11 ms·

This multi-year legal battle seem like insanity to me. What does Oracle, who practically prints money, expect to get out of this other than exercising a fleet

This multi-year legal battle seem like insanity to me. What does Oracle, who practically prints money, expect to get out of this other than exercising a fleet of expensive lawyers? At best the case was always iffy and even if they "win" it's unclear what that really means for them given the inevitable subsequent legal maneuvers. Even more puzzling is how are they making the argument that Google has, in any way, harmed their business? It's just mind boggling. A slip-and-fall insurance scam makes more rational sense to me.

Zanni 8y ago
Not defending Oracle here, but the fact that the decision in Google's favor has been overturned twice suggests Oracle's not 100% crazy to pursue this. And the upside is mandatory licensing fees for every Android device.
- YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
  > And the upside is mandatory licensing fees for every Android device. Sorry, how could that be an upside? It's plain, zero-sum rent-seeking. I.e. only an upside if you happen to collect the rent.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    I.e. an upside for Oracle.
    - Zanni 8y ago
      Exactly. Just pointing out the rationale for Oracle, not arguing the merits.
      - YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
        Yeah, sorry, my bad.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > It's plain, zero-sum rent-seeking. It is zero-sum iff the benefit to Oracle is exactly equal to the deadweight loss imposed by the tax. I tried to calculate this in the simplest econ 101 way, and got a surprising result. I would appreciate someone else commenting... Assume that the schedule of supply and the schedule of demand are straight lines. We have three groups: (1) purchasers of phones; (2) vendors of phones; (3) Oracle. In the absence of a tax imposed by Oracle, an equilibrium quantity Q_e of phones trade at an equilibrium price P_e. [1] This generates gains from trade, producer and consumer surplus, equal to the area circumscribed by the schedule of supply, the schedule of demand, and the line Q = 0. When Oracle imposes a fee on phone sales of value F, the price and quantity-traded of phones adjust. The new quantity traded Q_f is lower than Q_e, and the new price P_f is higher than P_e. The gains from trade are now the trapezoid circumscribed by the line Q = 0, the line Q = Q_f, the supply schedule, and the demand schedule. The missing gains, the deadweight loss, are equal to the triangle circumscribed by the line Q = Q_f, the supply schedule, and the demand schedule. Oracle receives F×Q_f in fees, a benefit equal to F×Q_f. The deadweight loss is a triangle with base F and height (Q_e - Q_f). It is therefore equal to (F×Q_e - F×Q_f)/2. Balancing the gains to Oracle against the deadweight loss, we see that they are equal when Q_f is one third of Q_e, or in other words when the fee is so massive that it cuts the quantity traded by 66%. If Q_f is larger than that, the benefits to Oracle exceed the loss imposed on purchasers and vendors. This result would seem to imply that we could improve the efficiency of the marketplace by allowing random third parties to impose large taxes on pretty much any good. This is hard to believe. Where did I go wrong? [1] In reality, there are a variety of models available at a variety of price points. This doesn't affect the problem I have with my result, though it is probably relevant to the phone market in specific.
    - wbl 8y ago
      If the fee is per phone it adjusts the supply schedule by moving it towards a lower quantity as a higher consumer price is required to compensate the producers at the same amount.
      - thaumasiotes 8y ago
        The schedule doesn't change. The quantity traded does, but I mentioned that: > When Oracle imposes a fee on phone sales of value F, the price and quantity-traded of phones adjust. The new quantity traded Q_f is lower than Q_e, and the new price P_f is higher than P_e.
  - bananamulch 8y ago
    It's certainly a downside for society, because there are people who otherwise would have purchased android phones that can't afford them because of the oracle tax.
    - toyg 8y ago
      “More phones” is not necessarily good “for society”. For the economy, maybe. The two concepts are not the same.
- monocasa 8y ago
  Or that Oracle is politically connected to the court of appeals for the federal circuit, hence why a patent appeals court is claiming jusdiction over a copyright matter, and making it's own copyright case law in contradiction with the normal copyright appeals court case law to begin with.
  - swarnie_ 8y ago
    The US court system is so corrupt you can just buy your way to appeal victories? That's essentially what you're saying here?
    - nikanj 8y ago
      Or so complex, you can always find a new kangaroo court to reopen your case. Cases tend to run back and forth until one party gives up, or goes bankrupt. Lords, even SCO v Linux is still going.
