16 ms·

Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

281 points by nkurz 10y ago

PunchTornado 10y ago
Oracle is at that stage where they didn't invent or do anything right in the last 5 years but try to get money from lawsuits.
- Thrillington 10y ago
  Only 5 years? Seems like it's been longer than that
- meddlepal 10y ago
  From what I've been told by a contact in their database sales team is that there pipeline for on-premise licenses is drying up quickly but their SaaS business is doing well.
  - derefr 10y ago
    That explains a lot about their recent behavior, e.g. dropping Solaris. If everyone is consuming their software over a network, it doesn't matter precisely what it's running on any more (so even if Oracle DBs could scale better on Solaris than on Linux or a BSD, a 1.3x SaaS shared-cluster size costs less than an OS development team.)
    - binarycrusader 10y ago
      They're not dropping Solaris. They're instead changing the release model: https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_moving_to_a https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_moving... Personally, I'd say this is similar to Microsoft's decisions around Windows 10.
      - jimnotgym 10y ago
        And that is what they call spin. Didn't they fire the people who write it?
        binarycrusader 10y ago
        No, they did not. How do I know? Because I'm still working on Solaris almost nine years later along with many others. Same manager, same projects. Staffing levels in some areas was changed as was publicly announced. See also http://www.esteem.co.uk/news-events/oracle-solaris-whats-going http://www.esteem.co.uk/news-events/oracle-solaris-whats-goi... Disclaimer: these are my opinions and not those of my employer.
        jimnotgym 10y ago
        Sorry, it was reported that the job losses at Oracle were from the Solaris team. I read the memo from Oracle on Solaris 12 and was (and am) completely unconvinced by it, but maybe I am just cynical. I am still moving away from it as fast as I can convince the board to back me. Good luck on the Solaris team, some good things could come out of it (with some open source licensing). Oracle could do themselves some serious reputational favours by staying out of court.
  - prokes 10y ago
    Just to add a little nuance - the difference is in flow vs stock of customers. Very few existing EBS customers are reimplementing in Cloud because of the time, cost, and loss of customizations. It doesn't make sense. New customers are being forced into Cloud by the Oracle sales team. The sales reps literally receive no compensation for on-prem (EBS) deals, and they must go through a lengthy approval process just to offer a prospect the on-prem solution. Thus everyone is being guided to Cloud, whether or not it is the right solution for the customer.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      > Very few existing EBS customers are reimplementing in Cloud because of the time, cost, and loss of customizations. Also, maybe Oracle's "lock your customers in and then extract as much profit as possible" history is guiding decisions? If there's a rearchitecture cost to migrate to cloud, then why would you do it with a company who already $&#@ed you over?
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      The exception is if they peddle a Sun hardware solution. They will be slobbering like a dog with a bone if you show any interest.
  - sjwright 10y ago
    > pipeline for on-premise licenses Sorry for being a grammar nazi, but this one is a serious pet peeve. The singular of "premises" isn't "premise", it's "premises". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premises
    - meddlepal 10y ago
      I'm not sure that's correct. The pluralization is for licenses not on-premise. Either way "on-premises licenses" sounds weird so I'm likely to stick with "on-premise licenses" regardless. Sorry.
      - grzm 10y ago
        Premises (singular) is a location. He was on the premises. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/on%20premises https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/on%20premises Premise (singular) is a presupposition. The premise is that we can get this done in 3 weeks. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/premise https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/premise I agree, it sounds weird. I'd avoid it all together and use on-site. Edit to add: or, as uncle-comment (?) pointed out with the Wikipedia article, on-premises software is a thing. On-prem might be a good compromise, depending on your penchant for shortening like that.
      - WildUtah 10y ago
        Either way "on-premises licenses" sounds weird so I'm likely to stick with "on-premise licenses" regardless. Sorry. Downvoted for expressing contempt for the English language and common decency, but then failing to add in the obvious "irregardless."
    - csours 10y ago
      TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-premises_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-premises_software
    - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
      Well, as a member of the post-WWII Stasi, I'd like to point out that English generally has no universally accepted authoritative form of the language to which you can persuasively appeal :)
  - Maarten88 10y ago
    > ...pipeline for on-premise licenses is drying up quickly but their SaaS business is doing well... I hear they are desperately pushing new cloud offerings, but they are having lots of problems with customer retention, as their cloud technology is really not ready so they are actually just selling hosted versions of the existing products that lack any cost advantage.
    - toyg 10y ago
      > they are actually just selling hosted versions of the existing products Ha, if that were true, it wouldn't even be that bad. In the niche I work for, what they sell is not even as powerful as their existing on-premises product. Not that it matters: they simply won't sell or even develop new on-premises, so you either go to their crappy cloud services or you just migrate away. There are now entire companies based on "move your existing Oracle solutions to our product with the minimum fuss and enjoy real power, not a cut-down version of what you already had three years ago".
- bogomipz 10y ago
  This is actually not true. Their cloud offering is doing really well. There's some impressive figures here: http://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/09/15/2016/oracles-cloud-business-doing-well-older-businesses-arent http://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/09/15/2016/oracles-c...
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    A more trickily written article you could not find. Oracle is busting their humps to get major ESC on their clouds but they've missed the chance on some of the really outlandishly big fish. Time will tell if they manage to met BofA or a similar ultrabig FI and that could be called a success, but short of that all they can do is pay folks to write wrongheaded quarterly analysis and say "gosh isn't this better than Amazon?" Which is totally absurd. Comically so. And from the perspective of actually using their tech, you're better off scooping a mug of old compost and dumping it in a sizzling pan of oil and letting the oil spatter burn you. It will be a more enjoyable experience.
  - empath75 10y ago
    Growth rate is a nonsense metric. If you're starting from nothing and invest a shitload of money in sales you'll have an amazing growth rate. IBM and Oracle are both way behind azure, google and aws.
    - parthdesai 10y ago
      I have a friend who works at IBM he tells me that IBM uses Google cloud for some of their stuff. The irony when you are a cloud provider but use another service.
      - yellowapple 10y ago
        I mean, that in and of itself ain't really ironic. Lots of cloud providers out there just resell abstractions around / improvements upon other cloud providers. Cloud66 is one with which I'm familiar; their whole business model revolves around wrapping AWS with CloudFoundry-like deployment mechanisms specifically for Ruby codebases (and Docker containers, but I never interacted with them in that capacity).
- claudiug 10y ago
  they have graal, sulong, I also cloud is doing fine :)
pikachuisntcool 10y ago
I hope Oracle wins. The sooner Java dies, the better.
- grenoire 10y ago
  Are you that hateful of Java that you are blind to the implications of an Oracle win? It won't be just Java 'dying.'
  - pikachuisntcool 10y ago
    Our laws governing software are so fundamentally broken already lol. It doesn't matter anymore.
    - taeric 10y ago
      This is not helpful. Specifically, petulance will not lead to improvement. To that end, do you have any suggestions on making things better? Do you contribute to any organizations that are trying?
  - technofiend 10y ago
    Let's assume Oracle wins on appeal... What's next? Is everyone suddenly writing .Net code? Or are we left to find languages with lapsed copyrights? Fortran IV and Snobol are the new hotness! Everyone in to the pool!
