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Oracle's Allies Against Google Include Scott McNealy and America's Justice Department (zdnet.com) 117

Posted by EditorDavid from the Sun-also-rises dept.
America's Justice Department "has filed a brief in support of Oracle in its Supreme Court battle against Google over whether Java should have copyright protection," reports ZDNet: The Justice Department filed its amicus brief to the Supreme Court this week, joining a mighty list of briefs from major tech companies and industry luminaries — including Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun, which Oracle bought in 2010, acquiring Sun-built Java in the process. While Microsoft, IBM and others have backed Google's arguments in the decade-long battle, McNealy, like the Justice Department, is opposing Google. McNealy called Google's description of how it uses Java packages a "woeful mischaracterization of the artful design of the Java packages" and "an insult to the hard-working developers at Sun who made Java such a success...."

Joe Tucci, former CEO of now Dell-owned enterprise storage giant EMC, threw in his two cents against Google. "Accepting Google's invitation to upend that system by eliminating copyright protection for creative and original computer software code would not make the system better — it would instead have sweeping and harmful effects throughout the software industry," Tucci's brief reads.
Oracle is also questioning the motives of Google's allies, reports The Verge: After filing a Supreme Court statement last week, Oracle VP Ken Glueck posted a statement over the weekend assailing the motives of Microsoft, IBM, and the CCIA industry group, all of which have publicly supported Google. Glueck's post comes shortly after two groups — an interdisciplinary panel of academics and the American Conservative Union Foundation — submitted legal briefs supporting Oracle. Both groups argued that Google should be liable for copying code from the Java language for the Android operating system. The ACUF argued that protecting Oracle's code "is fundamental to a well-ordered system of private property rights and indeed the rule of law itself...."

Earlier this year, Google garnered around two dozen briefs supporting its position. But Oracle claims that in reality, "Google appears to be virtually alone — at least among the technology community." Glueck says Google's most prominent backers had ulterior motives or "parochial agendas"; either they were working closely with Google, or they had their own designs on Java...

Even if you accept Oracle's arguments wholeheartedly, there's a long list of other Google backers from the tech community. Advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology signed on to amicus briefs last month, as did several prominent tech pioneers, including Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. The CCIA brief was signed by the Internet Association, a trade group representing many of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley. Patreon, Reddit, Etsy, the Mozilla Corporation, and other midsized tech companies also backed a brief raising "fundamental concerns" about Oracle's assertions.

Oracle's Allies Against Google Include Scott McNealy and America's Justice Department More | Reply

Oracle's Allies Against Google Include Scott McNealy and America's Justice Department

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  • Moral of the story... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Everyone should just ditch Java, there's no reason to use it anymore for anything new, if you really want a C like JIT compiled language C# is years ahead anyway, and nowadays far more open to boot thanks to the fact it's both an ECMA/ISO standard, and .NET core has open sourced all the tooling and libraries, with the closed source version now being End of Lifed over the next few years.

    Java should be treated 100% as legacy nowadays because it's owned by a company renowned for suing it's customers and stifli

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      The moral is that Google didn't want to release their version of Java under a license available to them. They wanted to release it under the Apache license, whereas Sun had released Java under the GPL.

      If Google had merely changed their license from Apache to GPL, then there would be no case, but they didn't want to.

      • Re:Moral of the story... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TheSunborn ( 68004 ) <(mtilsted) (at) (gmail.com)> on Sunday February 23, 2020 @04:11PM (#59758002)

        I am not sure about that.

        Since the Google implementation don't share code with the Oracles gpl java implementation, I don't think that releasing Android as gpl would have changed anything, since it would still not be a derived work of the gpl implementation.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

      First, C# is not open. It's essentially only runs on a single platform if you need to use any frameworks, and the presence of Mono does not magically make this a portable language beyond Windows.

      But more importantly here, this decision will affect software well beyond Java. Ditching Java does not solve the API ownership issue (especially since API seems to mean whatever you want it to mean these days). If Oracle wins, then it could have broad implications; such as having a copyright on an API which allows

      • Re:Moral of the story... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by PhrostyMcByte ( 589271 ) <phrosty@gmail.com> on Sunday February 23, 2020 @04:38PM (#59758142) Homepage

        First, C# is not open. It's essentially only runs on a single platform if you need to use any frameworks, and the presence of Mono does not magically make this a portable language beyond Windows.

        .NET Core runs on Linux and Mac.