      - allcentury 8y ago
        Not in this case, if they're at the supreme court, everyone has exhausted all appeals.
        bryanrasmussen 8y ago
        The supreme court can send it back to a lower court with instructions, they can also decide on the case but note that their decision would not cover particular arguments if they were made.
        monocasa 8y ago
        Nah, the Supreme Court already took a quick look at this case already, and here we are again.
rhinoceraptor 8y ago
I mean, it’s Oracle, what else would you expect? Their entire purpose is to make money, they’ve never had any prestense of any higher purpose.
- Proven 8y ago
  such as “don’t be evil”
- scarface74 8y ago
  And how is that different from every other company - including Google.
  - rhinoceraptor 8y ago
    Other companies at least have some notion that they should be helping society or something like that, and occasionally they do. Oracle has a long track record of being evil.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      There was a Freakonomics episode about just that. Studies show that most companies show of altruism is just social signaling and that people are willing to work for less if they think their company is doing good. It’s also cheap marketing.
      - jammygit 8y ago
        How did they prove it?
        scarface74 8y ago
        http://freakonomics.com/podcast/corporate-social-responsibility/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/corporate-social-responsibil...
keyle 8y ago
The only ones winning this are the lawyers, salivating at the idea of this blob of mess, playing on words beyond recognition and way above any common sense. I saw a lawyer's office earlier. Big logo said "We fight for fair". Sure, per minute.
- hopefulengineer 8y ago
  lawyer's are cancer. It amazes me that nearly everybody hates them yet people continuously vote for them politically. Why are people shocked that their politicians lie to them, considering they lie and twist words for a living as a lawyer?
  - YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
    I have used lawyers to defend my contract rights against people that try to weasel out of paying up for some services. How about we don't go black and white on lawyers (go case by case instead), to appreciate the complexity of human interactions and the corresponding complexity of determining who's right?
    - AmericanChopper 8y ago
      My lawyer is fantastic. On the few occasions I’ve used his services, he’s advocated passionately for me, and given me great advice. He cares personally about his clients and I don’t regret a single dollar I’ve spent on his invoices.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - retr0grad3 8y ago
    My wife's a lawyer but she's a Taurus.
    - JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
      Ford?
bitL 8y ago
To map out what is legal/not legal/enforceable, and use that knowledge for e.g. replicating somebody else's API for drop-in replacements (AWS?) etc.
gcbw2 8y ago
It's business admin 101, really. The unfair advantage IBM/Oracle/SAP et al have, is that they are entrenched. It is infinitely cheaper to develop things in-house or with smaller software shops, But then you won't be able to interface with your factory's material providers' system, or other Banks, etc because they only talk some protocol that is copyrighted/trade secret of those firms. They are not fighting google. Google just happened to enter in the cross fire and have deep pockets to fire back! What oracle (and others like IBM behind the scenes, via DC Federal Circuit "lobbying") are fighting back, is the freedom of smaller software shops to provide their clients with fully compatible offerings to their money cows. This is the only time someone conscious of freedom and privacy should be rooting for Google.
- fsloth 8y ago
  " is the freedom of smaller software shops to provide their clients with fully compatible offerings to their money cows." Thanks for this summary! I had no idea this was the underlying reason. I feel silly now because I thought it was just some weird obsession of someone in Oracle's C-suite.
jrochkind1 8y ago
Perhaps they hope to get a cut of every android phone sold?
dekhn 8y ago
they expect to get google to pay billions in licensing fees. it's worth spending millions to make billions.
kadendogthing 8y ago
Because you can't just take other software and change the license on it. The industry's, justified, hate for Oracle is blinding them to the larger underlying concern. Many people forget that Oracle technically won the legality of the last case, hence why we're here. They just weren't awarded damages. Even the judge didn't buy Google's arguments about open source or compatibility concerns.
- monocasa 8y ago
