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I wouldn't say it's bad for open source. Java was always a proprietary technology. Anybody who wasn't aware of this didn't do due diligence. It's bad for java.

I wouldn't say it's bad for open source. Java was always a proprietary technology. Anybody who wasn't aware of this didn't do due diligence. It's bad for java. Who wants to bet the company jewels on someting that Oracle controls? It won't be happening in the future. Apple's decision to stick with (objective) C is turning out to be a really smart move. That it runs 2x faster than java is another bonus. Bottom line: you can use java but don't get stuck so bad you can't refactor out of it. And don't trust Oracle. Regardless.

cromwellian 12y ago
Except that iOS is based on Unix, and the freedom to re-implement copyrighted Unix APIs was litigated and won. What if SCO/Novell/USL/whoever owns the Unix copyrights now, comes back and sues anyone reimplementing them? That includes OSX and iOS which are dependent on Unix compatibility. Also, what's being litigated here is not Java-the-language but Java-the-core-API-interfaces. You could refactor your way out of those, just provide alternate versions of java.io, java.lang, etc, new redesigned core APIs. It would break core Java compatibility, but Android is so big, most people would port their Java libraries, and in the end, Oracle would be hurt more, since they rely far more on server-side Java, but most of the world's Java programmers would be migrating to writing mobile apps, probably with non-Java backends, or Java + new Core APIs.
- super_mario 12y ago
  Except UNIX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix is owned by "The Open Group" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Group One of its purposes is to provide Single Unix Specification (SUS) certification. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification Mac OS X is SUS v3 certified (I don't think iOS is) and can call itself UNIX, and there is 0 danger of anyone suing you for implementing POSIX API or SUS. You just can not claim you are providing a UNIX without getting certified. This is why Linux is UNIX-like OS and not a UNIX.
  - cromwellian 12y ago
    You're confusing Trademark with Copyright. The Open Group owns the Unix trademark, it does not own the API. The fact that POSIX uses the API does not mean any claims to "structure, sequence, organization" of the APIs or command line utilities are invalid. This has never been litigated before. Past UNIX copyright wars were fought over copying actual code between Unix and clones. No one has ever tested whether API reimplementation of Unix is copyrighted. Implementing as public spec won't save you. Java has a public, open, specification and was clean-room reimplemented in much the same way that Linux is not Unix, Android Java is not Java. Claiming there is 0 danger in being sued sounds like naively wishful thinking, especially with Apple's deep pockets, there are plenty of lawyers out there looking for ways to crack that nut.
    - maxlybbert 12y ago
      The Open Group own both the UNIX trademark and the POSIX spec. They used to demand a lot of money for copies of the spec, but you can get it online for free nowadays ( https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/G101 https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/G101 is a good place to start). They put copyright notices on the spec, but (at least until this ruling) that was widely believed to only apply to the description of what functions needed to do, and not to the function declarations.
      - stormbrew 12y ago
        Is it clear that The Open Group or IEEE actually have a clear right to claim copyright of the POSIX api given this ruling? Were they assigned or licensed that copyright by AT&T or any of its successors? It seems likely enough that in the 80s this was not seen as necessary, and the old guard of UNIX implementers were still being quite belligerent towards each other at the time, afaik.
        maxlybbert 12y ago
        I believe the Open Group was assigned whatever copyright AT&T had when the Open Group was created.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- cwyers 12y ago
  IIRC, one of Oracle's points of contention is that Google is intentionally not being compatible with Java; they picked certain parts of the API they wanted to support, but it's not a full implementation of the Java APIs, and so conforming Java apps are not necessarily able to run.