        • Re:Moral of the story... (Score:5, Informative)

          by ndykman ( 659315 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @08:31PM (#59758904)

          .Net Core runs on Linux, Mac and Windows. The frameworks you can't run on .Net Core are all related to UI and Desktop applications. There's little demand to port them over and personally, that's fine by me. There's good cross-platform libraries out there already and we don't need another one just because.

        • Yes, yes, but that doesn't make it open or portable. If you can take your Windows .NET app and run it on Linux and it still works, then it's a miracle. It's only ported elsewhere as a diversion to try and "prove" portability.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Cyberax ( 705495 )
            You can actually run pretty much any C# code that is not UI-related in Linux. We have a complicated app that was initially written for ASP.NET and then migrated to React.JS with .NET backend. We develop it on Macs and deploy on Linux servers.

            Works surprisingly well.

        • First, C# is not open. It's essentially only runs on a single platform if you need to use any frameworks, and the presence of Mono does not magically make this a portable language beyond Windows.

          .NET Core runs on Linux and Mac.

          This hasn't been true for several years now. The whole .NET is open and it runs fine on Linux.

          Welcome to yesterday dude. Sincerely, a Java guy who has no dog in this C# fight.

      • Re:Moral of the story... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23, 2020 @05:23PM (#59758330)

        Um, I think you need to update your knowledge a bit, you seem to be a good few years behind the times.

        Microsoft created a new compiler for C# and Visual Basic .NET called Roslyn back around 2011, they released it as open source in 2014.

        In 2016 they released .NET Core, a completely open source re-write of the .NET Framework under the MIT License. The fact you mention Mono highlights your ignorance on the topic, it's all but irrelevant with the advent of .NET Core. Even platforms like Unity on which a large proportion of games are built now are moving entirely to .NET Core because it's cross platform and open source.

        Since then, .NET Core has continued to develop to the extent that Microsoft announced last year that they would cease further development of the .NET Framework and make .NET Core the mainline. They can do this because they've even ported the GUI framworks - WinForms and WPF now to .NET Core. .NET Core runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's also supported for PaaS development in both Azure and AWS. Due to the fact it's open source it can also be ported anywhere else it needs to be ported.

        You're also wrong that ditching Java does not solve the API ownership issue, to a large degree it does; the OP is right. C# is indeed an ECMA/ISO standard, and as the compilers and frameworks are licensed in such a way that you can do exactly what Google did with Java, there's no legal debate to be had. Does the Oracle case have potential repercussions elsewhere? Sure, certainly it does, however the particular type of thing Google is being sued for is not a risk with C# and .NET.

        As such, the OP is pretty much spot on in that C# is definitely a sane alternative to Java if that's the sort of language you're after. It has all the benefits of Java without the downsides, and a whole bunch of extra benefits on top due to being a more modern, better design language. Graal goes someway to catching the Java platform up with the .NET platform, but it's still ultimately stuck playing catchup - Graal will allow Java to finally do things the CLR could do about 10 - 15 years ago.

        • Re:Moral of the story... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by luis_a_espinal ( 1810296 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @08:44AM (#59760374) Homepage

          As such, the OP is pretty much spot on in that C# is definitely a sane alternative to Java if that's the sort of language you're after.

          I've worked on Java and C# (as well as MS's managed C++), and I've always found C# superior as a language. But the thing is, C# is not an alternative to Java in the general cases where Java is mainstream.

          Why? Well, it's not just language choice. It's platform (and the JVM is superior to .NET for the type of jobs it does.) It is also ecosystems. It's also availability of talent. In the enterprise arena, it is easier to find java developers than C# developers (both in quantity and quality... or lack thereof.)

          It is almost never an exclusive matter of language.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Certainly it would be best if APIs were not declared copyrightable. As a backup, it would make sense to avoid like the plague any copyrighted APIs no?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Skinkie ( 815924 )
      Take a peak at the last article on the most important open source software [zdnet.com]. You would need a true alternative for anything related to XSDs and code generation that works on complex schema's with the same level of support. What I have seen and experienced with C# that is still not the case, while C# does have better support for things like streams.

    • Re:Moral of the story... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @05:23PM (#59758336)

      I guess the AC pissed off the Oracle sock puppets and earned a Troll mod? Or maybe just Java developers who would like to coast to retirement without having to learn anything new?

      Java-style JIT isn't really that unique anymore. Java itself is owned by a pretty litigious company that's shown itself to be willing to pretty aggressively defend it. Why not switch to something that's less encumbered?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Errr....because ripping out tons of backend code that works is expensive?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          First line of his post:

          Everyone should just ditch Java, there's no reason to use it anymore for anything new

          Later in the same post:

          Java should be treated 100% as legacy nowadays

          (emphasis mine)

          Reading comprehension these days....