  They only got that ruling by appealing a copyright question to the patent appeals court, who for some reason decided to just go off into the weeds and set their own precedent in open conflict with the appeals court these questions would normally go to. That's why all the rulings keep getting overruled. The lower court judge is sane (he's actually awesome, you should check out Alsup) and keeps ruling in accordance with established case law, and the appeals court (who shouldn't even be answering copyright questions) keeps going 'nah, all that case law is stupid'. Hence why this should go to the supreme court who'll most likely tell the court of appeals for the federal circuit that they can't just go make their own law.
  - kadendogthing 8y ago
    >They only got that ruling by appealing a copyright question to the patent appeals court, Read the original ruling.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      I've read all the rulings, what's your actual point?
      - kadendogthing 8y ago
        >They only got that ruling by appealing a copyright question to the patent appeals court, That's not true and doesn't really fit within any legal timeline. That's my point.
toyg 8y ago
Oracle doesn’t actually print money. They are cash-rich but are struggling to convert long-suffering customers from on-prem products to their cloud equivalents. Nobody trusts them; you can sort-of deal with a crocodile that shows up once a year to collect, but when you go SaaS you are basically walking by the crocodile all the time, hoping it won’t bite you with higher prices at a day’s notice. And their support is not very good either, which again is more critical in saas scenarios than on-prem. In this situation, a significant new revenue stream ( an Android tax) is definitely worth fighting for. And Ellison loves lawyers; he even sued to compete in the America’s Cup...
- nzealand 8y ago
  Well, to be fair, suing has a long and storied Americas Cup tradition. New Zealand sued to challenge Dennis Conner off cycle, and when Conner pitted a cat against a mono hull, New Zealand sued again.
  - masonic 8y ago
    Wasn't that in reaction to the previous America's cup challenge where the Australians introduced a winged keel that had previously been disallowed from 3-meter boat competitions? IIRC, both were allowed because the charter gave the challenger the power to set constraints.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > In this situation, a significant new revenue stream ( an Android tax) is definitely worth fighting for. Except that there is no hope of that ever happening. Even if Oracle won in a big way, then Google would eat the one-time cost of deprecating the Java API on Android, similar to what Apple did between Objective C and Swift. There is no sustainable revenue stream there.
  - danjac 8y ago
    So Objective-C -> Swift, Java -> Go?
willart4food 8y ago
> exercising a fleet of expensive lawyers? They are maintaining/improving the barrier to entry.
nradov 8y ago
There are advantages to controlling a dominant platform. Even if Oracle doesn't get much direct revenue from Java they can use it to block strategic moves by competitors. While I think this lawsuit is terrible and I hope Google wins the legal case, from a moral standpoint they kind of acted like assholes back in 2005 when they decided to fragment the Java ecosystem rather than negotiating a licensing deal with Sun. So now we have real Java in multiple JDK / JRE implementations plus this weird pseudo-Java offshoot in Android. The language used by Android looks a lot like Java but it hasn't kept up with improvements in the core language and standard library, so now developers can't reliably reuse code across those platforms. That harms the software industry as a whole.
- hyperpallium 8y ago
  They were foresighted enough to see mobile as a key platform, and critical for long-term advertising... but not foresighted enough to try to work with Sun, to make a subset of java giving reasonable performance/efficiency on mobile back then. Probably because Sun went along with it, so why bother?
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Sun went along with it because they were out of money to sue and Google knew it.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      If it were that cut and dry they'd be able to find the money. At a bare minimum a law firm would pick them up on a contingency.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        If Google actually cared about not being sued by Oracle or eventually IBM, they should have bought Sun and do whatever they wanted with Java. Now they deserve everything they will get out of this.
pjmlp 8y ago
Having the possibility to actually use any library from Maven Central Android, instead of Android Java(J++).
tamrix 8y ago
Lawyers be getting paid.
sametmax 8y ago
It's just a way to say "hey, see what happens if we get angry ?" so that smaller players will always try to comply to their ludricrous future claims. You can see that even if they will spend millions, knowing to loose, against a giant like google, for a reason that ridicoulous, a tiny business won't stand a chance.