    - bsg75 10y ago
      Languages without a corporate owner.
      - coldpie 10y ago
        JavaScript is right out. There's such a mish-mash of API owners there that it will give decades of court cases from copyright trolls. This is one of the most important tech cases in history. Oracle is on a fast-track to destroying the software industry with it.
snarfy 10y ago
The entire software industry should be boycotting Oracle over this case. If they win it will ruin software development in the US.
- TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
  Except that Oracle has become so successful because they've captured the largest customer(s) of all: the US federal government.
  - gohbgl 10y ago
    Well isn't that a coincidence. Extracting money through state granted limited monopoly rights and lobbying for big government contracts at the same time. Oracle is really living the crony capitalist dream.
- ddebernardy 10y ago
  One coyld also argue the opposite: if Oracle wins, lawyers will start burning the software industry to the ground to an extent such that US lawmakers will be forced to reform copyright and patent laws.
koolba 10y ago
Is there anyone that's not on Oracle's payroll that sides with them on this case?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Microsoft probably wouldn't mind Oracle winning.
  - breakingcups 10y ago
    Someone made a great point about the WSL (Linux) layer in Windows in this thread.
  - jpkeisala 10y ago
    They would be the real winners since it would slap both Google and Oracle.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  You aren't going to like the answer to that question, but the appeals court seems to favor Oracle in this case. They specifically said that Oracle had a strong position, but that they were required to give Google a chance to present full evidence on the fair use issue.
- ddebernardy 10y ago
  I'm suspicious that Oracle winning would be such a bad thing in the long term. Lawyers would go nuts and start hurting IT companies, for sure. But the bleeding of angry voters who lost their jobs or their millions would then hopefully convince US lawmakers to reform their country's inane IP and patent laws.
golfer 10y ago
Is Oracle the biggest troll in Silicon Valley right now? Can't think of anyone else that would claim the title. Maybe Theranos.
- anonymous7777 10y ago
  Oracle invested in Theranos
- ultrahate 10y ago
  At least Oracle has actual products though. I don't wanna stick up for Oracle by any means, but comparing them with theranos just ain't right.
- koolba 10y ago
  > Is Oracle the biggest troll in Silicon Valley right now? Can't think of anyone else that would claim the title. Maybe Theranos. I'm not aware of Theranos being a troll. Fraudster for sure, but troll has a different meaning.
ryanobjc 10y ago
Who has better connections with Trump? Sadly to say, that is not an irrelevant fact anymore. Trump is clearly the kind of president that would reach in to legal rulings he's paid not to like.
- lazugod 10y ago
  Why would he care about two companies he doesn't own? I don't think this is a big concern.
  - mwfunk 10y ago
    Oracle's CEO is on his transition team, and Oracle is one of the few big tech companies to not publicly support the legal challenge to the travel ban.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  Oracle does: "Oracle's clout will come in part from the presence of its CEO, Safra Catz, who did not join the pro-Hillary Clinton chorus of other Silicon Valley honchos, and who is now working on Trump's transition team. " (http://fortune.com/2017/01/17/oracle-trump/ http://fortune.com/2017/01/17/oracle-trump/)
- paulddraper 10y ago
  What specifically could he do?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
exabrial 10y ago
Another thought too: Oracle kicking the hornet's nest on this may end up being a "good thing". Their verdict was dubious at best, they might get overturned and lose even more ground and $.
Spivak 10y ago
Okay, either I'm crazy or everyone else is. Assuming the court isn't trying to set a new precedent with regards to software it seems like Oracle should have easily won this case. There is an argument to be made that APIs shouldn't be copyrightable but surely it's not fair use -- Google's use of Java doesn't even come close to meeting the criteria.
- technofiend 10y ago
  This is tricky because if you declare any API no matter how trivial copyrightable then the first guy to copyright a function to compute sqrt, tan, atan, etc wins. And if you can't copyright trivial interfaces then the question becomes where the line is drawn. There's far more at stake than Oracle trying to squeeze money out of Google.
  - seibelj 10y ago
    Someone should write a program that generates all possible function names and argument types and declares them copyrighted, then release them all to the public.
    - MichaelBurge 10y ago
      That list wouldn't be copyrightable, since it contains no creative elements.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - Spivak 10y ago
      You could, by a similar method, generate all possible images but that doesn't mean you would be able to copyright them all. The creative element would become the act of identifying specific images within your set with artistic merit -- those would be copyrightable.
      - 10y ago
technofiend 10y ago
Although Oracle denied they bought Sun just to sue Google you have to wonder since they are claiming "billions" in damages and only paid $7.4 billion after IBM dropped their $7.0 billion bid. This purchase was such a seminal moment for the industry you have to wonder what an alternative history would look like if say IBM or Google made the purchase not to mention some dark horses like Amazon or Red hat.
- snarf21 10y ago
  They absolutely bought Sun just to sue. I used to know someone personally involved on the case. Oracle is a horrible company. To be fair, Google's "don't be evil" is also a bunch of crap. They've done their fair share of shady and exploitive things.
  - apathy 10y ago
    Google wasn't evil, at least not before the IPO (which is when I worked there). People took the slogan seriously and based decisions on it. I don't know what happened.
    - Teever 10y ago
      The people that intended to do evil merely waited until those who didn't intend to do so finished implementing the things they were implementing. Then they used that sound infrastructure to do evil with, as they had intended to do all along. Those people that took the slogan seriously were used.
      - rifung 10y ago
        Those are very damning accusations. Care to give some examples?
        shard972 10y ago
        I think Google's quiet transformation from a search company to a data company that is trying to learn everything about everyone is the prime example. Google buzz was also one of the early moves that showed this, opting everyone who uses gmail into a social network was pretty evil if you ask me.
pikachuisntcool 10y ago
Yeah. I got a suggestion. Don't join the industry. And if you're still in college, don't major in Computer Science Edit: Got hellbanned lol. @gregnoire: HN is a giant circlejerk You prolly think this site is so great and intellectual just because it has ycombinator in the URL. Internet comments fundamentally suck @DanBC: Pretty sure I got hellbanned. It's been an hour, still can't make new comments @sjwright: The medium is the message. Text typed on a psuedo-anonymous HTML page never leads to substantial discussion. This was obvious back in 2000s but I guess since the internet has regressed so much, most people turn a blind eye to it. Fuck, honestly, why am I even writing this? This is hypocrisy in its biggest form. I need to stop writing in these stupid comment sections
- grenoire 10y ago
  Your account is a month old: If you missed the memo, off-topic and arrogant comments are always voted down. Edit: I see you took the part with "HN has become a giant circlejerk anyway" down.
- sjwright 10y ago
  > Internet comments fundamentally suck No, internet comments are fundamentally sound. Unfortunately, a few people fundamentally suck and ruin them for the rest of us.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > Got hellbanned HN rarely hellbans, and not in cases like this. I'm not a mod and I'm not speaking for them, but I'm pretty sure they usually warn first, and that they announce bans. You haven't been banned. You have been i) heavily downvoted and ii) not upvoted.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  You could check out the YouTube community. Might be more to your liking.
- sctb 10y ago
  You weren't hellbanned, but you had violated the guidelines sufficiently to get enough downvotes to become subject to some of the same limitations. We've now banned this account for only posting uncivilly and unsubstantively. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13624326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13624326 and marked it off-topic.
moomin 10y ago
Let's slap a great big IANAL on this before I start: The fair use decision was wrong. It relied on a fundamental misunderstanding of the term transformative where the use of the code was considered rather than merely the implementation. So Oracle has a huge case here. Moreover, practically it doesn't matter. Even if fair use is established in this case, the door has been left wide open to hordes of API copyright trolls. If you thought patent trolls were bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. If you care about the economy, the only sensible outcome would be that API surfaces aren't subject to copyright. Sadly the horse has bolted a long time ago.
- Retric 10y ago
  There is a long history of the API around chips not being copywritable. EX: The IBM clones needed 1 chip that at the time was not off the shelf. So, people figured out what it did then implemented that. Method signatures would appear to represent the same situation because the chip needs to respond correctly not just respond to those inputs.
- iopq 10y ago
  If implementing an interface is against copyright, then every Java program is infringing on Oracle's copyright.
  - jolux 10y ago
    http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/googles-fair-use-defense-against-oracle.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/googles-fair-use-defense-...
    - Oletros 10y ago
      I don't think that Florian Mueller is an unbiased source, he was paid by Oracle while the trial was happening
      - jolux 10y ago
        Well if you could point me to an unbiased source trying to argue the other side of this question, then sure. I really want to know both sides of this issue and it's nearly impossible to find someone separating the quintessential geek love for Google and geek hatred for Oracle from the facts of the case other than Mueller. Honestly I'm all for liberalizing copyrights and fair use but it makes me mad to see Google going around ripping off everyone else's tech and then claiming fair use when they get sued. The fair use defense is not meant for multi-billion dollar multinational corporations that tried to shirk licensing by violating copyrights. Furthermore I find it particularly hilarious that everyone thinks Google fights against copyright with the purest of intentions when it seems transparent that less restrictive copyright is in their direct business interests.
danjoc 10y ago
How does OpenJDK stay out of violation if Oracle wins? Doesn't OpenJDK basically copy the API as well?
- alcari 10y ago
  OpenJDK was created by Sun.
- tlogan 10y ago
  Code for OpenJDK can run unmodified on Oracle Java. Code for Android Apps contain unrelated public APIs so cannot run on Oracle Java.
  - wtallis 10y ago
    What does copyright law care about software compatibility?
- punctilio 10y ago
  Oracle owns copyright on OpenJDK, so it can't 'violate'. Maybe more precisely, if you regard the API in question as copyrightable, Oracle has clearly licensed it under GPLv2 plus the Classpath Exception. Also, the issue of copyrightability of the Java SE API has already been definitively decided in this case, in Oracle's favor.
faragon 10y ago
Oracle should stop that, in my opinion. That attitude could kill Java in the long term.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  One wonders how much the taint of Java factored into the decision to invent Go.
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    Not much actually, the developers of Go mainly wanted shorter compile times than C++ offered.
    - thomasahle 10y ago
      Pretty sure different people wanted different things. Some people certainly wanted better concurrency.
      - AsyncAwait 10y ago
        Sure, that too. Both of which however had little to do with Java.
  - twblalock 10y ago
    My impression is that the Go team had two targets, both based on languages in common use at Google: C++ programmers, and programmers using languages like Python who wanted more type safety but didn't want to use a language with a massive ecosystem.
    - emiliobumachar 10y ago
      I might have misunderstood the last part. Why would anyone not want a massive ecosystem with their language? You can always ignore the ecosystem while retaining the option to change your mind later.
  - 10y ago
niftich 10y ago
I wish intent and end result counted more strongly. Andoid's compatibility isn't transitive: once code goes through the Android build pipeline to produce an Android Application it cannot be meaningfully used in the context of Oracle Java; it's a one-way transformation to remain "talent-compatible" with a large pool of Java developers and reuse the base of Java libraries. Projects like OpenJDK and WINE are efforts to provide an alternate execution environment for code that is mutually beneficial to the ecosystem, although perhaps not the wallets of the original owner. A commercial venture ought to qualify here if the intent is to compete on equal footing -- code targeting OpenJDK can run unmodified on Oracle Java, code targeting WINE can run unmodified on Win32, thereby not limiting the original creator's rights. However, Android Apps contain unrelated public APIs as part of the exported code, and a full packaged Android App cannot meaningfully run on Oracle JDK, despite portions of the standard library looking and behaving alike. This fragments the ecosystem and essentially allows Android to benefit from the works of the Java rightholders without making those contributions equally as useful to Oracle Java itself.
- orangecat 10y ago
  once code goes through the Android build pipeline to produce an Android Application it cannot be meaningfully used in the context of Oracle Java Android apps typically have an MVC-like structure where the UI uses Android-specific APIs, but the model is straight Java. As an example, I created an Android game and later decided that I wanted to make a level editor as a desktop Java application. I was able to reuse the model code in Oracle's JDK with no changes, even though I didn't have that use in mind when I originally wrote it. a full packaged Android App cannot meaningfully run on Oracle JDK That's true of any platform-specific Java API.
  - saurik 10y ago
    Right: and if you remember, the entire concept of a "platform-specific Java API" is what was at stake when Microsoft lost this very similar lawsuit when Sun sued them over J++. Either what Google is doing is horrible or what Microsoft did shouldn't have been a problem :/.
rbjorklin 10y ago
Curious to hear your reasons for calling Red Hat a dark horse. (Which I presume is some kind of slur/holds a derogatory meaning)
- bradyd 10y ago
  It's actually not derogatory: "A dark horse is a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort, or a contestant that seems unlikely to succeed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_horse
- champlinRyan 10y ago
  Dark horse in this context means other companies unlikely to actually buy it, or win the bidding war. Its not any sort of slur that I'm aware of.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- halestock 10y ago
  Per wikipedia: "A dark horse is a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort, or a contestant that seems unlikely to succeed." In this case I would imagine it's because Red Hat is pretty tiny compared to IBM/Google/Oracle and could not put up a comparable amount of money for the purchase.
- ben_jones 10y ago
  Dark Horse is the horse in the race nobody thinks has a chance of winning, but comes out near the front in the final seconds (surprising everybody). You could've just Googled it.
- IgneousPneuma 10y ago
  dark horse just means not a main favored candidate
- mindcrime 10y ago
  "Dark horse" isn't a slur or pejorative in general. It's roughly equivalent to "long shot" or "underdog" or something like that.
throwaway30121 10y ago
Oracle is such a shit company. There are still some great hackers there but Larry Ellison is an asshole, and I don't envy anyone who has to work for him even indirectly. "Left Oracle's Java business in tatters" eh? Where was their mobile OS? Their Dalvik? The wounds to Java have all been self-inflicted. If they succeed in copyrighting the API then where does this leave OpenJDK? Operating at the mercy of Larry fucking Ellison, which means not at all. I've got 17 years of Java experience under my belt, but frankly with Docker + Kubernetes for deployment and new system languages like Rust and Go I'm thinking it's time to jump ship. Or even to C# since apparently MS got the memo on Open Source (not to mention the need for integrated platform modularization - no more Maven hell! Yay!).
- ghuntley 10y ago
  fsharp |> welcomes all alienated Java veterans and newbies with open arms!
  - ed_blackburn 10y ago
    If you don't like maven, you're going to need a padded cell when you move to nuget.
    - hyperhopper 10y ago
      Paket makes dependencies a bit more reasonable, though https://fsprojects.github.io/Paket/ https://fsprojects.github.io/Paket/ But I agree, even Yarn/npm is better than the current state of dependencies for F#
      - ed_blackburn 10y ago
        Yep. Love Paket. Wholeheartedly recommend it.
    - lmm 10y ago
      I really like maven, so if there's an even more maven-ey thing around then sign me up.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
The sequence, structure and organization of those method signatures, in those 37 Java packages, were all GPL'd in the OpenJDK in 2007 by Sun. Regardless of whether API's can be copyrighted or not, Google had every right to use the code Sun GPL'd.
- Oletros 10y ago
  Google didn't use OpenJDK, they used Apache Harmony implementation
  - mjw1007 10y ago
    That's true, but the availability of OpenJDK (which, after all, Google have now switched to) weakens Oracle's argument on the "Effect on the market" factor.
    - dragandj 10y ago
      But OpenJDK is GPL. If Google licensed their Android Java as GPL, I guess they'd be OK. However, Google's Java is NOT GPL.
      - wtallis 10y ago
        If the "structure, sequence, and organization" of APIs is a copyrightable work in its own right, then couldn't Google make a GPL-licensed derivative SSO (Android's API) but put their implementation under a separate license? Has anyone done a legal analysis of how the GPL's copyleft provisions would apply to this new kind of copyrighted work?
        dragandj 10y ago
        No. Everything that gets linked to GPL has to be GPL.
        bitmapbrother 10y ago
anigbrowl 10y ago
This is turning into the Bleak House of copyright cases.
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
I'm really looking forward to the next 5 or 6 years, when all of the software patents created in the 90s and 2000's expire. It can't come soon enough.
- glenneroo 10y ago
  Or wait until some conglomerate lobbies hard enough to make software patents last as long as the copyright on Micky Mouse.
  - edraferi 10y ago
    Oh dear God please no
    - shp0ngle 10y ago
      Oh yes. Disney will never let Captain America or Mickey Mouse expire.
- binarymax 10y ago
  If only this had to do with patents. Oracle is claiming breach of copyright - which lasts over a hundred years.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    They originally claimed patents too, which is why this keeps going to the federal circuit instead of the 9th, who would have ended this silliness
    - 0xffff2 10y ago
      Huh? "The 9th [circuit]" is a Federal circuit court...
      - _delirium 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
diebir 10y ago
Oracle is set to repeat the trajectory of SCO. Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres. The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad", and when forced, it ends up with Postgres anyway. Oracle used to survive in significant part by the support of the "database administrators" class. This layer of support is also becoming thinner and older. There's essentially no way forward for Oracle. They can use hostage tactics to squeeze money out of exiting customers for a few more years, but otherwise they are irrelevant in the tech landscape. Except for Java, that is. The current tech is powered by Linux and there isn't really anything as big as Java on Linux. Python has been pretty significant and Go is making inroads, but the default is all Java. It is going to be interesting to watch how this will play out.
- gaius 10y ago
  This layer of support is also becoming thinner and older. It's not about age(ism) it's that Oracle stabbed them in the back by pushing cloud over on-prem where these guys (and gals) were employed. Now Oracle's biggest supporters are re-skilling to Postgres et al and stopped recommending Oracle to their organisations...
  - UseStrict 10y ago
    Agreed, we were stuck using Oracle at my job and it's an pain to maintain. Their cloud solutions are awful and on-premises suffered greatly. Their database engine might be solid, but everything around it was terrible. Things like PL/SQL being an unruly mess, even things like auto-incrementing columns were missing until the most recent release (12c R1). Coupled with insane licensing (arbitrarily changing the core factor for licensing) and auditing (soft limits, lots of hand-waving). It serves them right that they'd be losing out to Postgres.
  - tluyben2 10y ago
    This is what is important to note; Oracle screwed their consulting partners as much as they could by pulling support and 'dev' in-house and simply taking over contracts of big clients. My previous company was hurt quite a lot when Oracle ate BEA. I still talk to clients from back then who miss our support and products as now Oracle is bleeding them dry providing crap. But it seemed like a good idea at the time I guess.
cosatelo 10y ago
I really hope they win just because I hate using java for android development. Maybe if they win we'll swift will become the native language.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  Agreed, but I do find Kotlin[1] to be a good compromise in the meantime. 1 - https://kotlinlang.org https://kotlinlang.org
ptrptr 10y ago
I hope google just abandons java altogether if this is gonna continue.
- Jean-Philipe 10y ago
  It might put off not just Google, but also other companies using Java.
  - quantumhobbit 10y ago
    And I sort hope it does.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  While that could be a great direction I'm not so sure about its implementation. You'd have to create a new set of APIs accessible to another language to work with Android and then convince people to move codebases that have existed for years at this point to a new language. Granted they can work to make bridges, support both, etc but if the ultimate goal is to transition it's going to take a very, very, very long time. But I'd love to see what they would come up with for this hypothetical transition :)
- on_and_off 10y ago
  I suspect that they are preparing such a jump, at least as a trump card for Android. There are only a few details about this, but some googlers are working on Fuchsia, a new OS for constrained devices, with apps written with Flutter. Flutter can also be used to write Android apps by embedding its own runtime in the apps. In both cases, apps are written in Dart. This would be a huge transition though ... it means rewriting the apps from scratch in another language with a completely different tooling.
gime_tree_fiddy 10y ago
Maybe, this is a little bit off-topic. But anyone, who tried to use JetBrains IDEs on Ubuntu, might have faced the problem uglier font rendering with OpenJDK and the fix to it is to use the JDK from Oracle. I thought the different with OpenJDK was largely about the licensing. Anybody with some insight on it ?
- pjmlp 10y ago
  The closed source JDK has quite a few components that aren't the same as the OpenJDK. For example OpenJDK 9 will get a new Java 2D render, due to the differences between the two that were in use http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/265 http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/265
RandyRanderson 10y ago
Oracle is starting to remind me a lot of SCO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO/Linux_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO/Linux_controversies That hasn't worked out well for them. IMO, successful technology companies do not correlate with the value dollarsSpentOnLitigation/overallRevenue. I think selling ORCL and buying QQQ will be a profitable trade in the next 5 or so years.
shmerl 10y ago
Some just never learn. Oracle is a massive troll.
leotravis10 10y ago
Just as I thought this is over, Oracle just threw another curveball. I feel this will be upheld but never know with these courts.
iamnotlarry 10y ago
I got a sales call from Oracle out of the blue a few weeks ago. I have no idea what brought my company to their attention. I explained to the sales person that I am an Oracle-certified DBA with years of experience managing Oracle servers. I then told him there was absolutely no chance I would ever recommend switching to Oracle. In answer to his questions, I explained that I could not trust Oracle. I don't mean Oracle the RDBMS, I mean Oracle the company. He should be able to understand the need to trust your RDBMS. It would be crazy to use RDBMS software with you data if you didn't trust it. I think it would be crazy to trust a developer with your RDBMS if you don't trust the developer. I don't want to make sure I have the right lawyers and all my legal ducks in a row to battle Oracle for the heart and sole of my company (what company doesn't have data at its core these days?). I want to solve problems and create great things. I want partners in that effort who I trust. I don't trust Oracle. They do not want what is best for me. I don't want to end up as roadkill on there quest to be more profitable. I'd rather work with those who think that my success is their success.
sanatgersappa 10y ago
Fuchsia can't some soon enough.