      • OpenJDK is the official Java reference implementation of Java SE since version 7, and it is licensed under GNU GPL with a linking exception. Oracles JDK is licensed under Oracle Binary Code License Agreement, but it is based on the OpenJDK. There are quite a number of other both open and proprietary implementations.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Or maybe just Java developers who would like to coast to retirement without having to learn anything new?

        Would not surprise me. There are many, many 1-trick "coders" that can only do meaningful stuff in a single language. IMO, unless you have done real things in at least 3 different languages that are not too similar, you are not more than a low-level technician.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by swilver ( 617741 )

      .NET is a trap just waiting to spring shut. Some people however never learn and think the old beast has been tamed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      While I completely agree that Java should be pretty much regarded as dead at this time, the issue here is much, much larger. This is not about Java being copyrighted, this is about its API being copyrighted, even its most trivial and obvious parts. If Oracle is found to be right here, the software world will have massive problems for years and maybe decades to come. On the plus side, commercial, "owned" languages may finally go the way of the Dodo.

    • Everyone should just ditch Java, there's no reason to use it anymore for anything new, if you really want a C like JIT compiled language C# is years ahead anyway, and nowadays far more open to boot thanks to the fact it's both an ECMA/ISO standard, and .NET core has open sourced all the tooling and libraries, with the closed source version now being End of Lifed over the next few years.

      Java should be treated 100% as legacy nowadays because it's owned by a company renowned for suing it's customers and stifling innovation.

      Ditch Java, ditch Oracle. Make the world a better place.

      That's kind of stupid when you have a lot of investment in Java, given that this doesn't affect anyone but Google, and that it is not just Java or C# but the JVM (or .N ET CLR) and accompanying ecosystems. I love C# more than Java (I've worked on both professionally), but it makes no sense most of the time to start a large enterprise system in C# instead of Java (which is the bread-and-butter of the later platform.)

      I wholeheartedly believe Oracle is in the wrong here, morally speaking. But it was Google's

  • I really can not decide who I want to cheer for. Can't they both mortally would each other and die slowly?

    I mean seriously, you have Oracle the copywrite troll on one side and Google the anti-labor, anticompetitive privacy troll on the other...

    • Re:Snake vs centipede... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PhrostyMcByte ( 589271 ) <phrosty@gmail.com> on Sunday February 23, 2020 @04:33PM (#59758116) Homepage
      I don't care about specifically Google winning, but I do care very much about them losing and APIs suddenly being copyrightable. We all lose in that situation.
  • If you want to be safe, make sure you have a license for the software you are using. That is the way of the world going forward.

    • Re:Make sure you have a license (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @05:24PM (#59758340) Homepage

      If you want to be safe, make sure you have a license for the software you are using. That is the way of the world going forward.

      You don't get it, that's how it is today. If you got a license for Firefox and a license for Apache, then Firefox can talk to Apache. But if this ruling stands then the interface itself, that is the HTTP protocol is copyrighted. So everyone who wants to read or write HTTP requests need a license from Tim-Berners Lee for life + 70 years. Maybe a car analogy is simpler, you got tires on your car right? And you can fit many different brands of tires, likewise you can put the same tires on many brands of cars. Because you don't get to copyright and license the number, location and size of the bolts. They're functional requirements for interoperability.

      What Oracle somehow managed to convince the court was that they've put so much thought into how these parts fit together that it's a creative work and should have copyright protection. Nobody can make parts where the bolt holes align with ours, we own that configuration and you need a license to use it. Probably half the drivers in the Linux kernel will be copyright infringements because they never got any official blessing to decipher the hardware API. No protocols can be reverse engineered, no unlicensed third-party plug-in, basically if your software tries to talk to mine without a license it's illegal.

    • Everyone already had a license (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @10:07PM (#59759102)
      Just in case, Sun unequivocally gave everyone the OK to use the Java API back when they were just Sun. Oracle then bought Sun, rescinded the license, and demanded back-pay for all existing implementations created when Sun said it was OK, which "continued" to use the API. That's why your idea of just licensing the API won't work. The precedent Oracle already set is that if you pay to license an API, use it to create software, and release and sell that software, at any point in the future the owner of the API can say they're going to charge you a trillion dollars to renew your license next year. And you will either have to pay them, or pull your software from the market until you can ditch their API and recreate your software using something else. Basically the API owner has veto control over your software.