Zanni 8y ago

Not defending Oracle here, but the fact that the decision in Google's favor has been overturned twice suggests Oracle's not 100% crazy to pursue this. And the upside is mandatory licensing fees for every Android device.

YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
> And the upside is mandatory licensing fees for every Android device. Sorry, how could that be an upside? It's plain, zero-sum rent-seeking. I.e. only an upside if you happen to collect the rent.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  I.e. an upside for Oracle.
  - Zanni 8y ago
    Exactly. Just pointing out the rationale for Oracle, not arguing the merits.
    - YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
      Yeah, sorry, my bad.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > It's plain, zero-sum rent-seeking. It is zero-sum iff the benefit to Oracle is exactly equal to the deadweight loss imposed by the tax. I tried to calculate this in the simplest econ 101 way, and got a surprising result. I would appreciate someone else commenting... Assume that the schedule of supply and the schedule of demand are straight lines. We have three groups: (1) purchasers of phones; (2) vendors of phones; (3) Oracle. In the absence of a tax imposed by Oracle, an equilibrium quantity Q_e of phones trade at an equilibrium price P_e. [1] This generates gains from trade, producer and consumer surplus, equal to the area circumscribed by the schedule of supply, the schedule of demand, and the line Q = 0. When Oracle imposes a fee on phone sales of value F, the price and quantity-traded of phones adjust. The new quantity traded Q_f is lower than Q_e, and the new price P_f is higher than P_e. The gains from trade are now the trapezoid circumscribed by the line Q = 0, the line Q = Q_f, the supply schedule, and the demand schedule. The missing gains, the deadweight loss, are equal to the triangle circumscribed by the line Q = Q_f, the supply schedule, and the demand schedule. Oracle receives F×Q_f in fees, a benefit equal to F×Q_f. The deadweight loss is a triangle with base F and height (Q_e - Q_f). It is therefore equal to (F×Q_e - F×Q_f)/2. Balancing the gains to Oracle against the deadweight loss, we see that they are equal when Q_f is one third of Q_e, or in other words when the fee is so massive that it cuts the quantity traded by 66%. If Q_f is larger than that, the benefits to Oracle exceed the loss imposed on purchasers and vendors. This result would seem to imply that we could improve the efficiency of the marketplace by allowing random third parties to impose large taxes on pretty much any good. This is hard to believe. Where did I go wrong? [1] In reality, there are a variety of models available at a variety of price points. This doesn't affect the problem I have with my result, though it is probably relevant to the phone market in specific.
  - wbl 8y ago
    If the fee is per phone it adjusts the supply schedule by moving it towards a lower quantity as a higher consumer price is required to compensate the producers at the same amount.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      The schedule doesn't change. The quantity traded does, but I mentioned that: > When Oracle imposes a fee on phone sales of value F, the price and quantity-traded of phones adjust. The new quantity traded Q_f is lower than Q_e, and the new price P_f is higher than P_e.
- bananamulch 8y ago
  It's certainly a downside for society, because there are people who otherwise would have purchased android phones that can't afford them because of the oracle tax.
  - toyg 8y ago
    “More phones” is not necessarily good “for society”. For the economy, maybe. The two concepts are not the same.
monocasa 8y ago
Or that Oracle is politically connected to the court of appeals for the federal circuit, hence why a patent appeals court is claiming jusdiction over a copyright matter, and making it's own copyright case law in contradiction with the normal copyright appeals court case law to begin with.
- swarnie_ 8y ago
  The US court system is so corrupt you can just buy your way to appeal victories? That's essentially what you're saying here?
  - nikanj 8y ago
    Or so complex, you can always find a new kangaroo court to reopen your case. Cases tend to run back and forth until one party gives up, or goes bankrupt. Lords, even SCO v Linux is still going.
    - allcentury 8y ago
      Not in this case, if they're at the supreme court, everyone has exhausted all appeals.
      - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
        The supreme court can send it back to a lower court with instructions, they can also decide on the case but note that their decision would not cover particular arguments if they were made.
      - monocasa 8y ago
        Nah, the Supreme Court already took a quick look at this case already, and here we are again.