  - cromwellian 12y ago
    The full Java spec includes tons of Desktop code for Desktop Widgets, CORBA APIs, and all kinds of insane stuff that makes no sense on a smart phone and isn't used by 90% of Java developers who mostly work on the server side. Oracle's claims here are rather ridiculous, and even Oracle doesn't believe Swing or J2ME apps are appropriate for today's smartphones. It's a red herring of compatibility that no one cares about or wants to be compatible with.
    - cwyers 12y ago
      A lot of the discussion in this thread is about what this sort of ruling means for people making compatible implementations of other people's APIs -- Unix, the PC BIOS, etc. But that's not what Google was intending to do here, they were using part of Oracle's Java tech to build their own, incompatible application format.
      - cromwellian 12y ago
        They're using Java "The Good Parts", the subset of Java that is platform neutral that most people use. By the time Android was launched, Java on the Desktop was already dead. Practically zero people write Java desktop apps not care about compatibility with them, the vast majority of Java code prior to Android lived in the cloud. What makes Java valuable to most developers is byte-code portability, the widespread use of the language, the core APIs (not the GUI), and the developer tool chain. The Sun licenses for Java go back to a time when they had a dream to displace Windows on the Desktop with all native desktop apps written in Java. That reality was delusional, but Java succeeded brilliantly on the server.
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  > Except that iOS is based on Unix, and the freedom to re-implement copyrighted Unix APIs was litigated and won. Not quite. The freedom to re-implement Unix APIs was litigated. If I recall correctly, it was settled rather than won (that is, there was not a court decision but rather a settlement agreement).
davelnewton 12y ago
Thousands of companies "bet the jewels" on Java and will be making the same bet for the foreseeable future, for better or worse. Blanket statements like "ObjC is 2x faster than Java" is... well, a blanket statement, and in general, wrong. It depends so much on what, precisely, you're doing, how you're doing it, the compiler and JIT implementation, etc.
leccine 12y ago
Well I think we can ditch Java in favor of: Go, Erlang, Haskell, C++, Rust The reason for using Java is the corporate penetration and being the de-facto language for thousands of developers. I seriously think that Java as a language is old and hard to use (hello Clojure & Scala) and on the top of that owned Oracle is the biggest patent troll in the history of humanity, so even implementing the APIs can lead to lawsuits just like the example above. Now the only question is, why the hell do we still implement new things in Java in 2014? Time to wake up, get a language that is free by every meaning free has and bury Java for good. Is this hard? Definitely is, but if we don't start it today when can we stop Oracle from suing your startups because you implemented an API. Changing US law seems harder. :)
- threeseed 12y ago
  Please be serious. Go has about 0.0001% of the third party library base that Java does. Many of which are essential for large scale enterprise development. It's why languages like Clojure and Scala have become a lot more popular because they leverage the ecosystem. No one will move just because of some insignificant lawsuit.
  - leccine 12y ago
    You are talking about a stall picture, a moment in time, thinking this will last forever. I am talking about how fast that 0.0001% becomes 50%. If Oracle is patent trolling the Java developer communities the developers and other enterprises are not going to take it easy. We are talking about Google not some random 3 people startup that pays whatever the patent owner is asking for just to save a lawsuit. Java is the the most resourceful ecosystem today, there is no doubt about that. It is ~20 years old Go is 5, and please have a look to this chart: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Go%2C+Java&l=&relative=1 http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Go%2C+Java&l=&relative=1
    - garvelmdkb 12y ago
      It's amazing how the chart shows that go was growing faster than Java years before go was even released.... Virtually none of the 'go' job ads have anything to do with programming.