      So if Oracle wins, the endgame is that nobody will touch any API which requires purchasing a license - that just gives someone else control over whether you can sell your software in the future. Everyone will use only APIs which declare themselves open and free of charge to use in perpetuity. IOW the end result is exactly the same as if the court decides that APIs are not copyrightable,* except we take the long, painful, and expensive way to get there. Oracle is not immune to this either. As has been mentioned, they'd owe IBM billions for using SQL (I suppose IBM could unilaterally declare they owe trillions). They'd owe the creator of whatever programming language they're using to write their code (e.g. the C++ API). And they'd arguably owe Intel and AMD because their code uses the x86 and amd64 instruction sets, which are also APIs. Because copyrighting and licensing APIs is stupid.

      * (There is one difference. The U.S. will become a software backwater, with people being extremely reluctant to write or sell software in the U.S. for fear of being hit by lawsuits claiming API infringement. Software production will instead move to the rest of the world.)

      • Just in case, Sun unequivocally gave everyone the OK to use the Java API back when they were just Sun. Oracle then bought Sun, rescinded the license, and demanded back-pay for all existing implementations created when Sun said it was OK, which "continued" to use the API.

        No that's not what happened, which is why there are still open source Java implementations today.

        Sun gave out Java under one license, but Google didn't like that license, so they didn't accept it. If Google had licensed their Java implementation under the GPL, they would have been ok. Instead, they released it under the Apache license, so they are in court.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Sun sued Microsoft for similar reasons Oracle sued Google.

        • No they did not. There were two issues 1) MS deliberately released an incompatible version of Java VM that only worked on Windows. The MS Java implementation had 2 keywords not part of the Java spec. This is the exact opposite of what Google did. Their version was so compatible with Java that it was a drop in replacement. 2)Also MS interfered with Java including threatening Intel not to release a Java VM or MS would favor AMD in their OS.

  • See ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    America's Justice Department "has filed a brief in support of Oracle in its Supreme Court battle against Google over whether Java should have copyright protection.

    This is what a Trump fundraiser and kissing lots of chubby orange ass will buy you. You get to borrow the Justice Department and use it to beat up your competitors.

    • That seems like a terrible way to run a country.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That seems like a terrible way to run a country.

        Take a look at Russia, they have been running their country like this for decades. Seems to be working out just fine for them.

  • Why is Oracle fighting this so hard? (Score:3)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @04:06PM (#59757978)

    Google has already switched to using the OpenJDK source code under the terms of the GPL (so its no longer violating any Oracle copyright going forward as long as it continues to comply with the GPL). Does Oracle just want a nice fat cheque from Google for past supposed copyright violations? Or is there potential future behaviour from Google or others that Oracle seeks to prevent?

    • Google has already switched to using the OpenJDK source code under the terms of the GPL (so its no longer violating any Oracle copyright going forward as long as it continues to comply with the GPL). Does Oracle just want a nice fat cheque from Google for past supposed copyright violations? Or is there potential future behavior from Google or others that Oracle seeks to prevent?

      Yes and yes. Larry Ellison and Oracle won't be happy until everyone who even says the word "oracle" has to pay them a fee. Even then, they'll still grumble that it's not high enough.

      • Google has already switched to using the OpenJDK source code under the terms of the GPL (so its no longer violating any Oracle copyright going forward as long as it continues to comply with the GPL). Does Oracle just want a nice fat cheque from Google for past supposed copyright violations? Or is there potential future behavior from Google or others that Oracle seeks to prevent?

        Yes and yes. Larry Ellison and Oracle won't be happy until everyone who even says the word "oracle" has to pay them a fee. Even then, they'll still grumble that it's not high enough.

        Just wait till Larry Ellison sues the people of the island of Java for trade mark infringement.

    • Oracle is fighting this so hard because if they win, then they get billions of dollars. That's it, and don't tell me that you wouldn't fight hard for billions of dollars, too.

  • Buy Oracle (Score:3)

    by Ann Coulter ( 614889 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @04:21PM (#59758060) Journal

    Alphabet happens to have a market cap of over a trillion dollars. Oracle is around 176 billion dollars. The prudent course of action would be a leveraged buyout of Oracle by Alphabet. They can subsequently scuttle Oracle's the Supreme Court case and make Larry wear a "Kick Me" sign. Alphabet could even lower Oracle's market cap by providing subsidized migration services for Oracle's customers and then threatening to delist them if they continued to use Oracle products.

    • Re:Buy Oracle (Score:5, Funny)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @04:48PM (#59758196) Journal
      Ew, but then you would own Oracle. That stuff doesn't wash off.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Uncle Larry would never sell. And if he did, the Just Us Department would jump up and down and claim monopoly power or something. They'd get some of the other agencies that Trump has slimed to give Alphabet a hard time. Remember, everything Trump touches he destroys.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ndykman ( 659315 )

      Alphabet stock would implode based on a hostile takeover, Oracle would get a small boost, but then also tank. And by some strange miracle the buyout is approved by the feds, you'd end up with one company worth about at best half of what both companies are worth now and much more ripe for Microsoft, IBM, Amazon and the like to just feed on.