rhinoceraptor 8y ago

I mean, it’s Oracle, what else would you expect? Their entire purpose is to make money, they’ve never had any prestense of any higher purpose.

Proven 8y ago
such as “don’t be evil”
scarface74 8y ago
And how is that different from every other company - including Google.
- rhinoceraptor 8y ago
  Other companies at least have some notion that they should be helping society or something like that, and occasionally they do. Oracle has a long track record of being evil.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    There was a Freakonomics episode about just that. Studies show that most companies show of altruism is just social signaling and that people are willing to work for less if they think their company is doing good. It’s also cheap marketing.
    - jammygit 8y ago
      How did they prove it?
      - scarface74 8y ago
        http://freakonomics.com/podcast/corporate-social-responsibility/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/corporate-social-responsibil...

keyle 8y ago

The only ones winning this are the lawyers, salivating at the idea of this blob of mess, playing on words beyond recognition and way above any common sense. I saw a lawyer's office earlier. Big logo said "We fight for fair". Sure, per minute.

hopefulengineer 8y ago
lawyer's are cancer. It amazes me that nearly everybody hates them yet people continuously vote for them politically. Why are people shocked that their politicians lie to them, considering they lie and twist words for a living as a lawyer?
- YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
  I have used lawyers to defend my contract rights against people that try to weasel out of paying up for some services. How about we don't go black and white on lawyers (go case by case instead), to appreciate the complexity of human interactions and the corresponding complexity of determining who's right?
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    My lawyer is fantastic. On the few occasions I’ve used his services, he’s advocated passionately for me, and given me great advice. He cares personally about his clients and I don’t regret a single dollar I’ve spent on his invoices.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- retr0grad3 8y ago
  My wife's a lawyer but she's a Taurus.
  - JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
    Ford?

bitL 8y ago

To map out what is legal/not legal/enforceable, and use that knowledge for e.g. replicating somebody else's API for drop-in replacements (AWS?) etc.

gcbw2 8y ago

It's business admin 101, really. The unfair advantage IBM/Oracle/SAP et al have, is that they are entrenched. It is infinitely cheaper to develop things in-house or with smaller software shops, But then you won't be able to interface with your factory's material providers' system, or other Banks, etc because they only talk some protocol that is copyrighted/trade secret of those firms. They are not fighting google. Google just happened to enter in the cross fire and have deep pockets to fire back! What oracle (and others like IBM behind the scenes, via DC Federal Circuit "lobbying") are fighting back, is the freedom of smaller software shops to provide their clients with fully compatible offerings to their money cows. This is the only time someone conscious of freedom and privacy should be rooting for Google.

fsloth 8y ago
" is the freedom of smaller software shops to provide their clients with fully compatible offerings to their money cows." Thanks for this summary! I had no idea this was the underlying reason. I feel silly now because I thought it was just some weird obsession of someone in Oracle's C-suite.

jrochkind1 8y ago

Perhaps they hope to get a cut of every android phone sold?

dekhn 8y ago

they expect to get google to pay billions in licensing fees. it's worth spending millions to make billions.

kadendogthing 8y ago

Because you can't just take other software and change the license on it. The industry's, justified, hate for Oracle is blinding them to the larger underlying concern. Many people forget that Oracle technically won the legality of the last case, hence why we're here. They just weren't awarded damages. Even the judge didn't buy Google's arguments about open source or compatibility concerns.

