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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

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)
  - Oletros 11y ago
    Oracle failed to assert any patent related to virtual machines
  - dozzie 11y ago
    > Think again, at the very least it has a garbage collector ;-) ...which was not invented by Sun. GC is like twenty years older.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
- bliti 11y ago
  Main issue is making people move away from one language to another. You'd have to let people use their existing code base with the new language (like apple did with swift). Could it be possible without another similar lawsuit?
  - simi_ 11y ago
    Call them "legacy apps" and run them over a compatibility layer. Hardware will gradually get good enough to run the old Java apps without hiccups, and the apps that get translated to Go will run about as fast as the Java-Android versions [citation needed], but with oodles of memory to spare.
    - toyg 11y ago
      if the API is copyrightable, your "compatibility layer" would also infringe.
- aikah 11y ago
  > Would a rewrite in (say) Go even be possible? The problem isn't rewriting Dalvik in Go or language X,Y,Z.The problem is the APIs used by Google -- and Oracle copyright claims on them. Furthermore Dalvik supports most languages of the JVM so do you really want to impose a single language in place of Java, Clojure, Kotlin, Scala, Jruby, Jython and many more ? do you think all the programmers using these languages would be happy if forced to migrate to Go ? Ask yourself that question.
  - drivingmenuts 11y ago
    They probably wouldn't but then again, they're taunting the lawnmower (mentioned above) and seem to forget that the lawnmower has a lot of money and willpower. I'd say it's time they dumped that lawnmower and came up with something to replace it.
    - aikah 11y ago
      They also had the money to buy Sun Microsystems , they didn't. They had the money to use something else than Java on Android , they didn't. They're not going to move to Go, they'll just pay and make a deal if Oracle wins.
  - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
    Is it really more difficult to compile to Go source code than to Dalvik/ART byte code? Using Go as a compilation target would allow other languages to benefit from structured value types and goroutines.
    - aikah 11y ago
      > Is it really more difficult to compile to Go source code And who's going to write a Java/Clojure/Scala/Jyton/JRuby/Kotlin/ to Go compiler ? when Google couldn't even write their own language for the android plateform at first place ?
      - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
- jsingleton 11y ago
  It's not just Android. Google is a massive Java shop and a lot of their stuff is written in it. They have plenty of Java expertise in all areas. It's also the main language taught at universities, which helps with hiring. I've heard that Google's public use of Python is more for PR. If you want to change this then the way is to change what educators are teaching. Java is probably one of the reasons why they acquired Android. Possibly even one of the reasons Android is written in Java. I once knew a senior Java architect who turned down a job at Google. This was back in the "who needs another Yahoo!" days. Needless to say they regretted that decision.
userbinator 11y ago
Nicely summed up as "ORACLE: One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison."

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)
- Oletros 11y ago
  Oracle failed to assert any patent related to virtual machines
- dozzie 11y ago
  > Think again, at the very least it has a garbage collector ;-) ...which was not invented by Sun. GC is like twenty years older.
- noir_lord 11y ago
bliti 11y ago
Main issue is making people move away from one language to another. You'd have to let people use their existing code base with the new language (like apple did with swift). Could it be possible without another similar lawsuit?
- simi_ 11y ago
  Call them "legacy apps" and run them over a compatibility layer. Hardware will gradually get good enough to run the old Java apps without hiccups, and the apps that get translated to Go will run about as fast as the Java-Android versions [citation needed], but with oodles of memory to spare.
  - toyg 11y ago
    if the API is copyrightable, your "compatibility layer" would also infringe.
aikah 11y ago
> Would a rewrite in (say) Go even be possible? The problem isn't rewriting Dalvik in Go or language X,Y,Z.The problem is the APIs used by Google -- and Oracle copyright claims on them. Furthermore Dalvik supports most languages of the JVM so do you really want to impose a single language in place of Java, Clojure, Kotlin, Scala, Jruby, Jython and many more ? do you think all the programmers using these languages would be happy if forced to migrate to Go ? Ask yourself that question.
- drivingmenuts 11y ago
  They probably wouldn't but then again, they're taunting the lawnmower (mentioned above) and seem to forget that the lawnmower has a lot of money and willpower. I'd say it's time they dumped that lawnmower and came up with something to replace it.
  - aikah 11y ago
    They also had the money to buy Sun Microsystems , they didn't. They had the money to use something else than Java on Android , they didn't. They're not going to move to Go, they'll just pay and make a deal if Oracle wins.
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  Is it really more difficult to compile to Go source code than to Dalvik/ART byte code? Using Go as a compilation target would allow other languages to benefit from structured value types and goroutines.
  - aikah 11y ago
    > Is it really more difficult to compile to Go source code And who's going to write a Java/Clojure/Scala/Jyton/JRuby/Kotlin/ to Go compiler ? when Google couldn't even write their own language for the android plateform at first place ?
    - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
jsingleton 11y ago
It's not just Android. Google is a massive Java shop and a lot of their stuff is written in it. They have plenty of Java expertise in all areas. It's also the main language taught at universities, which helps with hiring. I've heard that Google's public use of Python is more for PR. If you want to change this then the way is to change what educators are teaching. Java is probably one of the reasons why they acquired Android. Possibly even one of the reasons Android is written in Java. I once knew a senior Java architect who turned down a job at Google. This was back in the "who needs another Yahoo!" days. Needless to say they regretted that decision.

userbinator 11y ago

Nicely summed up as "ORACLE: One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison."