And the patent and lawsuit related news just keeps on coming. Sorry. Anywho, this one’s a doozy. As we all know, Oracle – led by Larry Elison, who just so happens to be one of Steve Jobs’ best friends, but this is of course entirely coincidental – is suing the crap out of Google over the use of Java in Android, claiming not only patent but also copyright infringement. Well, when Sun was still on its own, its CEO, Jonathan Schwarz, publicly and explicitly endorsed Android’s use of Java in a blog post – a post that has since been removed by Oracle. But, as we all know, the internet never forgets.
The original blog post was dug up by Groklaw, and in it, Schwarz, back then the CEO of Sun, congratulates Android with its use of Java technology. “I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of others from Sun in offering my heartfelt congratulations to Google on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform, Android. Congratulations!” Scwarz wrote November 5, 2007.
“I’d also like Sun to be the first platform software company to commit to a complete developer environment around the platform, as we throw Sun’s NetBeans developer platform for mobile devices behind the effort,” he continues, “We’ve obviously done a ton of work to support developers on all Java based platforms, and were pleased to add Google’s Android to the list.”
“With friends like Google and Red Hat, it sure seems like the momentum behind Java’s on the rise…” he concluded.
Now, what does this mean? Well, obviously this isn’t in any way a contract or a patent license, but it could be used for something else: estoppel. Estoppel is a funny word which – very crudely stated – comes down to past actions of the accuser limiting the scope of the claims made against the defendant. As Groklaw explains:
I make a statement. (Congratulations, on incorporating my company’s technology into yours even without a license to my patents.)You hear the statement, and in reliance on the message the statement conveys rely on the statement to your detriment. (You incorporate the technology and, as a result, allegedly infringe the patents.)
I then try to enforce the patents against you but am barred from doing so under the doctrine of estoppel. (I cannot now deny I encouraged the infringement in the first place or at least led you to believe it was okay.)
This is not an easy argument to make, Groklaw notes, but Google has already added it to the Oracle v. Google case. The fact that Oracle deleted the blog post while the trial is still ongoing certainly won’t play to the database vendor’s compliment; judge Alsup already blasted Oracle for doing something similar earlier on in the case, using things like trade secrets to keep evidence from the public eye.
“The big companies do not own the US District Court. When it comes to a public hearing I’m not going to resort to Morse code to figure out what you are saying,” Alsup told Oracle’s lawyers, “This is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle. Nobody is going to put my word under seal even if I refer to your secret documents.”
All in all, it would appear Oracle’s case is growing ever weaker, no matter how many blog posts to the contrary Florian Mueller keeps churning out.
I thought groklaw was gone?
http://www.osnews.com/story/24623/Groklaw_Calls_it_a_Day_To_Close_M…
New person took over.
Mark Webbink, who is a lawyer (apparently a law professor), took over as the new editor of Groklaw on May 16th.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110515173831922
“Now that the battlefield has shifted from SCO attacking Linux to Microsoft using patents against it and from servers to mobiles, I realized that Groklaw needs a lawyer at the helm. So I asked Mark Webbink if he would take on this role, and I’m thrilled to tell you that he has accepted. He is the new editor of Groklaw as of today. Mark was General Counsel at Red Hat, as you know, and he is on the board of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is also a law professor, which as I’ll explain is a vital piece of what he has planned. Mark is a visiting professor at New York Law School where he runs the Center for Patent Innovations, oversees the Peer To Patent project run with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, has been active in seeking reform of the U.S. patent system, and teaches patent licensing. In addition, Mark is a senior lecturing fellow at Duke University School of Law where he teaches intellectual property (patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret) licensing. Mark has access to law students at those law schools and many others. In addition, Mark has remained interested and involved in free and open source software and related intellectual property issues and he is the author of the chapter on U.S. technology law included in a soon to be released book on free and open source software law.”
Hence the statement on Groklaw concerning this topic:
This statement is very probably a statement made by Mark Webbink, law professor, formerly General Counsel at Red Hat, and member of the board of the Software Freedom Law Center.
Edited 2011-07-26 12:49 UTC
You thought groklaw was gone but they remain. Larry thought Jonathan’s blog post was gone but it remains. Things never disappear on computers? I am learning about Git (version control software) and wondering what command I could fire at archive.org to recall the lost blog post, git show master@{MONDAY NOV 05, 2007} 😉
I haven’t been following this saga, so please excuse me if I ask a dumb question, but isn’t Google’s whole point that Dalvik isn’t Java? It seems like Schwarz saying “congratulations to Google on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform, Android” doesn’t exactly bolster that position.
It doesn’t matter if Dalvik really is or is not Java, what matters here is Schwarz making a public statement that as far as he was concerned he thought it was, and yet at the same time he was perfectly OK with it.
While this may be relevant, I guess it won’t be a large part of their defense. Ie, what is meant by “Java”, the patents read on the VM as far as I know, but Schwarz could be talking about the standard libraries, language, etc.
Still, it’s a nice thing for Google to have as part of the arsenal.
Maybe he was. But just because he was okay with it didn’t necessarily mean that Sun as a corporate entity was okay with it—figuring whether Sun was will undoubtedly be part of the legal process. http://blogs.oracle.com currently says “The views expressed on this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.” I didn’t read Schwarz’s blog (or anyone at Sun’s), but I’d be greatly surprised if it didn’t say something similar.
I agree with this and to go further I doubt expressions on a blog post will go anywhere.
“Congratulations to cmchittom for taking my ideas and posting them on OSnews.”
What was my intent there?
* Actually congratulate cmchittom
* Express anger that I didn’t make the same comment earlier
A blog post hardly captures the intent that may or may not be written there. Schwartz’s intent may have very well been to congratulate Google but I don’t think it would be able to stand up in court.
BTW, I’m just riding on cmchittoms coattails on this, I’m really not expressing anger 🙂
You have absolutely no idea what his intent or his knowledge was at the time of the alleged statement.
That is the point and why the whole post on Groklaw is absurdly stupid pandering for pageviews.
If someone finds that regardless of the name Google calls their technology, it’s still Java (which I personally think that it probably is) the fact that Johnathan Schwartz gave them Sun’s blessings to use Java is very much relevant to what Google has been accused of. That doesn’t mean there is a legal standing (I honestly don’t know if there is or isn’t) but it’s relevant to the issue at hand one way or the other.
Edited 2011-07-26 13:17 UTC
AFAIK, one can’t run Dalvik programs using a JRE, and likewise Dalvik cannot run Java programs. Dalvik is not Java, Java is not Dalvik.
AFAIK the only thing they have in common is the reserved words and syntax of the programming language. This is like the “interface” between the human authors of programs/apps and the interpreters themselves.
http://eupat.ffii.org/papers/europarl0309/juri0504/interop.en.html
There is a strong case to be made that an interoperability standard, particularly when people are one end of the interface, such as a programming language syntax and reserved words, should be exempt from patent-ability.
A practical example … one shouldn’t be able to patent something like the QWERTY layout for keyboards, because so many people have invested so much time into learning this layout that they would be locked in to a sole supplier if it was patentable. This is clearly not in the best interests of people.
Edited 2011-07-26 14:29 UTC
You’re asking a different question than the judge will be: you’re asking whether Dalvik is the same as Java in a technical sense. But what the judge is considering is whether Dalvik is Java in a legal sense (by if and how Google violates Oracle’s patents). Obviously, those are related questions, but they’re not the same question.
I know what you’re trying to say, but it’s a bad example. The QWERTY layout was patented when it was introduced in 1878.
Maybe language and syntax and API SHOULD not be able to be patented or licensed… but in practice… they are all the time.
