Oracle Claims Google Copied Java Code - Not So Fast, Though
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 28th Oct 2010 20:07 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
Legal Now, this is an interesting development in the ongoing war against Android. Oracle didn't just sue Google for allegedly infringing its Java patents; it also claimed copyright infringement. Oracle has amended its complaint, and, fair is fair, they've got the code to prove it: indeed, Android contains code that appears to be copied verbatim from Java - mind you, appears. However, the code in question comes straight from Apache's Harmony project, which raises the question - would a respected and long-established cornerstone of the open source world really accept tainted code in the first place?
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RE: I went over the code
by JAlexoid on Fri 29th Oct 2010 22:52 UTC in reply to "I went over the code"
JAlexoid
Member since:
2009-05-19

It's a rip off.
http://www.binplay.com/2010/10/look-at-copied-oracle-code.html

And yet, reading Oracle's code once, I can write the code that is very similar to the one found in Harmony. That, btw, would not constitute a copyright infringement. (Since it follows common industry conventions and has to conform to a published specification)

But then again, I am a Java dev for 10 years now. And Java has common naming conventions.

EDIT: Interesting point, the code is in the repository, but it's a test...

Edited 2010-10-29 23:11 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[2]: I went over the code
by Kebabbert on Mon 1st Nov 2010 11:27 in reply to "RE: I went over the code"
Kebabbert Member since:
2007-07-27

In how many ways can you declare 10 variables? The answer is 10! = 3.6 million ways. Almost 4 million ways.

The probability that the Google programmer chose exactly the same ordering as Oracle, would be 1 in 4 million. Highly unlikely.

Chances are more than 99.99999% the code is a copy.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[3]: I went over the code
by Neolander on Mon 1st Nov 2010 12:23 in reply to "RE[2]: I went over the code"
Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

That is assuming that the probability law is uniform. I'm not sure that this assumptions goes well when considering the human brain.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[3]: I went over the code
by sorpigal on Mon 1st Nov 2010 13:45 in reply to "RE[2]: I went over the code"
sorpigal Member since:
2005-11-02

I strongly disagree. I read through the sample so-called "copied code" and it's a lot less similar than code SCO claimed was 'copied' into Linux, and where it is similar it's pretty often due to implementing a known interface.

If you tell ten developers to write a quicksort function in C (for example) you'll get ten results which, while not identical, will be very similar and will be more similar to each other than these examples, right down to identical variable deceleration order. Even if there are a billion ways you *could* do the same thing, chances are culture, tradition and best practices will reduce that set down to a relatively small handful of similar implementations.

Reply Parent Score: 2