281 points by nkurz 10y ago

Oracle is at that stage where they didn't invent or do anything right in the last 5 years but try to get money from lawsuits.

Thrillington 10y ago
Only 5 years? Seems like it's been longer than that
meddlepal 10y ago
From what I've been told by a contact in their database sales team is that there pipeline for on-premise licenses is drying up quickly but their SaaS business is doing well.
- derefr 10y ago
  That explains a lot about their recent behavior, e.g. dropping Solaris. If everyone is consuming their software over a network, it doesn't matter precisely what it's running on any more (so even if Oracle DBs could scale better on Solaris than on Linux or a BSD, a 1.3x SaaS shared-cluster size costs less than an OS development team.)
  - binarycrusader 10y ago
    They're not dropping Solaris. They're instead changing the release model: https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_moving_to_a https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_moving... Personally, I'd say this is similar to Microsoft's decisions around Windows 10.
    - jimnotgym 10y ago
      And that is what they call spin. Didn't they fire the people who write it?
      - binarycrusader 10y ago
        No, they did not. How do I know? Because I'm still working on Solaris almost nine years later along with many others. Same manager, same projects. Staffing levels in some areas was changed as was publicly announced. See also http://www.esteem.co.uk/news-events/oracle-solaris-whats-going http://www.esteem.co.uk/news-events/oracle-solaris-whats-goi... Disclaimer: these are my opinions and not those of my employer.
        jimnotgym 10y ago
        Sorry, it was reported that the job losses at Oracle were from the Solaris team. I read the memo from Oracle on Solaris 12 and was (and am) completely unconvinced by it, but maybe I am just cynical. I am still moving away from it as fast as I can convince the board to back me. Good luck on the Solaris team, some good things could come out of it (with some open source licensing). Oracle could do themselves some serious reputational favours by staying out of court.
- prokes 10y ago
  Just to add a little nuance - the difference is in flow vs stock of customers. Very few existing EBS customers are reimplementing in Cloud because of the time, cost, and loss of customizations. It doesn't make sense. New customers are being forced into Cloud by the Oracle sales team. The sales reps literally receive no compensation for on-prem (EBS) deals, and they must go through a lengthy approval process just to offer a prospect the on-prem solution. Thus everyone is being guided to Cloud, whether or not it is the right solution for the customer.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    > Very few existing EBS customers are reimplementing in Cloud because of the time, cost, and loss of customizations. Also, maybe Oracle's "lock your customers in and then extract as much profit as possible" history is guiding decisions? If there's a rearchitecture cost to migrate to cloud, then why would you do it with a company who already $&#@ed you over?
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    The exception is if they peddle a Sun hardware solution. They will be slobbering like a dog with a bone if you show any interest.
- sjwright 10y ago
  > pipeline for on-premise licenses Sorry for being a grammar nazi, but this one is a serious pet peeve. The singular of "premises" isn't "premise", it's "premises". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premises
  - meddlepal 10y ago
    I'm not sure that's correct. The pluralization is for licenses not on-premise. Either way "on-premises licenses" sounds weird so I'm likely to stick with "on-premise licenses" regardless. Sorry.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Premises (singular) is a location. He was on the premises. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/on%20premises https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/on%20premises Premise (singular) is a presupposition. The premise is that we can get this done in 3 weeks. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/premise https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/premise I agree, it sounds weird. I'd avoid it all together and use on-site. Edit to add: or, as uncle-comment (?) pointed out with the Wikipedia article, on-premises software is a thing. On-prem might be a good compromise, depending on your penchant for shortening like that.
    - WildUtah 10y ago
      Either way "on-premises licenses" sounds weird so I'm likely to stick with "on-premise licenses" regardless. Sorry. Downvoted for expressing contempt for the English language and common decency, but then failing to add in the obvious "irregardless."
  - csours 10y ago
    TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-premises_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-premises_software
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    Well, as a member of the post-WWII Stasi, I'd like to point out that English generally has no universally accepted authoritative form of the language to which you can persuasively appeal :)
- Maarten88 10y ago
  > ...pipeline for on-premise licenses is drying up quickly but their SaaS business is doing well... I hear they are desperately pushing new cloud offerings, but they are having lots of problems with customer retention, as their cloud technology is really not ready so they are actually just selling hosted versions of the existing products that lack any cost advantage.
  - toyg 10y ago
    > they are actually just selling hosted versions of the existing products Ha, if that were true, it wouldn't even be that bad. In the niche I work for, what they sell is not even as powerful as their existing on-premises product. Not that it matters: they simply won't sell or even develop new on-premises, so you either go to their crappy cloud services or you just migrate away. There are now entire companies based on "move your existing Oracle solutions to our product with the minimum fuss and enjoy real power, not a cut-down version of what you already had three years ago".
bogomipz 10y ago
This is actually not true. Their cloud offering is doing really well. There's some impressive figures here: http://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/09/15/2016/oracles-cloud-business-doing-well-older-businesses-arent http://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/09/15/2016/oracles-c...
- KirinDave 10y ago
  A more trickily written article you could not find. Oracle is busting their humps to get major ESC on their clouds but they've missed the chance on some of the really outlandishly big fish. Time will tell if they manage to met BofA or a similar ultrabig FI and that could be called a success, but short of that all they can do is pay folks to write wrongheaded quarterly analysis and say "gosh isn't this better than Amazon?" Which is totally absurd. Comically so. And from the perspective of actually using their tech, you're better off scooping a mug of old compost and dumping it in a sizzling pan of oil and letting the oil spatter burn you. It will be a more enjoyable experience.
- empath75 10y ago
  Growth rate is a nonsense metric. If you're starting from nothing and invest a shitload of money in sales you'll have an amazing growth rate. IBM and Oracle are both way behind azure, google and aws.
  - parthdesai 10y ago
    I have a friend who works at IBM he tells me that IBM uses Google cloud for some of their stuff. The irony when you are a cloud provider but use another service.
    - yellowapple 10y ago
      I mean, that in and of itself ain't really ironic. Lots of cloud providers out there just resell abstractions around / improvements upon other cloud providers. Cloud66 is one with which I'm familiar; their whole business model revolves around wrapping AWS with CloudFoundry-like deployment mechanisms specifically for Ruby codebases (and Docker containers, but I never interacted with them in that capacity).
claudiug 10y ago
they have graal, sulong, I also cloud is doing fine :)

pikachuisntcool 10y ago

I hope Oracle wins. The sooner Java dies, the better.

grenoire 10y ago
Are you that hateful of Java that you are blind to the implications of an Oracle win? It won't be just Java 'dying.'
- pikachuisntcool 10y ago
  Our laws governing software are so fundamentally broken already lol. It doesn't matter anymore.
  - taeric 10y ago
    This is not helpful. Specifically, petulance will not lead to improvement. To that end, do you have any suggestions on making things better? Do you contribute to any organizations that are trying?
- technofiend 10y ago
  Let's assume Oracle wins on appeal... What's next? Is everyone suddenly writing .Net code? Or are we left to find languages with lapsed copyrights? Fortran IV and Snobol are the new hotness! Everyone in to the pool!
  - bsg75 10y ago
    Languages without a corporate owner.
    - coldpie 10y ago
      JavaScript is right out. There's such a mish-mash of API owners there that it will give decades of court cases from copyright trolls. This is one of the most important tech cases in history. Oracle is on a fast-track to destroying the software industry with it.

snarfy 10y ago

The entire software industry should be boycotting Oracle over this case. If they win it will ruin software development in the US.

TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
Except that Oracle has become so successful because they've captured the largest customer(s) of all: the US federal government.
- gohbgl 10y ago
  Well isn't that a coincidence. Extracting money through state granted limited monopoly rights and lobbying for big government contracts at the same time. Oracle is really living the crony capitalist dream.
ddebernardy 10y ago
One coyld also argue the opposite: if Oracle wins, lawyers will start burning the software industry to the ground to an extent such that US lawmakers will be forced to reform copyright and patent laws.

koolba 10y ago

Is there anyone that's not on Oracle's payroll that sides with them on this case?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
paulddraper 10y ago
Microsoft probably wouldn't mind Oracle winning.
- breakingcups 10y ago
  Someone made a great point about the WSL (Linux) layer in Windows in this thread.
- jpkeisala 10y ago
  They would be the real winners since it would slap both Google and Oracle.
ktRolster 10y ago
You aren't going to like the answer to that question, but the appeals court seems to favor Oracle in this case. They specifically said that Oracle had a strong position, but that they were required to give Google a chance to present full evidence on the fair use issue.
ddebernardy 10y ago
I'm suspicious that Oracle winning would be such a bad thing in the long term. Lawyers would go nuts and start hurting IT companies, for sure. But the bleeding of angry voters who lost their jobs or their millions would then hopefully convince US lawmakers to reform their country's inane IP and patent laws.

golfer 10y ago

Is Oracle the biggest troll in Silicon Valley right now? Can't think of anyone else that would claim the title. Maybe Theranos.

anonymous7777 10y ago
Oracle invested in Theranos
ultrahate 10y ago
At least Oracle has actual products though. I don't wanna stick up for Oracle by any means, but comparing them with theranos just ain't right.
koolba 10y ago
> Is Oracle the biggest troll in Silicon Valley right now? Can't think of anyone else that would claim the title. Maybe Theranos. I'm not aware of Theranos being a troll. Fraudster for sure, but troll has a different meaning.

ryanobjc 10y ago

Who has better connections with Trump? Sadly to say, that is not an irrelevant fact anymore. Trump is clearly the kind of president that would reach in to legal rulings he's paid not to like.

lazugod 10y ago
Why would he care about two companies he doesn't own? I don't think this is a big concern.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Oracle's CEO is on his transition team, and Oracle is one of the few big tech companies to not publicly support the legal challenge to the travel ban.
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
Oracle does: "Oracle's clout will come in part from the presence of its CEO, Safra Catz, who did not join the pro-Hillary Clinton chorus of other Silicon Valley honchos, and who is now working on Trump's transition team. " (http://fortune.com/2017/01/17/oracle-trump/ http://fortune.com/2017/01/17/oracle-trump/)
paulddraper 10y ago
What specifically could he do?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

exabrial 10y ago

Another thought too: Oracle kicking the hornet's nest on this may end up being a "good thing". Their verdict was dubious at best, they might get overturned and lose even more ground and $.

Spivak 10y ago

Okay, either I'm crazy or everyone else is. Assuming the court isn't trying to set a new precedent with regards to software it seems like Oracle should have easily won this case. There is an argument to be made that APIs shouldn't be copyrightable but surely it's not fair use -- Google's use of Java doesn't even come close to meeting the criteria.

technofiend 10y ago
This is tricky because if you declare any API no matter how trivial copyrightable then the first guy to copyright a function to compute sqrt, tan, atan, etc wins. And if you can't copyright trivial interfaces then the question becomes where the line is drawn. There's far more at stake than Oracle trying to squeeze money out of Google.
- seibelj 10y ago
  Someone should write a program that generates all possible function names and argument types and declares them copyrighted, then release them all to the public.
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    That list wouldn't be copyrightable, since it contains no creative elements.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - Spivak 10y ago
    You could, by a similar method, generate all possible images but that doesn't mean you would be able to copyright them all. The creative element would become the act of identifying specific images within your set with artistic merit -- those would be copyrightable.
    - 10y ago

technofiend 10y ago

Although Oracle denied they bought Sun just to sue Google you have to wonder since they are claiming "billions" in damages and only paid $7.4 billion after IBM dropped their $7.0 billion bid. This purchase was such a seminal moment for the industry you have to wonder what an alternative history would look like if say IBM or Google made the purchase not to mention some dark horses like Amazon or Red hat.

snarf21 10y ago
They absolutely bought Sun just to sue. I used to know someone personally involved on the case. Oracle is a horrible company. To be fair, Google's "don't be evil" is also a bunch of crap. They've done their fair share of shady and exploitive things.
- apathy 10y ago
  Google wasn't evil, at least not before the IPO (which is when I worked there). People took the slogan seriously and based decisions on it. I don't know what happened.
  - Teever 10y ago
    The people that intended to do evil merely waited until those who didn't intend to do so finished implementing the things they were implementing. Then they used that sound infrastructure to do evil with, as they had intended to do all along. Those people that took the slogan seriously were used.
    - rifung 10y ago
      Those are very damning accusations. Care to give some examples?
      - shard972 10y ago
        I think Google's quiet transformation from a search company to a data company that is trying to learn everything about everyone is the prime example. Google buzz was also one of the early moves that showed this, opting everyone who uses gmail into a social network was pretty evil if you ask me.

pikachuisntcool 10y ago

Yeah. I got a suggestion. Don't join the industry. And if you're still in college, don't major in Computer Science Edit: Got hellbanned lol. @gregnoire: HN is a giant circlejerk You prolly think this site is so great and intellectual just because it has ycombinator in the URL. Internet comments fundamentally suck @DanBC: Pretty sure I got hellbanned. It's been an hour, still can't make new comments @sjwright: The medium is the message. Text typed on a psuedo-anonymous HTML page never leads to substantial discussion. This was obvious back in 2000s but I guess since the internet has regressed so much, most people turn a blind eye to it. Fuck, honestly, why am I even writing this? This is hypocrisy in its biggest form. I need to stop writing in these stupid comment sections

grenoire 10y ago
Your account is a month old: If you missed the memo, off-topic and arrogant comments are always voted down. Edit: I see you took the part with "HN has become a giant circlejerk anyway" down.
sjwright 10y ago
> Internet comments fundamentally suck No, internet comments are fundamentally sound. Unfortunately, a few people fundamentally suck and ruin them for the rest of us.
DanBC 10y ago
> Got hellbanned HN rarely hellbans, and not in cases like this. I'm not a mod and I'm not speaking for them, but I'm pretty sure they usually warn first, and that they announce bans. You haven't been banned. You have been i) heavily downvoted and ii) not upvoted.
paulddraper 10y ago
You could check out the YouTube community. Might be more to your liking.
sctb 10y ago
You weren't hellbanned, but you had violated the guidelines sufficiently to get enough downvotes to become subject to some of the same limitations. We've now banned this account for only posting uncivilly and unsubstantively. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13624326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13624326 and marked it off-topic.

moomin 10y ago

Let's slap a great big IANAL on this before I start: The fair use decision was wrong. It relied on a fundamental misunderstanding of the term transformative where the use of the code was considered rather than merely the implementation. So Oracle has a huge case here. Moreover, practically it doesn't matter. Even if fair use is established in this case, the door has been left wide open to hordes of API copyright trolls. If you thought patent trolls were bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. If you care about the economy, the only sensible outcome would be that API surfaces aren't subject to copyright. Sadly the horse has bolted a long time ago.

