6 ms·

Can someone explain why oracle is doing this? This is not good for their brand name, this is not good for Java. A large number of people use Java because of and

by hippo8 11y ago

Can someone explain why oracle is doing this? This is not good for their brand name, this is not good for Java. A large number of people use Java because of android app development, what is oracle trying to gain out of all this?

rjbwork 11y ago
Money, market exclusivity. Oracle is a big, dumb, litigious beast that pursues IP and money at the exclusion of everything else. See the Solaris/OpenSolaris/Illumous situation, and anyone who has ever worked somewhere with big Oracle databases.
- creshal 11y ago
  And their CSO's attitude towards security: https://archive.is/iz4H2 https://archive.is/iz4H2
vbezhenar 11y ago
I guess that's their way to monetize Java.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
quarterto 11y ago
http://www.bonkersworld.net/images/2011.06.27_organizational_charts.png http://www.bonkersworld.net/images/2011.06.27_organizational...
andyjohnson0 11y ago
Almost anyone who cares about this lawsuit is automatically someone whose opinions don't matter to Oracle. Oracle only cares about executives at large orgs with large budgets to spend on Oracle's enterprise software. And those people don't care about Java or Oracle's reputation among people outside their community. To understand Oracle's motivations it is necessary to review what Bryan Cantrill said about the company: "As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it’s very hard to get used to that idea. It’s like, ‘surely this is more complicated!’ but it’s like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity — that’s it! …Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah… you talk to Oracle, it’s like, ‘no, we don’t fucking make dreams happen — we make money!’ …You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. 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. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ — lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle." [1] Nothing that Oracle does makes sense without understanding this. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m
- simi_ 11y ago
  For me this just puts into perspective how much it sucks to have Java as the language powering Android. Would a rewrite in (say) Go even be possible? I guess you could machine translate a lot of boring stuff like support for a gazillion devices, and the memory footprint savings would be quite substantial.
  - bad_user 11y ago
    Oracle tried their hand with copyright infringement, because copyright is far stronger than anything else that's IP-related. However, here's the thing: 1. Oracle is basically arguing about APIs being copyrightable and if APIs are deemed to be copyrightable, we're fucked as an industry ;-) 2. Oracle, because of the Sun acquisition, has many, many interesting patents related to programming languages and virtual machines. Consider that Sun was involved in the research for making Smaltalk VMs fast and they also developed Self. The IP for all the fancy techniques used in Java's HotSpot VM? Well Sun owned it. Do you think Go is safe because it's not based on Java, or because it doesn't have a Java-like VM? Think again, at the very least it has a garbage collector ;-) Thing is, if Google would have cloned OpenJDK, they would have been safe because of the GPL license. But they didn't, they used Apache Harmony instead, a project that never passed the Java TCK because Sun never allowed it to.
    - bliti 11y ago
      Was openjdk a feasible option at the time?
      - pakled_engineer 11y ago
        Yes but Android's policy is avoid GPL whenever possible, which is why they rewrote their own Dm-crypt mod and other standard tools also Oracle already tried and failed to sue over Android http://www.infoworld.com/article/2615512/java/open-source-java-for-android--don-t-bet-on-it.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/2615512/java/open-source-ja... (2012 article)
    - 11y ago
modoc 11y ago
I could go on for hours about the myriad ways Oracle keeps shooting themselves in the foot with amazingly short sighted policies. However, Larry Ellison is hanging out on a yacht many times larger than any house I'll ever own, so really I guess they aren't that dumb....
- scrollaway 11y ago
  > However, Larry Ellison is hanging out on a yacht many times larger than any house I'll ever own, so really I guess they aren't that dumb.... If the CEO's money is a metric in measuring this, maybe. But maybe that's also what's wrong with that attitude. Contrived example: "Yes, the guy did rape and murder 7 little girls, but he's also taking champagne baths in a tub larger than the city I live in, so he has to be doing something right".
  - modoc 11y ago
    I guess my point is that I can arm-chair quarterback all I want, but their business doesn't seem to end up hurt by their tactics (which look self-destructive to me), so perhaps my view is not 100% accurate.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      And my point is that you can make more money than god and still be evil and your existence be a net negative on the world. I don't think we should judge them by the money they make.
      - modoc 11y ago
        I guess we're talking cross-purpose. I'm not trying to say Oracle is "good" or "evil" or weigh in on their moral value to the world. I'm just pointing out that business decisions they make, that seem to be illogical or self-harming, never appear to actually harm their overall business long term.
      - rayiner 11y ago
toyg 11y ago
The Oracle/Sun perspective (let's not forget that the whole argument predates the acquisition, although it hadn't reached the court yet) is that Google "stole" Java and should pay something for it. They want a piece of the Android action, preferably a lot of money. In order to do that, in pure Ellison style, they will use any tactic, no matter how ruthless or disparaging. Ellison does not care about style or manners, he only cares about winning and cashing in; in many ways he's very similar to his great friend Jobs (who did not care about anything but his products, basically). (Not that Google comes out squeaky-clean, from all this. They clearly piggybacked on the java ecosystem while explicitly avoiding to grant any attribution...)
- Zigurd 11y ago
  There is no Java inside an Android handset. Dalvik isn't Java. Dalvik bytecode isn't Java. The two Android runtimes have similar semantics to Java, but there is no Java technology in either one. There is no JavaCompiler API in Android. Google "uses" Java in the toolchain, for some definition of "use." But They don't sell anyone any Java. It will be tough sledding for anyone trying to show there is Java IP inside Android.
  - throwawaykf05 11y ago
    You certainly write Android apps using the Java API, which is Sun/Oracle IP. The argument there is no "real" Java in Android actually hurts Google's case. Because Dalvik uses non-Java byte code, these apps are not interoperable with "real" Java apps. This completely undermines some of Google's legal arguments as a defense for API copyrightability, because the cases they cited (Sega etc) explicitly held that copying certain things was OK for maintaining binary interoperability.
    - Zigurd 11y ago
      > "You certainly write Android apps using the Java API" So Oracle should go after Eclipse and other IDEs? Or Apache Harmony? > *" This completely undermines some of Google's legal arguments as a defense for API copyrightability, because the cases they cited (Sega etc) explicitly held that copying certain things was OK for maintaining binary interoperability." That binary compatibility is required by javac, which is in the toolchain. Then the Java bytecode gets translated to Dalvik bytecode and packaged as an APK.
dragonwriter 11y ago
They are trying to get control of and/or money from Android, as well as prevent other people from creating similar Java-alike but not Java-by-Oracle's-terms platforms.
throwawaykf05 11y ago
While some people may use Java "because Android", rest assured that far, far more people do Android development "because Java". The reason Google chose Android was clearly because they needed a large number of people writing many apps as quickly as possible for their platform to compete with the iPhone. Google got a much better deal out of Java. Sun/Oracle got nothing in return.
- Oletros 11y ago
  > they needed a large number of people writing many apps as quickly as possible for their platform to compete with the iPhone. Android was bought before the iPhone existed