How do you think Intel was able to keep out x86 competition? You had to license it from Intel. At the of the day a CPU instruction set is just another set of key words and apis… for lack of a better term.
I could be wrong, but I think Intel actually licensed the mnemonic of its assembler set. That’s about as obvious as it can get.
Even if they don’t do this, they are other ways like licensing or patenting how something obvious is done and tying that to the API… it achieves the same thing.
No the APIs aren’t, but they get over that limitation by making the API in such a way that implementing it in a compatible manner will result in patent infringement.
It’s not quite that simple. Dalvik may be a distinct and binary-incompatible VM, but it’s still the Java language running on top of it – source files are *.java, using standard Java APIs (e.g java.lang.reflect, java.util.*, etc).
What that means is that although not binary compatible with the JVM, it has to at least be very similar, providing implementations of most of the low-level interfaces that the JVM supplies. There *is* plenty of room for patent infringement there, so this revelation should help in shooting that down…
Programming language syntax and reserved words are NOT innovative, novel or inventive. They are actually fairly obvious. It is highly, highly unlike that any aspect of the programming language syntax or reserved words is the subject of valid patented claims.
As for the “other side” … the APIs from the language to the underlying platforms are set by the underlying platform. There can be no IP of java about this facet either, because the APIs in question don’t belong to Java.
And even Oracle isn’t claiming that Google’s use of Java as a language or API’s in Android is violation of it’s patents. The claims are mostly in the manner how the core VM works.
Their valuator decided that Google was somehow making Java less valuable(an absolutely preposterous idea). That just shows what an incompetent person they got to do the valuation of their damages.
Actually, Oracle’s complaint is that the product of Google’s process isn’t compatible with and won’t run in a standard JVM so, in fact, it does devalue Java. You can ridicule that argument, if you like, but it’s already been tested in court. Microsoft tried something similar by adding extensions to their JVM which wouldn’t run in Sun’s JVM, and the courts found that they had violated Sun’s license, awarded them damages, and forced the company to stop doing what they were doing. MS responded by pulling the MSJVM entirely from Windows. Google created a completely incompatible VM. Should be interesting to see how this comes down, but I wouldn’t bet on Google winning, if I were you. Reverse-engineering has its limits, and there are clearly conflicts with patent law.
No. That lawsuit:
A) was settled (so no court decision was made == not tested in court)
B) was about breach of contract
C) was about wrongful advertisement
Being the key phrase in the Sun vs MS lawsuit. Their MSJVM continued to live on in the form of .NET and languages(C#,J# and J++). As long as their product’s name wasn’t Java, they were OK.
I know, there will be a settlement. Oracle will get paid. Question is “How much?”
I was referring to the combination of US vs Microsoft (in which the federal court found that Microsoft had violated its agreement with Sun) and Sun vs Microsoft.
Oracle would be crazy to ask for anything less than per-license royalties.
So… you’re a legal scholar now. Please explain why it was “tested in court”. With references to sources, if you please.
My arguments are based on the original filings by Sun against MS.
http://www.techlawjournal.com/courts/sunwvmsft/Default.htm
And shorter outcome overview
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-251401.html
http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
A) I fail to see the devalued part(the argument that Oracle is using today)
B) It also says that it’s not clear if it has affected Java, however Microsoft succeeded in locking-in applications and making them incompatible.
Look at B74-76. Sun designed Java with portability in mind; that is, apps written for one JVM could be run with minimal to no modification on another JVM, yielding significant benefits to software developers and Sun. Google’s Dalvik VM is completely incompatible with Sun’s JVMs and, therefore, prevents that portability promise. Hence, it devalues Java for Sun.
Microsoft did something that was logically similar. They implemented a JVM that was incompatible with Sun’s. It explicitly omitted some functionality and couldn’t pass Sun’s conformance tests. It doesn’t matter whether Dalvik uses a different bytecode specification and register set; the point is that it’s incompatible with Sun’s JVM, and yields the same net effect as Microsoft’s JVM: It fragments the Java market.