  • I gather Oracle is running multiple lawsuits against Google concurrently then?

  • Rather hypocritical aren't they? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @04:44PM (#59758168)

    ``The ACUF argued that protecting Oracle's code `is fundamental to a well-ordered system of private property rights and indeed the rule of law itself....' ''

    These bozos rank politicians according to their fealty to ``conservative values''. Claiming that current day conservatives and that the ACUF itself value the rule of law is one hell of a stretch. They're sucking up to Oracle to safeguard the probable campaign donations of one of their billionaire friends, that's all.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      The sucking has been going in the other direction. Oracle executives have had meetings in the White House to explain the situation and what campaign dollars are involved. The White House, having no principles and for sale to the highest bidder, would probably switch sides if Alphabet lost their vertebrae like the Republicans in Congress.

    • "conservative values" means conserving power for those who already have it, which in turn means preventing anyone else from gaining it.

      That's why the founders didn't invite any women or POCs to help write the Constitution.

  • O-R-A-C-L-E (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @04:47PM (#59758180)
    One
    Rich
    Asshole
    Called
    Larry
    Ellison

  • More gaslighting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ragahast ( 879945 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @05:38PM (#59758382)

    Accepting Google's invitation to upend that system by eliminating copyright protection for creative and original computer software code

    Oracle and their friends continue to try to gaslight the court with this strawman. No one - least of all Google - is trying to eliminate copyright protection for software. They are arguing for the status quo that interface definitions, like forms in general, are not copyrightable.

    Oracle's position is that they alone can name the function that takes two integers and returns the larger "max," because "int max(int a, int b)" is in the Java API.

    • This!!
      A trillion times this!!!

    • I think the problem is that you're thinking about this on a personal level. It's not got much to do with common sense, or actual innovation or creativity.

      It's just a dumb ruling about some dumb businesses that's purely political, will be decided by an inane argument by the aristocrat class of lawyers, and will be easily worked around by some mechanism or other in the future. Don't mistake opportunistic corruption for actual governance or even idiocracy.

      • Indeed, and Google has already worked around it in this case by switching to OpenJDK. So no matter how the Supreme Court rules, they are fine.
        • No, because they still have to pay damages over something that was fine.
          • Oh, it's clear from the email releases, Google considered that an acceptable business cost when they started building Android.
        • Oracle’s position is that they can sue every single Android developer if they used their APIs. Of course Oracle will set up an annual fee program so that Android developers can pay them indefinitely.

          • Eh, Google will either blanket-indemnify devs or start their own developer program like Apple did. Most devs won't care to connect-the-dots (or in the former case, even notice) and the world will move on. It's literally not worth your attention.

          • Oracle’s position is that they can sue every single Android developer if they used their APIs.

            What are you talking about? Do you always make things up like that?

            • Do you ever think about the larger ramifications of things? If Oracle says their APIs are copyrighted anyone creating an API identical to them can be sued. For example in OO specifically Java, there is the concept of overriding in which a method (ie API) can be overridden. If I don’t like long the Java sort(Array array) takes, I can write my own sort(Array array). The API would be identical but the code would be different. According to you and Oracle, I have to get permission to do that despite the fa
              • Oh, you have permission, the JDK has a license allowing developers to do whatever with it (read the license for details). That's the point I've been trying to make, you should not use software without a license. There was a huge controversy over this for years called "the Java trap" until Sun licensed Java under an acceptable license.

    • Would you hold the same to be true for a more complex function with a truly unique name?

    • Then how does dynamic linking to GPL libraries work? Why does the LGPL exist?

      When non-GPL software consumes an interface to GPL software, it's considered a derived work, but if it implements the same interface it isn't?

  • As RMS said:
    It's a trap!

  • Can someone explain why a government department is taking sides?

    A second question is why anyone with half a clue about software would agree with Oracle?

    • Can someone explain why a government department is taking sides?

      A second question is why anyone with half a clue about software would agree with Oracle?

      The answer to both questions is that Larry Ellison recently held a fundraiser for Trump. A bunch of his employees did a walkout over it.

  • According to a Wired article from 2016 Scott McNealy supported Google's use of the Java API [wired.com] and them having their own implementation. The reasoning was that Sun could then sell development tools and everyone profited.

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