follow the terms of the license. Since they tried to release it under BSD (I think that's the license the used), they are now being sued.
The only question remaining is whether their implementation was a fair use or not. My guess is it will be found not to be, but who knows with a jury trial.
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The problem is Google originally did that with Sun's blessing... who was then bought out by Oracle... now Oracle is suing for something the original patent owner gave permission for.
Re:What about IBM . . . ? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is Google originally did that with Sun's blessing..
If by 'blessing' you mean they got a written or verbal contract giving them permission, then no, you're wrong. Some people at Sun might have been happy about it, but without a contract, 'happiness' doesn't matter.
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The reports I read said that Sun didn't like Google stealing Java, they tried to get licensing money, but when negotiations broke down, they just dropped the issue. There is no doubt that internally they Iiked Java being used more, and I think that's what the GGP was referring to, but I don't think that is
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Even if Oracle gets every cent they've asked for, by the time it's reached a final settlement and all appeals have been exhausted, the only ones that will see any of that money will be Oracle's lawyers.
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the only ones that will see any of that money will be Oracle's lawyers
Which are likely employees of Oracle and only get a salary plus a bonus for winning.
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Re: What about IBM . . . ? (Score:2)
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Didn't they simply use the harmony libraries as a base which were presumably Apache licenced?
That's a good point, I just checked, and Harmony is Apache-licensed, not GPL. The way they got around it was by doing a clean-room implementation for interoperability purposes. This is allowed as fair use (Sony vs Connectix). (Incidentally, Sun explicitly allowed interoperability as long as it's compatible with their Java: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Java_... [swpat.org] )
Google is likely going to try a fair use defense based on interoperability (probably other defenses as well). That isn't likely to work, see this: htt [natlawreview.com]
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A "reimplementation" is (usually) not a derived work.
And if it was: doing so and releasing it under GPL would not "prevent" anything. You can not "copy" something infringing copyright and then releasing it under GPL and say: "look but it is GPL, it is not an infringement!"
The only question remaining is whether their implementation was a fair use or not.
Actually not. "Fair use" is a term that describes exceptions from "copyright infringement". E.g. you commit an obvious "copyright infringement" but do it b
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reimplementations are not derivative works.
They are definitely derivative works. If you re-implement it in the correct way, then you can have a fair use defense, but it's still a derivative work in that case.
Re:What about IBM . . . ? (Score:5, Insightful)
For this to be true, APIs must be copyrightable. Which is obvious bullshit, regardless of what the courts may say on the matter.
Re:What about IBM . . . ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was not an argument, merely a point. And it's as subtle as the situation requires, which is to say, not at all.
The notion that APIs are copyrightable is bullshit, because APIs describe what is done, not how it is done. It is unfortunate that we have courts in this country that are unable to comprehend that simple fact, and everyone in the industry should make every effort to counter that - because copyrightable APIs represent a major threat to innovation and interoperability for all of us.
What is the license for ISO C APIs? I don't recall any special verbiage to that effect in the Standard, and by itself that document is copyrighted by ISO. What if they decide to enforce that copyright against implementations? What if ECMA does the same for JavaScript?
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In common English one might say that a clean-room re-implementation is derivative, but in the context of copyright law 'derivative work' is fairly specific and this doesn't apply.
It's still a derivative work. Clean-room implementation is an example of a fair-use defense, but Google didn't do a clean-room implementation, and they didn't do it for interoperability. I'm really interested in seeing what their defense is, actually.
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Clean-room implementation is an example of a fair-use defense
First of all: a "clean room implementation" is not a derived work. So: copy right does not even apply!!!
Secondly: as copyright does not apply, it is not a "fair use" defense, as that term is described and defined in "copy right law" which does not apply for this situation.
BTW: when the JVM-specification was published, SUN declared it an open standard and challenged the public to implement their own variations. On that base I probably would start
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a "clean room implementation" is not a derived work.
Why do you think that? I'm interested in your legal reasoning (or references to legal reasoning).
BTW: when the JVM-specification was published, SUN declared it an open standard and challenged the public to implement their own variations
I think you're referring to this license [swpat.org], which doesn't apply in Google's case because their version of Java is not even close to meeting the requirements of that license.
