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I wonder if Oracle winning would reinvigorate software developement - by which I mean, maybe the resulting fragmentation would leave a lot of room for new ideas

by ColanR 6y ago

I wonder if Oracle winning would reinvigorate software developement - by which I mean, maybe the resulting fragmentation would leave a lot of room for new ideas to be developed. e.g.: if this court case was decided before Google made Android, then Google would have had to use something other than Java to do it and they wouldn't have been able to attract such a large developer base to make apps. Maybe they would have come up with a new language, or reused whatever else was viable at the time. But, maybe their OS wouldn't have been so overwhelming in its popularity and other OSes, like PalmOS and the windows phone OS, could have remained alive today. I think there's a lot of people, maybe the majority, who would agree that Android's UI was inferior to one or both of those alternatives. e.g. #2: looking to the future, the resulting fragmentation could mean that even new OSes will have to be developed (edit - since even kernel APIs could be covered by copyright). That could be pretty bad for open source and hacking in general - except that as another poster has pointed out, closed-down software might turn out to be pretty useless compared to open-source. Maybe Oracle winning could be a really good thing for reinvigorating the development of new paradigms in software.

chabad360 6y ago
Fragmentation is almost never a good thing and it's certainly not a good thing in this case. Allowing developers to use the same knowledge, the same interfaces, the se languages across systems means that consumers benefit. Having a de facto standard is good for everyone, and arguing that there is less innovation in programming because you don't own the rights to function names is ridiculous.
- ColanR 6y ago
  Seems like it could be compared to breaking up a monopoly. When there's one player in town (Java & Android in the two examples I used), any competing ideas never get a chance to succeed: we're still using variations of Java, probably at this point for historical reasons, and Purism etc. is having a real rough go of it. Look at the failed attempts at competing OSes that various phone manufacturers put out. There were some duds, but I mentioned two that could have given Andriod a run for its money if there were more fragmentation in the market - and I think that would have been better for consumers. > arguing that there is less innovation in programming because you don't own the rights to function names is ridiculous I applaud the rhetorical flourish, but I think it misses the point. It's not the cause of the fragmentation, but the fragmentation caused by the lost rights that improves the innovation.
  - gerash 6y ago
    Let's take your proposal further and let's say we have 20 different languages (some even with non English characters), runtimes, compilers, build systems, UI guidelines, etc will uniform distribution across the world. So even if you want to publish a software for your home country you'll only be able to reach 5% of population with any single tool chain. Are you willing to learn all those 20 different language/runtime/tool chains?
    - ColanR 6y ago
      > Are you willing to learn all those 20 different language/runtime/tool chains? No, and that's exactly my point. Because it would be impossible to support everything, developers and corporations might have to aim for more limited reach. I imagine that would lead to a situation where we have 20 different widely supported kernels, 20 different up-to-date web browsers, 20 different modern OSes, etc. I would love to be able to choose from such a diversity of software alternatives - wouldn't you?
      - dodobirdlord 6y ago
        I don’t see this resulting in 20 different web browsers or kernels or OSes that are anywhere near as good as the ones we have today. Making even just one is a shocking investment of resources and a massive ongoing maintenance responsibility. Many, many human lifetimes have gone into building something like Chrome. Wishing that this herculean effort was forced to be duplicated 19 times over just so that you could have alternatives to choose feels kinda perverse.
        ColanR 6y ago
        Talking about the complexity of modern software might be a tangent. However. I think that if time and effort were limited by this fragmentation, we would find that we're able to do just fine with browsers that have fewer hours of effort put into them. The current range of second-tier browsers have a ton of strange and interesting ideas about them, but because the web standards they have to support are so complex they simply can't support much of the modern web. I imagine that those standards would be written much more conservatively if the writers knew that it would be impractical for anyone to implement them. > Wishing that this herculean effort was forced to be duplicated 19 times over just so that you could have alternatives to choose feels kinda perverse. There is absolutely no reason for you to get personal.
stickfigure 6y ago
...or it could mean that we'd all still be writing COBOL on OS/360. It's a terrible idea.
abraae 6y ago
> I wonder if Oracle winning would reinvigorate software developement This is a future I like to envisage as well. New programming languages (for example), struggling for traction, might feel obliged to clearly open source their APIs, to demonstrate their openness. Corporates, tech giants etc. might in turn gravitate towards such more-open platforms, leading to a virtuous circle of innovation and steady migration away from technologies that try to use their APIs for extortion.

by ColanR 6y ago

chabad360 6y ago

Fragmentation is almost never a good thing and it's certainly not a good thing in this case. Allowing developers to use the same knowledge, the same interfaces, the se languages across systems means that consumers benefit. Having a de facto standard is good for everyone, and arguing that there is less innovation in programming because you don't own the rights to function names is ridiculous.

ColanR 6y ago
Seems like it could be compared to breaking up a monopoly. When there's one player in town (Java & Android in the two examples I used), any competing ideas never get a chance to succeed: we're still using variations of Java, probably at this point for historical reasons, and Purism etc. is having a real rough go of it. Look at the failed attempts at competing OSes that various phone manufacturers put out. There were some duds, but I mentioned two that could have given Andriod a run for its money if there were more fragmentation in the market - and I think that would have been better for consumers. > arguing that there is less innovation in programming because you don't own the rights to function names is ridiculous I applaud the rhetorical flourish, but I think it misses the point. It's not the cause of the fragmentation, but the fragmentation caused by the lost rights that improves the innovation.
- gerash 6y ago
  Let's take your proposal further and let's say we have 20 different languages (some even with non English characters), runtimes, compilers, build systems, UI guidelines, etc will uniform distribution across the world. So even if you want to publish a software for your home country you'll only be able to reach 5% of population with any single tool chain. Are you willing to learn all those 20 different language/runtime/tool chains?
  - ColanR 6y ago
    > Are you willing to learn all those 20 different language/runtime/tool chains? No, and that's exactly my point. Because it would be impossible to support everything, developers and corporations might have to aim for more limited reach. I imagine that would lead to a situation where we have 20 different widely supported kernels, 20 different up-to-date web browsers, 20 different modern OSes, etc. I would love to be able to choose from such a diversity of software alternatives - wouldn't you?
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      I don’t see this resulting in 20 different web browsers or kernels or OSes that are anywhere near as good as the ones we have today. Making even just one is a shocking investment of resources and a massive ongoing maintenance responsibility. Many, many human lifetimes have gone into building something like Chrome. Wishing that this herculean effort was forced to be duplicated 19 times over just so that you could have alternatives to choose feels kinda perverse.
      - ColanR 6y ago
        Talking about the complexity of modern software might be a tangent. However. I think that if time and effort were limited by this fragmentation, we would find that we're able to do just fine with browsers that have fewer hours of effort put into them. The current range of second-tier browsers have a ton of strange and interesting ideas about them, but because the web standards they have to support are so complex they simply can't support much of the modern web. I imagine that those standards would be written much more conservatively if the writers knew that it would be impractical for anyone to implement them. > Wishing that this herculean effort was forced to be duplicated 19 times over just so that you could have alternatives to choose feels kinda perverse. There is absolutely no reason for you to get personal.

stickfigure 6y ago

...or it could mean that we'd all still be writing COBOL on OS/360. It's a terrible idea.

abraae 6y ago

> I wonder if Oracle winning would reinvigorate software developement This is a future I like to envisage as well. New programming languages (for example), struggling for traction, might feel obliged to clearly open source their APIs, to demonstrate their openness. Corporates, tech giants etc. might in turn gravitate towards such more-open platforms, leading to a virtuous circle of innovation and steady migration away from technologies that try to use their APIs for extortion.