62 ms·

This is all pretty irrelevant whatboutism. It is all entirely unrelated to Oracle sueing Google. Google could be 100% tracking newer Java language features and

by dtech 7y ago

This is all pretty irrelevant whatboutism. It is all entirely unrelated to Oracle sueing Google. Google could be 100% tracking newer Java language features and Oracle would still have made this lawsuits. It's financial compensation or competitive advantage they are after or something, compatiblity and feature parity is very low on Oracle lawyer's list.

pjmlp 7y ago
Love this Oracle hate around here. Sun and Oracle never sued other JVM implementations, only Microsoft and Google, aka J++ and Android Java. If Google did not wanted a lawsuit, they could have easily made an offer to buy Sun after torpedoing their profits helping the company to close doors, no love for Google from my side on this story.
- wtetzner 7y ago
  This isn't about loving or hating Google or Oracle. It's about the implications of APIs being copyrightable.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    APIs aren't designed in vacuum, they are the outcome of the work of a group of people that put in the effort and endless hours of work to design them. Whoever is paying their salaries has the right to decide how they get used. If this is the way to fix Android Java, or fully replace it with Flutter, then so be it.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      > APIs aren't designed in vacuum, they are the outcome of the work of a group of people that put in the effort and endless hours of work to design them. You could say the same about the design of an electrical plug or a radio signaling protocol. That doesn't make the functional aspects of the design subject to copyright.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Bad examples, they are protected by certifications, market compliance processes, and paying for ISO and similar standard documents. Even implementators of languages considered free beer like C and C++, have at the end of the day have someone paying for those 100 CHF. Naturally there are black markets to work around those issues, then if a fire can be tracked back to a not-certified plug, the insurance can consider it isn't responsible for paying.
        AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        > Bad examples, they are protected by certifications, market compliance processes, and paying for ISO and similar standard documents. So then what do you need copyright for? Do the same thing for your API. Copyright is the wrong tool for this. But in particular, notice that if your "market compliance processes" start trying to charge monopoly rents, someone will reverse engineer the thing and launch a competing compliance process which insurance companies will happily accept as long as it has reasonable quality. Also notice that the compliance process for things like that is generally shepherded by a third party non-profit like UL or IEEE and not a competitor in the same market.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Thankfully some governments do believe in market regulations and certifications.
  - papyruskaleido 7y ago
    The whole thread in about hating Oracle. It's probably warranted, but Google shouldn't get a pass. They induced this situation. Someone did a back of the envelope calculation and decided a lawsuit was going to be cheaper than licensing Java would be. Or maybe they'd get really lucky and Sun would go under. But, Oracle bought Sun and brought along the suit that Google had counted on. And then Oracle kept throwing things at them until one stuck. This all would have been avoided if Google wasn't a bad actor in the first place. They wanted to play by different rules than everyone else and thought they had enough weight to get their way. Now someone in their own weight class came along and we all get to live with the fallout.
    - wtallis 7y ago
      > Someone did a back of the envelope calculation and decided a lawsuit was going to be cheaper than licensing Java would be. I don't think it was an issue of monetary value. Sun simply wasn't going to offer terms that would allow Google to make Android with Sun's blessing, because Sun wanted to retain tight control over the feature set of different Java editions. > This all would have been avoided if Google wasn't a bad actor in the first place. They wanted to play by different rules than everyone else Please don't do this. The irony of making such a silly claim using a software stack that is so thoroughly built on those "different rules" is too much.
      - papyruskaleido 7y ago
        Okay. If you need a license for something and someone isn't going to license it to you, you don't have carte blanche to do whatever you want with their IP. > Please don't do this. The irony of making such a silly claim using a software stack that is so thoroughly built on those "different rules" is too much. Give me a break. You just said yourself they circumvented Sun's licensing. If software licensing and trademark usage doesn't matter, then why do even bother with them?
        wtallis 7y ago
        > You just said yourself they circumvented Sun's licensing. If software licensing and trademark usage doesn't matter, then why do even bother with them? Please don't conflate trademark licenses with copyright licenses.

by dtech 7y ago

pjmlp 7y ago

Love this Oracle hate around here. Sun and Oracle never sued other JVM implementations, only Microsoft and Google, aka J++ and Android Java. If Google did not wanted a lawsuit, they could have easily made an offer to buy Sun after torpedoing their profits helping the company to close doors, no love for Google from my side on this story.

wtetzner 7y ago
This isn't about loving or hating Google or Oracle. It's about the implications of APIs being copyrightable.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  APIs aren't designed in vacuum, they are the outcome of the work of a group of people that put in the effort and endless hours of work to design them. Whoever is paying their salaries has the right to decide how they get used. If this is the way to fix Android Java, or fully replace it with Flutter, then so be it.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > APIs aren't designed in vacuum, they are the outcome of the work of a group of people that put in the effort and endless hours of work to design them. You could say the same about the design of an electrical plug or a radio signaling protocol. That doesn't make the functional aspects of the design subject to copyright.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Bad examples, they are protected by certifications, market compliance processes, and paying for ISO and similar standard documents. Even implementators of languages considered free beer like C and C++, have at the end of the day have someone paying for those 100 CHF. Naturally there are black markets to work around those issues, then if a fire can be tracked back to a not-certified plug, the insurance can consider it isn't responsible for paying.
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        > Bad examples, they are protected by certifications, market compliance processes, and paying for ISO and similar standard documents. So then what do you need copyright for? Do the same thing for your API. Copyright is the wrong tool for this. But in particular, notice that if your "market compliance processes" start trying to charge monopoly rents, someone will reverse engineer the thing and launch a competing compliance process which insurance companies will happily accept as long as it has reasonable quality. Also notice that the compliance process for things like that is generally shepherded by a third party non-profit like UL or IEEE and not a competitor in the same market.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Thankfully some governments do believe in market regulations and certifications.
- papyruskaleido 7y ago
  The whole thread in about hating Oracle. It's probably warranted, but Google shouldn't get a pass. They induced this situation. Someone did a back of the envelope calculation and decided a lawsuit was going to be cheaper than licensing Java would be. Or maybe they'd get really lucky and Sun would go under. But, Oracle bought Sun and brought along the suit that Google had counted on. And then Oracle kept throwing things at them until one stuck. This all would have been avoided if Google wasn't a bad actor in the first place. They wanted to play by different rules than everyone else and thought they had enough weight to get their way. Now someone in their own weight class came along and we all get to live with the fallout.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    > Someone did a back of the envelope calculation and decided a lawsuit was going to be cheaper than licensing Java would be. I don't think it was an issue of monetary value. Sun simply wasn't going to offer terms that would allow Google to make Android with Sun's blessing, because Sun wanted to retain tight control over the feature set of different Java editions. > This all would have been avoided if Google wasn't a bad actor in the first place. They wanted to play by different rules than everyone else Please don't do this. The irony of making such a silly claim using a software stack that is so thoroughly built on those "different rules" is too much.
    - papyruskaleido 7y ago
      Okay. If you need a license for something and someone isn't going to license it to you, you don't have carte blanche to do whatever you want with their IP. > Please don't do this. The irony of making such a silly claim using a software stack that is so thoroughly built on those "different rules" is too much. Give me a break. You just said yourself they circumvented Sun's licensing. If software licensing and trademark usage doesn't matter, then why do even bother with them?
      - wtallis 7y ago
        > You just said yourself they circumvented Sun's licensing. If software licensing and trademark usage doesn't matter, then why do even bother with them? Please don't conflate trademark licenses with copyright licenses.