Re:What about IBM . . . ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think that? I'm interested in your legal reasoning (or references to legal reasoning).
Because copyright law defines what a "derived work" is.
A clean room implementation is an independent implementation of some specification. As specifications are not covered by copyright law (the law explicitly says so) multiple implementation of such a specifications are not a derived works of each other. And as the "origin", the specification, is not copy-right-able, it can't be a derived work of the specification by definition.
The primary work, from which the specification probably was "derived" is not related to the implementations of that specification. Not related "under copyright law". Obviously "intellectually" they are related.
The core argument for understanding what a derived work is, is always: "does the derived work "incorporate" pieces of the original work?" If not: it is not derived.
Unfortunately there where some misguided rulings in the USA that declared linking to dynamic linked libraries a derived work of those libraries. No idea what the status about that is right now. In my (and Europe's) interpretation a DLL has an interface which is an API/specification, so that the implementation can be replaced and hence the client using that API/DLL is not derived from the DLL. (If it was static linked the library would be part of the code and hence the whole executable would be a derived work of that library)
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Whether it is or is not, an API should not be copyrightable,
But it is, so for that to change will take an act of legislation.
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First off, Java is not licensed under GPL.
Look up openJDK.
This is purely about copyright over the Java API itself.
The Java API is copyrighted. That has already been appealed to the Supreme Court, and now the case has been sent back down to a lower court to test Google's fair-use defense.
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I seem to remember there was some clause on their download page that it could only be used on IBM branded hardware.
Which was a pity as testing one's product with J9, jamvm, harmony etc might reveal hitherto problems related to ambiguities in the Java spec. (of which I found a few in my own code when testing with classpath)
Re: What about IBM . . . ? (Score:2)
oracle thinks it can milk coffee (Score:4, Funny)
in other news, indonesian, island of java is going to sue both oracle and google.
and are coffee producers entitled to some that loot too? think of all the coffee that is needed to code. but what about tea?
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Google should have paid the $200 million or so initially to license it legally from Sun, instead they played all these games to save a tiny bit of money. Everyone knows how valuable Android is today, and how useful Java is to make Android run. So expect Google to pay $2 to $5 billion.
Strange signal (Score:5, Insightful)
I am fully aware that the law suit is a bit more complex than simply using Java in a product, but I still think that Oracle is sending a weird signals to their existing and potential customers:
"Feel free to use our products for free but if you get successful we will sue you to get a piece of the cake."
I miss Sun!
Re:Strange signal (Score:4, Funny)
if you get successful we will sue you to get a piece of the cake
Estimating about $2.50 for a 300g cake, that's roughly 1.1 million metric tonnes of cake.
Re: Strange signal (Score:5, Funny)
Sir, please convert your cake figure to Libraries of Congress, or at least a car analogy. Thank you...
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You could fill the entire interior of the library of congress with cars and it won't be enough to transport that cake.
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That's a big Twinkie.... [youtube.com]
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"Feel free to use our products for free but if you get successful we will sue you to get a piece of the cake."
Maybe your analogy would work better if Google didn't replace Sun/Oracle's product with their own instead of writing Java applications. If someone took AOSP, reimplemented a ton of the Google Play APIs and shipped a non-Google "Android" phone I wouldn't expect Google to be very happy about that either.
Re:Strange signal (Score:4, Interesting)
It is. Even if you're in the right and think you can win you have to think very seriously before doing something like that. Where I work the (not Oracle) database vendor we had used for years started suing its customers - they sued us for millions after recalculating our license fees and arriving at a ridiculous number. So we wrote them out of all our applications and refused to buy anything from them. I'm not sure who won the lawsuit, but in just a handful of years they were out of business.
Re: Strange signal (Score:2)
I'm definitely not anti-Microsoft, I make a living developing with C# and think they make the best development environments. However, if I were starting a business, i definitely would go all open source for the servers.. Today in 2016 that might even be .Net on Linux.
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Either you're a troll, or you have no idea about Microsoft audits. You could ask Ernie Ball.
I'm personally surprised that anyone will still do business with them, but I guess that there are a lot of short-sighted managers.
Nine-point-three billion (Score:2)
By all means, Go big.
Oracle's damages calc right from sales handbook (Score:2)
Re: Oracle's damages calc right from sales handboo (Score:2)
Why I Do Not Recommend Oracle (Score:2)
It all sounds so familiar. Why would that be? Oh yes. Oracle is a purveyor of databases software. The SCO Group used to be a purveyor of operating system software. However, it eventually upped its claims against IBM to at least $5 billion. Not far short of Oracle's demand for $9.3 billion. Where is SCO now?
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf4/IB... [groklaw.net] ... It started out as a Chapter 11, became a Chapter 7 going back to 2007. These claims are the last,
"Today SCO is, as the Court is aware, in a LIQUIDATION process
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Oracle may or may not go out of business someday, but don't confuse them with SCO.
SCO was run by idiots and may have been a puppet of Microsoft. Larry may be an asshole, but Oracle is in a competely different league than SCO.
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The lawyer who got most of the SCO money is Darl's brother.
It wasn't Darl's first run at extracting vast amounts of cash via lawyer from the place he was supposed to be running.
Wouldn't buy Oracle, but they have $170 billion (Score:2)
I haven't purchased from Oracle and I don't plan to. Besides this case, I just don't think the cost/benefit ratio is there.
Some will say that you have to pay big bucks if you have a lot of data or a lot of transactions, but Facebook used MySQL (aka MariaDB) to scale pretty large, and they now use Hadoop and Presto to process more than a terabyte each day.
If open source databases handle Facebook and Google , I think they'll be enough for my needs.
That said, Oracle has $170 billion, based on market valuation.
Re: Wouldn't buy Oracle, but they have $170 billio (Score:2)
They used to. Now Apple does (Score:2)
Facebook doesn't use Cassandra much anymore:
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/d... [wired.com]
They have three database management systems, Hadoop, MySQL, and Cassandra. One thing they use Hadoop for is backups of their MySQL.
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If open source databases handle Facebook and Google , I think they'll be enough for my needs.
Facebook is run on NoSQL databases (Cassandra I believe). In other words: non relational databases.
Oracle is a relational database.
So the power and scaling has nothing to do of "closed sources" aka professionals versus "open source" aka hobbyists.
Googles "appstore" is also run originally by NoSQL databases, no idea if they offer true relational ones now.
However many people scale MySQL/MariaSQL "in the cloud" ... tha
Facebook uses three DBMS, Hadoop, MySQL, Cassandra (Score:2)
Facebook uses three database management systems, Hadoop, MySQL, and Cassandra. One thing they use Hadoop for is backups of their MySQL.
Ps, Cassandra mostly replaced by Presto (SQL) (Score:2)
Facebook doesn't use Cassandra much anymore. They their Cassandra DB helped jumpstart the NoSQL craze, Facebook soon realized they were wrong - Codd and Date had it right the first time, with the relational model. Now mostly Facebook uses Apache Presto, an SQL query processor that uses Hadoop as storage (much like MariaDB uses various storage engines). Another thing they use Hadoop for is to store backups of their MySQL/MariaDB databases.
So yeah you said four sentences and two are factually incorrect, mak
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I was not aware that facebook migrated away from Cassandra. They used to be a show case for it.
an SQL query processor that uses Hadoop as storage That does not really make sense.
As I could figure on short notice, the data in the MySQL databases is processed periodically and transformed into Hadoop based data storages.
Also your comment seems more to aim for the "data analysis" part of Facebook and not the storage of user data. It makes no sense, regardless how you cluster, to store the user data, their posts
Isn't it good more devices have Java on them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Isn't it good more devices have Java on them? (Score:5, Insightful)
"You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket." -- Frank Sobotka
Invalid claim... (Score:4, Interesting)
Weird... wasn't Java GPL'd at one point (2006-2007)? Oracle does not have a leg to stand on here even if Google were to take the whole stack and redistribute it. They would merely be required to make the source available - which they have done and it has led to derivatives/forks.
But, as Android is built on a Java _clone_ (Apache Harmony, soon OpenJDK) on top of Linux. Oracle's claim is even weaker.
One more reason... (Score:2)
Re:One more reason... [OSS] (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed, but the problem is that there is no alternative statically-typed ("compile-y") language out there that seems ready in terms of being road-tested and not too different from other common production languages.
C# is too MS-tied with a similar legal-greed risk, and C++ is too low-level to replace Java and C#.
Object Pascal? Ada? too complex. Eiffel? too much like Pascal such that you might as well go Pascal.
Python, Ruby, Php, etc. are dynamic languages. They have their place, but for certain classes of applications you need a static/strict typed language.
Object-Fortran? :-) I dunno
Re:One more reason... [OSS] (Score:4, Insightful)
C# is too MS-tied with a similar legal-greed risk
Actually C# had already a freer license by the early 2000s. I distinctly remember pointing this out and people dismissing my concerns with Java since back then Sun was one of the good guys.
C++ is too low-level to replace Java and C#.
Modern, core C++ is about as high level as Java and without the JVM overhead. Read up on it. The C++ core as proposed by Bjarne has a good chance of becoming the Java replacement.
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It's not the having pointers, it's not being able to avoid them or detect them. I believe that ALL compiler languages have pointers, but many can isolate them, and detect user access to them.
Pointers are fine, and can allow you to do things that are clumsy without them. Not being able to tell the difference between a pointer and an integer is unacceptable. (Well, more to the point, not being able to write code where all the pointer manipulation is provably done via system routines is what's unacceptable.
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The problem with Object-Pascal is poor documentation. Also, it has poor unicode support.
Ada is less complex than C++ (calling it more complex used to be true before the STL). But it's default strings are fixed length, and different lengths of fixed length strings can't be compared. And it's difficult to flex in other ways. I like lots of things about it, but for my purposes it's too rigid in too many places.
Eiffel? That's hardly like Pascal at all. But there's only one version that's still doing much
Amazing that Google left themselves vulnerable (Score:3)
Why on earth did they copy the Java APIs? Most of them are not particularly good anyway.
Sure the law on this was a little unclear, which is a good reason to stay right away from it. And so easy to do. Not hard to tweak an Eclipse parser for a similar but different language.
Maybe it is because Google got rid of all there MBAs and used engineering management?
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How are APIs copyrightable anyway? Wasn't the whole Compaq lawsuit way back when about building functionality behind an API without changing the API? They wrote a detailed API spec for DOS and then had separate "pure" engineers who knew nothing about the DOS implementation build their own DOS, and thus they had a functionally identical clone of the DOS API such that DOS programs could run on Compaq's new PC clone.
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No silly imp. Compaq only reverse engineered the BIOS and did a clean-room implementation so that Microsoft DOS would boot on their hardware. It's the BIOS API/spec they dealt with, and they only implemented enough to get it working.
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I think your memory is close, but not quite right. I think Compaq cloned the BIOS, not DOS. IBM published the PC BIOS source code (in one of those boxed binders that the PC made standard for years.) There was no reason to clone DOS, since the customer had to buy either PC-DOS or MS-DOS anyway.
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How are APIs copyrightable anyway?
They are not. In most copyright laws (most countries) it is even explicitly written in the law.
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In US, this is not at all a given. In fact, this is exactly what this case is all about - and so far the courts have favored the notion that APIs are copyrightable, unfortunately.
http://readwrite.com/2015/06/2... [readwrite.com]
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Why on earth did they copy the Java APIs? Most of them are not particularly good anyway.
I think it was already written that way when they bought the Android company.
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Why on earth did they copy the Java APIs? Most of them are not particularly good anyway.
... I switched to Java coming from C++ mainly forced to do MFC stuff and related stuff on Windows.
They are not? Wow
You must have been working in a research lab that you encountered better APIs than Java's ... where is that? Can I apply for a job there?
Google should fix this by using GPL Java (Score:3)
Java is available under a GPL + exceptions license. Google should take this GPL code and use it as a base for a new VM. Make whatever changes are required to make it slot in place of their current VM (something the GPL explicitly allows them to do) and start shipping it. The "classpath exception" in the Java license would allow them to keep other stuff (such as Google Play Services, the Google store and all the Google apps) closed source whilst still being in compliance with the license attached to the open source Java code.
