“Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said the software maker had considered building its own smartphone to compete with Apple and Google but decided it was a ‘bad idea’ after a weeks-long cost and market analysis. As part of that exhaustive internal analysis, he said, Oracle had pondered at one point buying Blackberry-maker RIM and Palm.” So, Larry (likely after consulting with his best friend Jobs) decided to try to extort money from Google instead – which isn’t working out either. Did you analyse that, too, Larry?
What hasn’t Oracle considered buying?
Micro$oft. Now that would be an epic battle of the titans! Say what you want, but in that instance, I’m on Microsoft’s side, as Oracle f*cked up more than a couple of good software companies.
Besides, Ellison is a prick, and his arrogant attitude is almost as bad as Jobs.
LOL, I remember seeing a show called ‘Most Evil’, where they gave serial killers a rating on a points scale to determine how evil they were. If you used such a scale to rate tech companies, I think Oracle would be way up there.
Merging Solaris and QNX would be a dream come true. Solaris on QNX uKernel. yummmy
They wanted to compete with Google and Apple, right. They didn’t want to compete with Samsung, Nokia, etc. Motorola isn’t even merged yet and Google isn’t even a competitor in smartphones and Motorola isn’t even mentioned.
Looking at the 2 sentences article surrounded by adverts, now I understand. They just tried to make a page with the words Google, Apple and Oracle, if possible in the same sentence for SEO, no matter if it doesn’t make any sense. I hope OSNews gets money when they link to those pages.
Edited 2012-04-18 07:03 UTC
Right… reuters is a new blog in town that do need some SEO recognition…
Right, because Reuters is so old it couldn’t possibly use sensationalistic headlines to get more clicks and money. Reuters is only driven by noble ideals, and good journalism.
Google doesn’t even do smartphones yet. It’s still Motorola and even Motorola is not Samsung yet.
Edited 2012-04-18 20:56 UTC
Have you read this?
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/opening-slides-1592541….
Oracle reveals several internal mails from Google.
page 77, 78
“My proposal is that we take a license that specifically grants the right for us to Open Source our product. We’ll pay Sun for the license and the TCK. Before we release our product to the open source community we’ll make sure our JVM passes all TCK certification tests so that we don’t create fragmentation”
“Q48. Does Android support existing Java apps?
A. No.
Q49. Is Android Java compatible?
A. No.”
And page 90 is also informative.
Some questions: all companies paid Java license money to Sun (IBM, Oracle, etc) but Google choose not to pay. Why is that? Why is Google bosses saying “we need to negotiate a Java license from Sun”. Why is Google saying “Android Java is fragmenting Java”? Just read the slides.
It is a compelling argument on Oracle’s side.
However I doubt many would read it.
Unfortunately tech bloggers like Thom don’t actually write code, they don’t appreciate the effort that goes into it.
If I scraped this site and all the articles, I can guarantee they wouldn’t be happy.
Edited 2012-04-18 09:33 UTC
All fine and dandy, but the Java patents in play have been virtually obliterated, the copyright claim is over a smidge of third party submitted code, which, correct me if I’m wrong, has never been distributed with a handset in the wild and never was a critical part of Android. So no huge smoking gun there.
Google never copied Java lock, stock and barrel, removed the copyright notices and claimed it as their own. Google wrote their own virtual machine with its own unique bytecode, retrofitted Java the language (syntax and grammar) on top of that and made use of independently written modules from the Apache Harmony project. No misappropriation of Sun/Oracle code there.
The only real lever Sun/Oracle have is trademark protection over what is and is not Java. Even more so, now that their “sooper sekrit” methods and what not are out in the open under the GPL. Google has never marketed Android or the Nexus handsets as Java phones or Java powered. They have been consistent in telling the world that Dalvik is NOT Java. Therefore they need not be compatible and need not pass the TCK.
Yes, programming can be an arduous task and sometimes you can get emotionally invested in the end result, but at the end of the day (and I know this is very irreverent) a program is nothing but a list of instructions to be carried out by an advanced calculator.
I didn’t say their argument is write, I said they had a compelling argument.
Nonetheless the attitude that a something isn’t worth anything because it can be copied a thousand times needs to go.
Yes it is can be easily copied almost infinately, but it is very difficult to create once.
Nonetheless the attitude that a something isn’t worth anything because it can be copied a thousand times needs to go.
Yes it is can be easily copied almost infinately, but it is very difficult to create once.
Of course there should be remuneration for effort spent. But the effort spent should not be an excuse to elevate that spent effort to something extraodinary. It should not be a matter of people staking a claim on perpetual remuneration just because they spent an amount of effort once to create something. There should be a balance.
Google knew they were walking on the edge with retrofitting Java the language on their own Virtual Machine. If they had used some other language, like their own Go, and wrote their own Dalvik Class libraries instead of partly using Apache Harmony to shoehorn Java the language in there, Sun/Oracle wouldn’t have found cause to bark up this tree.
Sun/Oracle, on the other hand, are being disingenious by claiming full rights to determine who can and cannot use their “free” Java. When Sun open sourced the JDK under the GPL (revealing all trade secrets of their Java) and went on to say that the world could now freely use Java and even applauding Google for using Java in Android, it should have been enough for this Oracle suit to be dismissed on the grounds of estoppel.
I agree that not everything should be free of cost, but I also think that the world doesn’t need an environment where “I created something, now pay me till kingdom come!” is the norm.
TBH I here many of these comments that there should be balance, but nobody ever suggests a legal mechanism to do this.
Well, common decency and refraining from blind greed is hard to put into law…
We weren’t talking about that.
I was talking about how someone should be rewarded for copyright, and he said “I don’t think that should last forever”.
I said I agree there has to be the best middle ground.
What you did my friend is basically added nothing helpful and equated “greed” with copyright.
And also never answered question.
Is this your homework, Larry?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZSFvntwgEQ