Schwartz: Android didn't need license for Java APIs
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 27th Apr 2012 01:00 UTC
Legal "Former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz took the stand here today as a witness for the defense, and disputed Oracle's claim that Java APIs were proprietary code from Sun. Google's lawyer, Robert van Nest, asked Schwartz whether, during his tenure at Sun, Java APIs were considered proprietary or protected by Sun. 'No,' Schwartz said in explaining the nature of open software, 'These are open APIs, and we wanted to bring in more people... We wanted to build the biggest tent and invite as many people as possible.'" Whoopsie for Oracle.
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tomcat
Member since:
2006-01-06

"Obviously, if the APIs were truly "open" as Schwartz suggests, then there was no point in negotiating with Google over licensing fees. And yet they did negotiate. And the negotiations failed. And then Schwartz was replaced by adults without ponytails. Sounds like he has an ax to grind.


The negotiations were over the implementation and the TCK (which you need to pass to call it Java). Google wrote their own implementation and called it Dalvik (not Java).

Swartz welcomed Google aboard at the time. This is no turn-around or revisionist history. "

Given the fact that Google actually borrowed source files from Sun's implementation, it's clear this was no clean-room implementation; in fact, Google was probably referring to the original sources as they wrote their code. Which means that Google's code is a derivative work and, thus, a copyright violation. But thanks for playing, anyway.

Reply Parent Score: -1

Lazarus Member since:
2005-08-10

Given the fact that Google actually borrowed source files from Sun's implementation, it's clear this was no clean-room implementation; in fact, Google was probably referring to the original sources as they wrote their code. Which means that Google's code is a derivative work and, thus, a copyright violation.


9 source lines of code out of 15 million lines does not a derivative work make.

http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-Trial-GoogleOpeningStills.pdf

But thanks for playing, anyway.

Reply Parent Score: 7

james_parker Member since:
2005-06-29


Given the fact that Google actually borrowed source files from Sun's implementation, it's clear this was no clean-room implementation; in fact, Google was probably referring to the original sources as they wrote their code. Which means that Google's code is a derivative work and, thus, a copyright violation. But thanks for playing, anyway.


Google's code is a derivative work in exactly the same way that BSD was a derivative of Unix. The last bits of AT&T code were removed and BSD was deemed not to infringe on Unix.

This is the same model that Google took with Java. They removed the last bits of Sun (Oracle) code and the result will soon be deemed not to infringe on Java.

Reply Parent Score: 2