Retric 10y ago
There is a long history of the API around chips not being copywritable. EX: The IBM clones needed 1 chip that at the time was not off the shelf. So, people figured out what it did then implemented that. Method signatures would appear to represent the same situation because the chip needs to respond correctly not just respond to those inputs.
iopq 10y ago
If implementing an interface is against copyright, then every Java program is infringing on Oracle's copyright.
- jolux 10y ago
  http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/googles-fair-use-defense-against-oracle.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/googles-fair-use-defense-...
  - Oletros 10y ago
    I don't think that Florian Mueller is an unbiased source, he was paid by Oracle while the trial was happening
    - jolux 10y ago
      Well if you could point me to an unbiased source trying to argue the other side of this question, then sure. I really want to know both sides of this issue and it's nearly impossible to find someone separating the quintessential geek love for Google and geek hatred for Oracle from the facts of the case other than Mueller. Honestly I'm all for liberalizing copyrights and fair use but it makes me mad to see Google going around ripping off everyone else's tech and then claiming fair use when they get sued. The fair use defense is not meant for multi-billion dollar multinational corporations that tried to shirk licensing by violating copyrights. Furthermore I find it particularly hilarious that everyone thinks Google fights against copyright with the purest of intentions when it seems transparent that less restrictive copyright is in their direct business interests.

danjoc 10y ago

How does OpenJDK stay out of violation if Oracle wins? Doesn't OpenJDK basically copy the API as well?

alcari 10y ago
OpenJDK was created by Sun.
tlogan 10y ago
Code for OpenJDK can run unmodified on Oracle Java. Code for Android Apps contain unrelated public APIs so cannot run on Oracle Java.
- wtallis 10y ago
  What does copyright law care about software compatibility?
punctilio 10y ago
Oracle owns copyright on OpenJDK, so it can't 'violate'. Maybe more precisely, if you regard the API in question as copyrightable, Oracle has clearly licensed it under GPLv2 plus the Classpath Exception. Also, the issue of copyrightability of the Java SE API has already been definitively decided in this case, in Oracle's favor.

faragon 10y ago

Oracle should stop that, in my opinion. That attitude could kill Java in the long term.

CydeWeys 10y ago
One wonders how much the taint of Java factored into the decision to invent Go.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  Not much actually, the developers of Go mainly wanted shorter compile times than C++ offered.
  - thomasahle 10y ago
    Pretty sure different people wanted different things. Some people certainly wanted better concurrency.
    - AsyncAwait 10y ago
      Sure, that too. Both of which however had little to do with Java.
- twblalock 10y ago
  My impression is that the Go team had two targets, both based on languages in common use at Google: C++ programmers, and programmers using languages like Python who wanted more type safety but didn't want to use a language with a massive ecosystem.
  - emiliobumachar 10y ago
    I might have misunderstood the last part. Why would anyone not want a massive ecosystem with their language? You can always ignore the ecosystem while retaining the option to change your mind later.
- 10y ago

niftich 10y ago

I wish intent and end result counted more strongly. Andoid's compatibility isn't transitive: once code goes through the Android build pipeline to produce an Android Application it cannot be meaningfully used in the context of Oracle Java; it's a one-way transformation to remain "talent-compatible" with a large pool of Java developers and reuse the base of Java libraries. Projects like OpenJDK and WINE are efforts to provide an alternate execution environment for code that is mutually beneficial to the ecosystem, although perhaps not the wallets of the original owner. A commercial venture ought to qualify here if the intent is to compete on equal footing -- code targeting OpenJDK can run unmodified on Oracle Java, code targeting WINE can run unmodified on Win32, thereby not limiting the original creator's rights. However, Android Apps contain unrelated public APIs as part of the exported code, and a full packaged Android App cannot meaningfully run on Oracle JDK, despite portions of the standard library looking and behaving alike. This fragments the ecosystem and essentially allows Android to benefit from the works of the Java rightholders without making those contributions equally as useful to Oracle Java itself.

orangecat 10y ago
once code goes through the Android build pipeline to produce an Android Application it cannot be meaningfully used in the context of Oracle Java Android apps typically have an MVC-like structure where the UI uses Android-specific APIs, but the model is straight Java. As an example, I created an Android game and later decided that I wanted to make a level editor as a desktop Java application. I was able to reuse the model code in Oracle's JDK with no changes, even though I didn't have that use in mind when I originally wrote it. a full packaged Android App cannot meaningfully run on Oracle JDK That's true of any platform-specific Java API.
- saurik 10y ago
  Right: and if you remember, the entire concept of a "platform-specific Java API" is what was at stake when Microsoft lost this very similar lawsuit when Sun sued them over J++. Either what Google is doing is horrible or what Microsoft did shouldn't have been a problem :/.

rbjorklin 10y ago

Curious to hear your reasons for calling Red Hat a dark horse. (Which I presume is some kind of slur/holds a derogatory meaning)

bradyd 10y ago
It's actually not derogatory: "A dark horse is a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort, or a contestant that seems unlikely to succeed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_horse
champlinRyan 10y ago
Dark horse in this context means other companies unlikely to actually buy it, or win the bidding war. Its not any sort of slur that I'm aware of.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
halestock 10y ago
Per wikipedia: "A dark horse is a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort, or a contestant that seems unlikely to succeed." In this case I would imagine it's because Red Hat is pretty tiny compared to IBM/Google/Oracle and could not put up a comparable amount of money for the purchase.
ben_jones 10y ago
Dark Horse is the horse in the race nobody thinks has a chance of winning, but comes out near the front in the final seconds (surprising everybody). You could've just Googled it.
IgneousPneuma 10y ago
dark horse just means not a main favored candidate
mindcrime 10y ago
"Dark horse" isn't a slur or pejorative in general. It's roughly equivalent to "long shot" or "underdog" or something like that.

throwaway30121 10y ago

Oracle is such a shit company. There are still some great hackers there but Larry Ellison is an asshole, and I don't envy anyone who has to work for him even indirectly. "Left Oracle's Java business in tatters" eh? Where was their mobile OS? Their Dalvik? The wounds to Java have all been self-inflicted. If they succeed in copyrighting the API then where does this leave OpenJDK? Operating at the mercy of Larry fucking Ellison, which means not at all. I've got 17 years of Java experience under my belt, but frankly with Docker + Kubernetes for deployment and new system languages like Rust and Go I'm thinking it's time to jump ship. Or even to C# since apparently MS got the memo on Open Source (not to mention the need for integrated platform modularization - no more Maven hell! Yay!).

ghuntley 10y ago
fsharp |> welcomes all alienated Java veterans and newbies with open arms!
- ed_blackburn 10y ago
  If you don't like maven, you're going to need a padded cell when you move to nuget.
  - hyperhopper 10y ago
    Paket makes dependencies a bit more reasonable, though https://fsprojects.github.io/Paket/ https://fsprojects.github.io/Paket/ But I agree, even Yarn/npm is better than the current state of dependencies for F#
    - ed_blackburn 10y ago
      Yep. Love Paket. Wholeheartedly recommend it.
  - lmm 10y ago
    I really like maven, so if there's an even more maven-ey thing around then sign me up.

bitmapbrother 10y ago

The sequence, structure and organization of those method signatures, in those 37 Java packages, were all GPL'd in the OpenJDK in 2007 by Sun. Regardless of whether API's can be copyrighted or not, Google had every right to use the code Sun GPL'd.