by hippo8 11y ago

rjbwork 11y ago

Money, market exclusivity. Oracle is a big, dumb, litigious beast that pursues IP and money at the exclusion of everything else. See the Solaris/OpenSolaris/Illumous situation, and anyone who has ever worked somewhere with big Oracle databases.

creshal 11y ago
And their CSO's attitude towards security: https://archive.is/iz4H2 https://archive.is/iz4H2

vbezhenar 11y ago

I guess that's their way to monetize Java.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

quarterto 11y ago

http://www.bonkersworld.net/images/2011.06.27_organizational_charts.png http://www.bonkersworld.net/images/2011.06.27_organizational...

andyjohnson0 11y ago

Almost anyone who cares about this lawsuit is automatically someone whose opinions don't matter to Oracle. Oracle only cares about executives at large orgs with large budgets to spend on Oracle's enterprise software. And those people don't care about Java or Oracle's reputation among people outside their community. To understand Oracle's motivations it is necessary to review what Bryan Cantrill said about the company: "As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it’s very hard to get used to that idea. It’s like, ‘surely this is more complicated!’ but it’s like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity — that’s it! …Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah… you talk to Oracle, it’s like, ‘no, we don’t fucking make dreams happen — we make money!’ …You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. 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. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ — lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle." [1] Nothing that Oracle does makes sense without understanding this. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m