Some people have suggested that the actual market value of Java is zero and, therefore, Sun has nothing to complain about; but that isn’t true at all. Sun has (or had) contracts with various companies to license its technology for a fee. And, to the extent that fragmenting the Java market causes incompatibility issues, it reduces Sun’s capacity for licensing revenue.
If it gets that far, the court will likely find that Dalvik infringes on Sun’s Java patents, and order Google to pay damages to Oracle. But I would venture to say that both companies will settle first. Sun had asked Google to pay $100M to license Java. Of course, that figure was derived at a time when the full market potential of Android was not known. The settlement could run as high as a billion dollars; particularly since Oracle is likely to claim treble damages for willful patent infringement on Google’s part; since Google was aware that it would be infringing, refused to settle with Sun, and did it, anyway.
Google’s Dalvik VM is completely incompatible with Sun’s JVMs and, therefore, is not Java at all. To show this, it is not called Java, it is called Dalvik.
Agreed: Sun’s JVM had an innovative, patentable feature in that it was designed with portability in mind; that is, apps written for one JVM could be run with minimal to no modification on another JVM, yielding significant benefits.
Precisely.
Dalvik does not implement those novel features of Java, as Dalvik is not Java. Dalvik is strictly single platform. Programs written for Dalvik can run only on Dalvik, and not on Java JVMs. Programs written for Java JVMs cannot run on Dalvik platforms (Android).
Ergo, Dalvik does not compete with Java. Dalvik is not Java technology, and does not possess the capabilities of Java technology. Dalvik is not Java. Dalvik does not infringe on Java patents.
Actually, I don’t think so. AFAIK MSJVM was compatible with Java, it could run programs written to run on JVMs. The problem was that Microsoft extended Java to include extra, Microsoft-only extensions. Programs written for MSJVM therefore might not run on other JVMs. THIS was the issue tha Microsoft got in trouble for with MSJVM … aka “embrace, extend, extinguish”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine
“The Microsoft Java Virtual Machine was a proprietary Java Virtual Machine computer program from Microsoft. It was first made available for Internet Explorer version 3 so that users could run Java applets when browsing on the World Wide Web. It was the fastest Windows-based implementation of a Java virtual machine for the first two years after its release. Sun Microsystems, the creator of Java, sued Microsoft in October 1997 for incompletely implementing the Java 1.1 standard. It was also named in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust civil actions, as an implementation of Microsoft’s Embrace, extend and extinguish strategy. In 2001, Microsoft settled the lawsuit with Sun and discontinued its Java implementation.”
My bold.
Not at all. Dalvik cannot possibly fragment the Java market, because Dalvik is not Java. Dalvik is not cross-platform, Dalvik does not implement Java.
Dalvik does not “embrace, extend extinguish” Java … Dalvik doesn’t even make it to the very first step of “embrace”. Dalvik is not Java.
How hard is this to understand? Sheesh!
Edited 2011-07-29 07:08 UTC
lemur2,
“Dalvik does not implement those novel features of Java, as Dalvik is not Java. Dalvik is strictly single platform. Programs written for Dalvik can run only on Dalvik, and not on Java JVMs. Programs written for Java JVMs cannot run on Dalvik platforms (Android). ”
Whether you are semantically correct or not doesn’t really address whether oracle has a legal claim over dalvik/android, isn’t that the root concern?
Trademark: I don’t think android violates any oracle trademarks.
Copyright: I don’t know if android infringes on oracle copyrights.
Patents: I don’t know if android infringes on oracle patents.
I don’t think anyone can answer the later two without knowing the agreements in place between google and former sun or otherwise making assumptions.
Agreed. It is entirely up to the courts to decide.
I am simply trying to bring some balance to the picture. A lot of people seem to have concluded that any company which brings a patent lawsuit will win. This is NOT a vaild assumption.