Oletros 10y ago
Google didn't use OpenJDK, they used Apache Harmony implementation
- mjw1007 10y ago
  That's true, but the availability of OpenJDK (which, after all, Google have now switched to) weakens Oracle's argument on the "Effect on the market" factor.
  - dragandj 10y ago
    But OpenJDK is GPL. If Google licensed their Android Java as GPL, I guess they'd be OK. However, Google's Java is NOT GPL.
    - wtallis 10y ago
      If the "structure, sequence, and organization" of APIs is a copyrightable work in its own right, then couldn't Google make a GPL-licensed derivative SSO (Android's API) but put their implementation under a separate license? Has anyone done a legal analysis of how the GPL's copyleft provisions would apply to this new kind of copyrighted work?
      - dragandj 10y ago
        No. Everything that gets linked to GPL has to be GPL.
        bitmapbrother 10y ago

anigbrowl 10y ago

This is turning into the Bleak House of copyright cases.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago

I'm really looking forward to the next 5 or 6 years, when all of the software patents created in the 90s and 2000's expire. It can't come soon enough.

glenneroo 10y ago
Or wait until some conglomerate lobbies hard enough to make software patents last as long as the copyright on Micky Mouse.
- edraferi 10y ago
  Oh dear God please no
  - shp0ngle 10y ago
    Oh yes. Disney will never let Captain America or Mickey Mouse expire.
binarymax 10y ago
If only this had to do with patents. Oracle is claiming breach of copyright - which lasts over a hundred years.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  They originally claimed patents too, which is why this keeps going to the federal circuit instead of the 9th, who would have ended this silliness
  - 0xffff2 10y ago
    Huh? "The 9th [circuit]" is a Federal circuit court...
    - _delirium 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

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diebir 10y ago

Oracle is set to repeat the trajectory of SCO. Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres. The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad", and when forced, it ends up with Postgres anyway. Oracle used to survive in significant part by the support of the "database administrators" class. This layer of support is also becoming thinner and older. There's essentially no way forward for Oracle. They can use hostage tactics to squeeze money out of exiting customers for a few more years, but otherwise they are irrelevant in the tech landscape. Except for Java, that is. The current tech is powered by Linux and there isn't really anything as big as Java on Linux. Python has been pretty significant and Go is making inroads, but the default is all Java. It is going to be interesting to watch how this will play out.

gaius 10y ago
This layer of support is also becoming thinner and older. It's not about age(ism) it's that Oracle stabbed them in the back by pushing cloud over on-prem where these guys (and gals) were employed. Now Oracle's biggest supporters are re-skilling to Postgres et al and stopped recommending Oracle to their organisations...
- UseStrict 10y ago
  Agreed, we were stuck using Oracle at my job and it's an pain to maintain. Their cloud solutions are awful and on-premises suffered greatly. Their database engine might be solid, but everything around it was terrible. Things like PL/SQL being an unruly mess, even things like auto-incrementing columns were missing until the most recent release (12c R1). Coupled with insane licensing (arbitrarily changing the core factor for licensing) and auditing (soft limits, lots of hand-waving). It serves them right that they'd be losing out to Postgres.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  This is what is important to note; Oracle screwed their consulting partners as much as they could by pulling support and 'dev' in-house and simply taking over contracts of big clients. My previous company was hurt quite a lot when Oracle ate BEA. I still talk to clients from back then who miss our support and products as now Oracle is bleeding them dry providing crap. But it seemed like a good idea at the time I guess.

cosatelo 10y ago

I really hope they win just because I hate using java for android development. Maybe if they win we'll swift will become the native language.

AsyncAwait 10y ago
Agreed, but I do find Kotlin[1] to be a good compromise in the meantime. 1 - https://kotlinlang.org https://kotlinlang.org

ptrptr 10y ago

I hope google just abandons java altogether if this is gonna continue.

Jean-Philipe 10y ago
It might put off not just Google, but also other companies using Java.
- quantumhobbit 10y ago
  And I sort hope it does.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
While that could be a great direction I'm not so sure about its implementation. You'd have to create a new set of APIs accessible to another language to work with Android and then convince people to move codebases that have existed for years at this point to a new language. Granted they can work to make bridges, support both, etc but if the ultimate goal is to transition it's going to take a very, very, very long time. But I'd love to see what they would come up with for this hypothetical transition :)
on_and_off 10y ago
I suspect that they are preparing such a jump, at least as a trump card for Android. There are only a few details about this, but some googlers are working on Fuchsia, a new OS for constrained devices, with apps written with Flutter. Flutter can also be used to write Android apps by embedding its own runtime in the apps. In both cases, apps are written in Dart. This would be a huge transition though ... it means rewriting the apps from scratch in another language with a completely different tooling.

gime_tree_fiddy 10y ago

Maybe, this is a little bit off-topic. But anyone, who tried to use JetBrains IDEs on Ubuntu, might have faced the problem uglier font rendering with OpenJDK and the fix to it is to use the JDK from Oracle. I thought the different with OpenJDK was largely about the licensing. Anybody with some insight on it ?

pjmlp 10y ago
The closed source JDK has quite a few components that aren't the same as the OpenJDK. For example OpenJDK 9 will get a new Java 2D render, due to the differences between the two that were in use http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/265 http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/265

RandyRanderson 10y ago

Oracle is starting to remind me a lot of SCO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO/Linux_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO/Linux_controversies That hasn't worked out well for them. IMO, successful technology companies do not correlate with the value dollarsSpentOnLitigation/overallRevenue. I think selling ORCL and buying QQQ will be a profitable trade in the next 5 or so years.

shmerl 10y ago

Some just never learn. Oracle is a massive troll.

leotravis10 10y ago

Just as I thought this is over, Oracle just threw another curveball. I feel this will be upheld but never know with these courts.

iamnotlarry 10y ago

I got a sales call from Oracle out of the blue a few weeks ago. I have no idea what brought my company to their attention. I explained to the sales person that I am an Oracle-certified DBA with years of experience managing Oracle servers. I then told him there was absolutely no chance I would ever recommend switching to Oracle. In answer to his questions, I explained that I could not trust Oracle. I don't mean Oracle the RDBMS, I mean Oracle the company. He should be able to understand the need to trust your RDBMS. It would be crazy to use RDBMS software with you data if you didn't trust it. I think it would be crazy to trust a developer with your RDBMS if you don't trust the developer. I don't want to make sure I have the right lawyers and all my legal ducks in a row to battle Oracle for the heart and sole of my company (what company doesn't have data at its core these days?). I want to solve problems and create great things. I want partners in that effort who I trust. I don't trust Oracle. They do not want what is best for me. I don't want to end up as roadkill on there quest to be more profitable. I'd rather work with those who think that my success is their success.

sanatgersappa 10y ago

Fuchsia can't some soon enough.