4 ms·

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 y

by 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
  > 1. Oracle is basically arguing about APIs being copyrightable and if APIs are deemed to be copyrightable, we're fucked as an industry ;-) In the US, in Europe where we are somewhat more sane on this issue I'd look forward to a boom in software development the like of which we've never seen. The implications for the US software industry are pretty horrify though, it makes software patents look mild.
  - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
    Why a boom in software development?
    - toyg 11y ago
      parent thinks the industry will flee to safer European shores, because the local legal climate is much more liberal than the US when it comes to software (for example, patent trolls are very rare over here). In practice this is unlikely for a number of reasons, in particular the fact that Europe is way too expensive for the industry that spearheaded third-world "offshoring".
      - noir_lord 11y ago
        That would be the case except if you where a US software company fleeing a legislative climate that made it hard to do business are you going to put your HQ/major business units in Berlin/Paris or a third-world country. These are large primarily sales driven organizations so first world transport links and infrastructure matter.
      - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
        It's not just unlikely, it's completely nonsensical from a legal perspective. If Google's Android division were located in Europe, that would make zero difference for their legal fight against Oracle. The only way to avoid US law is to not trade in the US at all, otherwise someone should have told Samsung and SAP before they paid hundereds of millions to Apple and Oracle respectively.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  I always think is is somewhat interesting given the Java trap [1]. In some ways RMS was very prescient (not entirely surprising), but had Sun not released Java under the GPL, we could easily be having this discussion about IceTea. The "Don't be ridiculous, nobody is going to sue you for using/implementing Java/C#/whatever" attitude was always frustrating, but I have to admit I didn't actually expect it to really happen :-P [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.en.html
- throwawaykf05 11y ago
  APIs are pretty much confirmed to be copyrightable, as far as I can tell. The SC denying cert to review this appeal essentially confirms the Federal Circuit's interpretation. All that is left is to decide on fair use, which could still let Google off, but that defense assumes copyrightability. But I disagree "we're fucked as an industry", though there could be some inconvenience. The Sega etc. cases still hold, and they essentially say that copying interfaces for binary compatibility / interoperability is fine. As far as statically compiled languages are concerned, that's all we need. If some API creator sues, we can always create / adopt a different API and map it to the binary instructions in the SPI.
  - tzs 11y ago
    As far as I've been able to tell, the Federal Circuit's decision sets no precedent. It is only binding on the trial court in this particular case. Their decisions on patents set precedent, but for copyright they are supposed to follow the precedent of the numbered circuit that the trial court is in, which would be the 9th in this case. Future copyright cases in the 9th will still be appealed to the 9th Circuit, not the Federal Circuit, unless they are also a patent case. I think there needs to be a change to the way appeals work in cases like this. In federal trial courts, there is a thing called supplemental jurisdiction which allows a court to hear claims that they would normally not have subject matter jurisdiction to hear if they are part of a case with other claims that they do have jurisdiction to hear. For example, suppose a business deal goes bad, and ends up spawning a lawsuit involving federal copyright claims and state contract claims. Copyright claims must be heard in federal court. Federal courts normally would not have jurisdiction to hear state contract cases, but because of supplemental jurisdiction the federal court will hear the state contract claims too. If the case was just a state contract case, it could not be brought in federal court. The idea behind supplemental jurisdiction is that in case like my hypothetical business deal gone bad it really is one case that just happened to generate issues that fell under different jurisdictions. If tried separately there would be much overlap in witnesses, documents, and other evidence. It would be an inefficient use of judicial resources and unduly burdensome on the parties and the witnesses. At the appellate level, the court is examining the trial court's application of the law, not the trial court's determination of the facts. The appeals court works off the transcript and documents from the trial court, and the only people that have to appear physically are the lawyers arguing for the parties. I think it would make a more sense to let appeals from multi-issue cases to go to multiple appeals courts, each appeals court only getting those issues for which it sets precedent. So in a case like Oracle vs. Google, tried in the 9th Circuit, copyright issue appeals should go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and patent issue appeals should go to the Federal Circuit. In cases like my hypothetical copyright and state contract case, if tried in the 9th Circuit, appeals on copyright issues should go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and state contract issues should go to a state appellate court.
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.

by simi_ 11y ago

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
> 1. Oracle is basically arguing about APIs being copyrightable and if APIs are deemed to be copyrightable, we're fucked as an industry ;-) In the US, in Europe where we are somewhat more sane on this issue I'd look forward to a boom in software development the like of which we've never seen. The implications for the US software industry are pretty horrify though, it makes software patents look mild.
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  Why a boom in software development?
  - toyg 11y ago
    parent thinks the industry will flee to safer European shores, because the local legal climate is much more liberal than the US when it comes to software (for example, patent trolls are very rare over here). In practice this is unlikely for a number of reasons, in particular the fact that Europe is way too expensive for the industry that spearheaded third-world "offshoring".
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      That would be the case except if you where a US software company fleeing a legislative climate that made it hard to do business are you going to put your HQ/major business units in Berlin/Paris or a third-world country. These are large primarily sales driven organizations so first world transport links and infrastructure matter.
    - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
      It's not just unlikely, it's completely nonsensical from a legal perspective. If Google's Android division were located in Europe, that would make zero difference for their legal fight against Oracle. The only way to avoid US law is to not trade in the US at all, otherwise someone should have told Samsung and SAP before they paid hundereds of millions to Apple and Oracle respectively.
mikekchar 11y ago
I always think is is somewhat interesting given the Java trap [1]. In some ways RMS was very prescient (not entirely surprising), but had Sun not released Java under the GPL, we could easily be having this discussion about IceTea. The "Don't be ridiculous, nobody is going to sue you for using/implementing Java/C#/whatever" attitude was always frustrating, but I have to admit I didn't actually expect it to really happen :-P [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.en.html
throwawaykf05 11y ago
APIs are pretty much confirmed to be copyrightable, as far as I can tell. The SC denying cert to review this appeal essentially confirms the Federal Circuit's interpretation. All that is left is to decide on fair use, which could still let Google off, but that defense assumes copyrightability. But I disagree "we're fucked as an industry", though there could be some inconvenience. The Sega etc. cases still hold, and they essentially say that copying interfaces for binary compatibility / interoperability is fine. As far as statically compiled languages are concerned, that's all we need. If some API creator sues, we can always create / adopt a different API and map it to the binary instructions in the SPI.
- tzs 11y ago
  As far as I've been able to tell, the Federal Circuit's decision sets no precedent. It is only binding on the trial court in this particular case. Their decisions on patents set precedent, but for copyright they are supposed to follow the precedent of the numbered circuit that the trial court is in, which would be the 9th in this case. Future copyright cases in the 9th will still be appealed to the 9th Circuit, not the Federal Circuit, unless they are also a patent case. I think there needs to be a change to the way appeals work in cases like this. In federal trial courts, there is a thing called supplemental jurisdiction which allows a court to hear claims that they would normally not have subject matter jurisdiction to hear if they are part of a case with other claims that they do have jurisdiction to hear. For example, suppose a business deal goes bad, and ends up spawning a lawsuit involving federal copyright claims and state contract claims. Copyright claims must be heard in federal court. Federal courts normally would not have jurisdiction to hear state contract cases, but because of supplemental jurisdiction the federal court will hear the state contract claims too. If the case was just a state contract case, it could not be brought in federal court. The idea behind supplemental jurisdiction is that in case like my hypothetical business deal gone bad it really is one case that just happened to generate issues that fell under different jurisdictions. If tried separately there would be much overlap in witnesses, documents, and other evidence. It would be an inefficient use of judicial resources and unduly burdensome on the parties and the witnesses. At the appellate level, the court is examining the trial court's application of the law, not the trial court's determination of the facts. The appeals court works off the transcript and documents from the trial court, and the only people that have to appear physically are the lawyers arguing for the parties. I think it would make a more sense to let appeals from multi-issue cases to go to multiple appeals courts, each appeals court only getting those issues for which it sets precedent. So in a case like Oracle vs. Google, tried in the 9th Circuit, copyright issue appeals should go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and patent issue appeals should go to the Federal Circuit. In cases like my hypothetical copyright and state contract case, if tried in the 9th Circuit, appeals on copyright issues should go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and state contract issues should go to a state appellate court.

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.