simi_ 11y ago
For me this just puts into perspective how much it sucks to have Java as the language powering Android. Would a rewrite in (say) Go even be possible? I guess you could machine translate a lot of boring stuff like support for a gazillion devices, and the memory footprint savings would be quite substantial.
- bad_user 11y ago
  Oracle tried their hand with copyright infringement, because copyright is far stronger than anything else that's IP-related. However, here's the thing: 1. Oracle is basically arguing about APIs being copyrightable and if APIs are deemed to be copyrightable, we're fucked as an industry ;-) 2. Oracle, because of the Sun acquisition, has many, many interesting patents related to programming languages and virtual machines. Consider that Sun was involved in the research for making Smaltalk VMs fast and they also developed Self. The IP for all the fancy techniques used in Java's HotSpot VM? Well Sun owned it. Do you think Go is safe because it's not based on Java, or because it doesn't have a Java-like VM? Think again, at the very least it has a garbage collector ;-) Thing is, if Google would have cloned OpenJDK, they would have been safe because of the GPL license. But they didn't, they used Apache Harmony instead, a project that never passed the Java TCK because Sun never allowed it to.
  - bliti 11y ago
    Was openjdk a feasible option at the time?
    - pakled_engineer 11y ago
      Yes but Android's policy is avoid GPL whenever possible, which is why they rewrote their own Dm-crypt mod and other standard tools also Oracle already tried and failed to sue over Android http://www.infoworld.com/article/2615512/java/open-source-java-for-android--don-t-bet-on-it.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/2615512/java/open-source-ja... (2012 article)
  - 11y ago

modoc 11y ago

I could go on for hours about the myriad ways Oracle keeps shooting themselves in the foot with amazingly short sighted policies. However, Larry Ellison is hanging out on a yacht many times larger than any house I'll ever own, so really I guess they aren't that dumb....

scrollaway 11y ago
> However, Larry Ellison is hanging out on a yacht many times larger than any house I'll ever own, so really I guess they aren't that dumb.... If the CEO's money is a metric in measuring this, maybe. But maybe that's also what's wrong with that attitude. Contrived example: "Yes, the guy did rape and murder 7 little girls, but he's also taking champagne baths in a tub larger than the city I live in, so he has to be doing something right".
- modoc 11y ago
  I guess my point is that I can arm-chair quarterback all I want, but their business doesn't seem to end up hurt by their tactics (which look self-destructive to me), so perhaps my view is not 100% accurate.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    And my point is that you can make more money than god and still be evil and your existence be a net negative on the world. I don't think we should judge them by the money they make.
    - modoc 11y ago
      I guess we're talking cross-purpose. I'm not trying to say Oracle is "good" or "evil" or weigh in on their moral value to the world. I'm just pointing out that business decisions they make, that seem to be illogical or self-harming, never appear to actually harm their overall business long term.
    - rayiner 11y ago

toyg 11y ago

The Oracle/Sun perspective (let's not forget that the whole argument predates the acquisition, although it hadn't reached the court yet) is that Google "stole" Java and should pay something for it. They want a piece of the Android action, preferably a lot of money. In order to do that, in pure Ellison style, they will use any tactic, no matter how ruthless or disparaging. Ellison does not care about style or manners, he only cares about winning and cashing in; in many ways he's very similar to his great friend Jobs (who did not care about anything but his products, basically). (Not that Google comes out squeaky-clean, from all this. They clearly piggybacked on the java ecosystem while explicitly avoiding to grant any attribution...)

Zigurd 11y ago
There is no Java inside an Android handset. Dalvik isn't Java. Dalvik bytecode isn't Java. The two Android runtimes have similar semantics to Java, but there is no Java technology in either one. There is no JavaCompiler API in Android. Google "uses" Java in the toolchain, for some definition of "use." But They don't sell anyone any Java. It will be tough sledding for anyone trying to show there is Java IP inside Android.
- throwawaykf05 11y ago
  You certainly write Android apps using the Java API, which is Sun/Oracle IP. The argument there is no "real" Java in Android actually hurts Google's case. Because Dalvik uses non-Java byte code, these apps are not interoperable with "real" Java apps. This completely undermines some of Google's legal arguments as a defense for API copyrightability, because the cases they cited (Sega etc) explicitly held that copying certain things was OK for maintaining binary interoperability.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    > "You certainly write Android apps using the Java API" So Oracle should go after Eclipse and other IDEs? Or Apache Harmony? > *" This completely undermines some of Google's legal arguments as a defense for API copyrightability, because the cases they cited (Sega etc) explicitly held that copying certain things was OK for maintaining binary interoperability." That binary compatibility is required by javac, which is in the toolchain. Then the Java bytecode gets translated to Dalvik bytecode and packaged as an APK.

dragonwriter 11y ago

They are trying to get control of and/or money from Android, as well as prevent other people from creating similar Java-alike but not Java-by-Oracle's-terms platforms.

throwawaykf05 11y ago

While some people may use Java "because Android", rest assured that far, far more people do Android development "because Java". The reason Google chose Android was clearly because they needed a large number of people writing many apps as quickly as possible for their platform to compete with the iPhone. Google got a much better deal out of Java. Sun/Oracle got nothing in return.

Oletros 11y ago
> they needed a large number of people writing many apps as quickly as possible for their platform to compete with the iPhone. Android was bought before the iPhone existed