cromwellian 12y ago

Except that iOS is based on Unix, and the freedom to re-implement copyrighted Unix APIs was litigated and won. What if SCO/Novell/USL/whoever owns the Unix copyrights now, comes back and sues anyone reimplementing them? That includes OSX and iOS which are dependent on Unix compatibility. Also, what's being litigated here is not Java-the-language but Java-the-core-API-interfaces. You could refactor your way out of those, just provide alternate versions of java.io, java.lang, etc, new redesigned core APIs. It would break core Java compatibility, but Android is so big, most people would port their Java libraries, and in the end, Oracle would be hurt more, since they rely far more on server-side Java, but most of the world's Java programmers would be migrating to writing mobile apps, probably with non-Java backends, or Java + new Core APIs.

super_mario 12y ago
Except UNIX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix is owned by "The Open Group" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Group One of its purposes is to provide Single Unix Specification (SUS) certification. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification Mac OS X is SUS v3 certified (I don't think iOS is) and can call itself UNIX, and there is 0 danger of anyone suing you for implementing POSIX API or SUS. You just can not claim you are providing a UNIX without getting certified. This is why Linux is UNIX-like OS and not a UNIX.
- cromwellian 12y ago
  You're confusing Trademark with Copyright. The Open Group owns the Unix trademark, it does not own the API. The fact that POSIX uses the API does not mean any claims to "structure, sequence, organization" of the APIs or command line utilities are invalid. This has never been litigated before. Past UNIX copyright wars were fought over copying actual code between Unix and clones. No one has ever tested whether API reimplementation of Unix is copyrighted. Implementing as public spec won't save you. Java has a public, open, specification and was clean-room reimplemented in much the same way that Linux is not Unix, Android Java is not Java. Claiming there is 0 danger in being sued sounds like naively wishful thinking, especially with Apple's deep pockets, there are plenty of lawyers out there looking for ways to crack that nut.
  - maxlybbert 12y ago
    The Open Group own both the UNIX trademark and the POSIX spec. They used to demand a lot of money for copies of the spec, but you can get it online for free nowadays ( https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/G101 https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/G101 is a good place to start). They put copyright notices on the spec, but (at least until this ruling) that was widely believed to only apply to the description of what functions needed to do, and not to the function declarations.
    - stormbrew 12y ago
      Is it clear that The Open Group or IEEE actually have a clear right to claim copyright of the POSIX api given this ruling? Were they assigned or licensed that copyright by AT&T or any of its successors? It seems likely enough that in the 80s this was not seen as necessary, and the old guard of UNIX implementers were still being quite belligerent towards each other at the time, afaik.
      - maxlybbert 12y ago
        I believe the Open Group was assigned whatever copyright AT&T had when the Open Group was created.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
cwyers 12y ago
IIRC, one of Oracle's points of contention is that Google is intentionally not being compatible with Java; they picked certain parts of the API they wanted to support, but it's not a full implementation of the Java APIs, and so conforming Java apps are not necessarily able to run.
- cromwellian 12y ago
  The full Java spec includes tons of Desktop code for Desktop Widgets, CORBA APIs, and all kinds of insane stuff that makes no sense on a smart phone and isn't used by 90% of Java developers who mostly work on the server side. Oracle's claims here are rather ridiculous, and even Oracle doesn't believe Swing or J2ME apps are appropriate for today's smartphones. It's a red herring of compatibility that no one cares about or wants to be compatible with.
  - cwyers 12y ago
    A lot of the discussion in this thread is about what this sort of ruling means for people making compatible implementations of other people's APIs -- Unix, the PC BIOS, etc. But that's not what Google was intending to do here, they were using part of Oracle's Java tech to build their own, incompatible application format.
    - cromwellian 12y ago
      They're using Java "The Good Parts", the subset of Java that is platform neutral that most people use. By the time Android was launched, Java on the Desktop was already dead. Practically zero people write Java desktop apps not care about compatibility with them, the vast majority of Java code prior to Android lived in the cloud. What makes Java valuable to most developers is byte-code portability, the widespread use of the language, the core APIs (not the GUI), and the developer tool chain. The Sun licenses for Java go back to a time when they had a dream to displace Windows on the Desktop with all native desktop apps written in Java. That reality was delusional, but Java succeeded brilliantly on the server.
AnimalMuppet 12y ago
> Except that iOS is based on Unix, and the freedom to re-implement copyrighted Unix APIs was litigated and won. Not quite. The freedom to re-implement Unix APIs was litigated. If I recall correctly, it was settled rather than won (that is, there was not a court decision but rather a settlement agreement).

davelnewton 12y ago

Thousands of companies "bet the jewels" on Java and will be making the same bet for the foreseeable future, for better or worse. Blanket statements like "ObjC is 2x faster than Java" is... well, a blanket statement, and in general, wrong. It depends so much on what, precisely, you're doing, how you're doing it, the compiler and JIT implementation, etc.

leccine 12y ago

Well I think we can ditch Java in favor of: Go, Erlang, Haskell, C++, Rust The reason for using Java is the corporate penetration and being the de-facto language for thousands of developers. I seriously think that Java as a language is old and hard to use (hello Clojure & Scala) and on the top of that owned Oracle is the biggest patent troll in the history of humanity, so even implementing the APIs can lead to lawsuits just like the example above. Now the only question is, why the hell do we still implement new things in Java in 2014? Time to wake up, get a language that is free by every meaning free has and bury Java for good. Is this hard? Definitely is, but if we don't start it today when can we stop Oracle from suing your startups because you implemented an API. Changing US law seems harder. :)

threeseed 12y ago
Please be serious. Go has about 0.0001% of the third party library base that Java does. Many of which are essential for large scale enterprise development. It's why languages like Clojure and Scala have become a lot more popular because they leverage the ecosystem. No one will move just because of some insignificant lawsuit.
- leccine 12y ago
  You are talking about a stall picture, a moment in time, thinking this will last forever. I am talking about how fast that 0.0001% becomes 50%. If Oracle is patent trolling the Java developer communities the developers and other enterprises are not going to take it easy. We are talking about Google not some random 3 people startup that pays whatever the patent owner is asking for just to save a lawsuit. Java is the the most resourceful ecosystem today, there is no doubt about that. It is ~20 years old Go is 5, and please have a look to this chart: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Go%2C+Java&l=&relative=1 http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Go%2C+Java&l=&relative=1
  - garvelmdkb 12y ago
    It's amazing how the chart shows that go was growing faster than Java years before go was even released.... Virtually none of the 'go' job ads have anything to do with programming.