FTA: Oracle’s recent lawsuit against Google and open source
I wish the Google people would stop saying that. Oracle didn't sue open source. That doesn't even make sense, you can't sue open source any more than you can sue Santa. Beside the fact that the open-sourced Java implementations are explicitly unaffected by this lawsuit.
This is really not nice for Open Source. I can understand that Oracle wants to make money, but they are really creating big barriers for corporations using Java. The lawsuit is marking the start of Java's decline. Its a matter of time before something replaces it.
While I see the Google vs. Oracle Java struggle getting ugly, I don't think this marks the decline of Java at all. Most corporations invested in Java are not building their own version of Java- do they really care how this goes down? In addition what language is in any position to replace Java?
> Its a matter of time before something replaces it.
replaces it for new development, perhaps. java itself will probably never go away now, though, lawsuit or not. its footprint is just too huge now. at worst, it'll just stagnate.
"Oracle’s recent lawsuit against Google and open source"
The lawsuit is against Google, not the OpenJDK. It seems disingenuous to keep linking Google's situation with Open Source in general. Google isn't using the OpenJDK. Google didn't want to spend the money and now has to deal with that decision. A simple "We are not going to a conference sponsored by someone suing us" would be good enough. Adobe and Google must have sent their people to the same blog training program.
> Google didn't want to spend the money and now has to deal with that decision.
It's not that they didn't want to pay, they wanted to make a fully open source mobile OS. Going with OpenJDK would have forced them to make Android GPL which would have been a no-no for carriers and going with Sun's licensed JVM would have made Android not open source. So Google had to go with their own VM if they wanted to have an open source mobile OS based on Java.
If you attack an open-source project (which the pertinent parts are) with general software patents, how is that not an attack on open source? What Oracle is doing is absolutely no different than what SCO was engaged in.
Note that Oracle's general patents on rudimentary VM and runtime characteristics could be applied against any number of non-Java targets. There just aren't many with the pockets as deep as Google.
How hard would it be for Google to fork OpenJDK and release Guava 7 instead (with all the niceties we're waiting for). If they made it open they probably could get a lot of people to switch over.
That would not really solve the problem. The Sun/Oracle patent grant only extends to JDKs that conform to the specification, and pass all tests in the test suite. That is, if you can license the test suite (see Apache Harmony).
[+] [-] pvg|15 years ago|reply
I wish the Google people would stop saying that. Oracle didn't sue open source. That doesn't even make sense, you can't sue open source any more than you can sue Santa. Beside the fact that the open-sourced Java implementations are explicitly unaffected by this lawsuit.
[+] [-] davidw|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wicknicks|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swannodette|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KeithMajhor|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noodle|15 years ago|reply
replaces it for new development, perhaps. java itself will probably never go away now, though, lawsuit or not. its footprint is just too huge now. at worst, it'll just stagnate.
[+] [-] protomyth|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|15 years ago|reply
The lawsuit is against Google, not the OpenJDK. It seems disingenuous to keep linking Google's situation with Open Source in general. Google isn't using the OpenJDK. Google didn't want to spend the money and now has to deal with that decision. A simple "We are not going to a conference sponsored by someone suing us" would be good enough. Adobe and Google must have sent their people to the same blog training program.
[+] [-] patrickaljord|15 years ago|reply
It's not that they didn't want to pay, they wanted to make a fully open source mobile OS. Going with OpenJDK would have forced them to make Android GPL which would have been a no-no for carriers and going with Sun's licensed JVM would have made Android not open source. So Google had to go with their own VM if they wanted to have an open source mobile OS based on Java.
[+] [-] ergo98|15 years ago|reply
Note that Oracle's general patents on rudimentary VM and runtime characteristics could be applied against any number of non-Java targets. There just aren't many with the pockets as deep as Google.
[+] [-] peterlind|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtonal|15 years ago|reply
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Java_and_patents#The_Java_Language_...
[+] [-] adharmad|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dminor|15 years ago|reply
Oracle/Google is a patent lawsuit.