Yes it will cost a chunk of money to do all the rewrites and stuff but it would mean Oracle has no ability to claim they violated the copyright of the various Java APIs (since the code that implements those APIs in the new VM would be a derived work of the GPL Java source code (where the license explicitly gives you all the rights under copyright law you would need regardless of whether APIs are actually copyrightable or not)
Re:Google should fix this by using GPL Java (Score:4, Informative)
Java is available under a GPL + exceptions license. Google should take this GPL code and use it as a base for a new VM.
They have switched to that now [arstechnica.com]. Amazing how quickly they followed your advice. :)
I'm not an Oracle fan but... (Score:2)
in their defense, if they had not bought SUN where would SUN be today? In the Tech trash heap, along with Digital Equipment and others. SUN had a lot of assets - great hardware, intellectual property, etc - but they couldn't sell anything.
Oracle, to their credit, recognized this and bought them up. For what seems now like a bargain price. They realized that they had a great database product but didn't have the enterprise applications to go with it. So they bought PeopleSoft and JD Edwards and some other pie
Android going forward (Score:2)
I'm looking forward to when Google finally decides to discontinue supporting Java.
Well, Android wouldn't have gone anywhere w/o Java (Score:2)
Android would have died without the write-once run-badly-everywhere aspects of Java. Google could have written its own, but it chose to copy Java's APIs.
It's not like there were a lot of multi-platform options out there. Tk/TCL?
Time to pay up, google. Your technical debt is calling.
Re:Google Legal Fund (Score:5, Interesting)
Second trial always favors the defendant. They knows the plaintiffs strategy and what influenced the jury.
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Doesn't exactly the same apply to the plaintiff - that they know the defendant's strategy and what influenced the jury?
Re:Google Legal Fund (Score:5, Insightful)
It works both ways, but the Plaintiff's strategy can't really change, they are locked into the arguments they've already made. In civil trials all the evidence that can be presented and all the base arguments and defenses have to be filed to keep the trial as fair as possible. They can certainly fine tune and try to adjust their prior arguments but the best chance for the Plaintiff is to catch the Defendant off guard with a presentation of the evidence that can't be countered effectively. They would have used their best bullets in the first trial and now Google knows what they are and how best to defend against them because of the feedback they got from Jurors of the previous trial.
It's possible that Oracle could find a new "bullet" to use in this trial that is in line with all their arguments up to the trial but the chances are pretty slim or they would have used it during the first trial. You simply don't hold back on your evidence, you expend all your best attacks. They won't catch Google's lawyers off guard with a refinement of those same arguments.
It's a statistically known fact that a second trial always favors the defendant, this is true in both Criminal and Civil trials. The criminal trials even have a freer hand to make completely different arguments and propose new motives where in the civil trial they can't argue outside the prior boundaries they established in the run-up to the first trial. This also limits Google because they can't make defenses outside the ones they proposed but they can and will find evidence to blunt Oracles best attacks and that could swing the next trial into their favor.
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Keep your money and or give it to the poor. Google has lawyers on retainer for this.
If you want to show support, then by all means, send them a nice letter.
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I don't code in C# nor Java but most of the people who use both Java and C# love C# and hate Java.
The only real criticism being that it is essentially Windows-only but it seems to open up a little.
If you want to kill Microsoft, kill it for the MFC, or their EEE variants of the web standards. But I think we should keep C# and Visual Studio.
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Shareholders:
https://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh... [yahoo.com]
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Microsoft is shaking down Android companies harder than Oracle:
http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com]
C# would have been a far worse idea. Fewer developers, libraries, little open source support. Built by the only company more evil than Oracle.
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C# would have been a far worse idea. Fewer developers, libraries, little open source support. Built by the only company more evil than Oracle.
Surprise! Now you have Xamarin.
Er, I mean Microsoft Xamarin.
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Except that The Neverending Story book eventually ended.
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While you're talking crap about Java being a POS, I will say that for many people their first introduction to Java would have been in the late 1990s as a browser plugin, running a shitty applet, which would go something like:
1. Click on link to page with applet
2. Webpage stops responding
3. JVM rumbles to life in the background for several minutes slowly devouring all RAM
4. Eventually a weird looking applet appears with menus and styling completely different from host OS
5. Applet runs like shit
Obviousl