monocasa 8y ago
They only got that ruling by appealing a copyright question to the patent appeals court, who for some reason decided to just go off into the weeds and set their own precedent in open conflict with the appeals court these questions would normally go to. That's why all the rulings keep getting overruled. The lower court judge is sane (he's actually awesome, you should check out Alsup) and keeps ruling in accordance with established case law, and the appeals court (who shouldn't even be answering copyright questions) keeps going 'nah, all that case law is stupid'. Hence why this should go to the supreme court who'll most likely tell the court of appeals for the federal circuit that they can't just go make their own law.
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  >They only got that ruling by appealing a copyright question to the patent appeals court, Read the original ruling.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    I've read all the rulings, what's your actual point?
    - kadendogthing 8y ago
      >They only got that ruling by appealing a copyright question to the patent appeals court, That's not true and doesn't really fit within any legal timeline. That's my point.

toyg 8y ago

Oracle doesn’t actually print money. They are cash-rich but are struggling to convert long-suffering customers from on-prem products to their cloud equivalents. Nobody trusts them; you can sort-of deal with a crocodile that shows up once a year to collect, but when you go SaaS you are basically walking by the crocodile all the time, hoping it won’t bite you with higher prices at a day’s notice. And their support is not very good either, which again is more critical in saas scenarios than on-prem. In this situation, a significant new revenue stream ( an Android tax) is definitely worth fighting for. And Ellison loves lawyers; he even sued to compete in the America’s Cup...

nzealand 8y ago
Well, to be fair, suing has a long and storied Americas Cup tradition. New Zealand sued to challenge Dennis Conner off cycle, and when Conner pitted a cat against a mono hull, New Zealand sued again.
- masonic 8y ago
  Wasn't that in reaction to the previous America's cup challenge where the Australians introduced a winged keel that had previously been disallowed from 3-meter boat competitions? IIRC, both were allowed because the charter gave the challenger the power to set constraints.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> In this situation, a significant new revenue stream ( an Android tax) is definitely worth fighting for. Except that there is no hope of that ever happening. Even if Oracle won in a big way, then Google would eat the one-time cost of deprecating the Java API on Android, similar to what Apple did between Objective C and Swift. There is no sustainable revenue stream there.
- danjac 8y ago
  So Objective-C -> Swift, Java -> Go?

willart4food 8y ago

> exercising a fleet of expensive lawyers? They are maintaining/improving the barrier to entry.

nradov 8y ago

There are advantages to controlling a dominant platform. Even if Oracle doesn't get much direct revenue from Java they can use it to block strategic moves by competitors. While I think this lawsuit is terrible and I hope Google wins the legal case, from a moral standpoint they kind of acted like assholes back in 2005 when they decided to fragment the Java ecosystem rather than negotiating a licensing deal with Sun. So now we have real Java in multiple JDK / JRE implementations plus this weird pseudo-Java offshoot in Android. The language used by Android looks a lot like Java but it hasn't kept up with improvements in the core language and standard library, so now developers can't reliably reuse code across those platforms. That harms the software industry as a whole.

hyperpallium 8y ago
They were foresighted enough to see mobile as a key platform, and critical for long-term advertising... but not foresighted enough to try to work with Sun, to make a subset of java giving reasonable performance/efficiency on mobile back then. Probably because Sun went along with it, so why bother?
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Sun went along with it because they were out of money to sue and Google knew it.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    If it were that cut and dry they'd be able to find the money. At a bare minimum a law firm would pick them up on a contingency.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      If Google actually cared about not being sued by Oracle or eventually IBM, they should have bought Sun and do whatever they wanted with Java. Now they deserve everything they will get out of this.

pjmlp 8y ago

Having the possibility to actually use any library from Maven Central Android, instead of Android Java(J++).

tamrix 8y ago

Lawyers be getting paid.

sametmax 8y ago

It's just a way to say "hey, see what happens if we get angry ?" so that smaller players will always try to comply to their ludricrous future claims. You can see that even if they will spend millions, knowing to loose, against a giant like google, for a reason that ridicoulous, a tiny business won't stand a chance.