I point out, once again, that given that there are many languages out there, both interpreted and compiled, the only really innovative, patentable aspect of Java IMO was its cross-platform capabilities.
I think the marketing theme for Java was even “write once, run anywhere”.
Dalvik doesn’t have that feature at all. The one, major, marketed (possessing market value), novel, innovative, perhaps patentable feature of Java … and Dalvik doesn’t have it.
Dalvik is not Java.
lemur2,
“I point out, once again, that given that there are many languages out there, both interpreted and compiled, the only really innovative, patentable aspect of Java IMO was its cross-platform capabilities.”
In my opinion, the whole Java VM was a fairly radical departure from other compiled languages in it’s class. I don’t really see the reason courts would limit infringement claims to portability only at the exclusion of everything else.
I would like to know why dalvik bytecode is less portable than java bytecode?
The portable nature of java stems from the intermediate non-architecture specific bytecode form, and in this sense I think dalvik is fairly similar. However I stand to be corrected. To my knowledge, the main difference is that dalvik is “register based”. From my read of this next link, it looks like the number of registers is dynamic and is intended to improve encoding efficiency (instructions over stack based variables use less efficient memory addresses).
http://code.google.com/p/smali/wiki/Registers
It’s google’s implementation of a VM, and assuming they haven’t misappropriated any copyrighted source code, I think they should be entitled to write their own implementation since I don’t believe in software patents. However patent law being what it is, I don’t have much confidence that anyone can write software without infringing someone else’s patents.
Edited 2011-07-31 18:47 UTC
Actually the MS implementation was incomplete, it could not run all Java bytecode programs (lacking JNI and RMI support as I understand it).
This was in the Wikipedia link you cited.
In terms of what Google provides, they do embrace Java quite well in practice, writing a plugin for Eclipse to develop Java-language-based programs for Android, and dx, a compiler from Java bytecode to Dalvik bytecode.
Not that this is really any legal problem, but I guess it was part of the reason Oracle wants to level patents against them.
When it comes to legal cases, logically does not fly. It has to be very much explicit to be “tested in court”.
I got burnt many times with the “logical” argument…
However those samples will be of help to Oracle, no doubt.
Again. That case was a case of misrepresentation and improper use of Java trademark. Microsoft later on happily released J++ and J# – Microsoft’s own Java variants with Java APIs and a VM(though no JVM).
What Sun was and Oracle is licensing is the Java trademark along with TCK. That may include unlimited field of use clause(J2ME VM in Symbian is from IBM btw), patent licenses and right to call your implementation Java(tm).
People who didn’t want to call their implementation Java(like MS still has J#) or didn’t want to have the field of use clause enforced(Apache Harmony) weren’t accused of anything.
And that is what Oracle is arguing, yet the judge already seems sceptical on this one. If it had been tested in court, he would not have been so sceptical on that part.
It is very easy to mix concepts.
You have Java, the programming language and Java the platform.
So unless you pay very close attention to the context, it is very easy to mix one with the other.
Other VM systems are safe from this, because their VM system is different than the language name they support.
It uses the Java language … however it does not compile to Java Bytecode.
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-13-n83.html
It seems not if the timeline outlined in this comment is true;
http://news.cnet.com/8618-1023_3-20082151.html?communityId=2108&tar…
Edited 2011-07-26 14:49 UTC
It would still be relevant as evidence of Sun’s approval of Android as is – and encouraging the use of Java technology. Dalvik was probably there, just a bit more behind the scenes than it is today.
Schwartz would approve the Android using the JVM not using Dalvik, since JVM implementations have to go through an approval process.
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-13-n83.html
Remember that Microsoft got sued for calling their JVM, java when it was an incompatible JVM.
If Schwartz did know it was Dalvik, maybe his comments would be different … however we can’t know that unless we ask the man himself.
Edited 2011-07-26 15:22 UTC
They did – however, this isn’t the same situation. Microsoft were providing a VM that ran Java bytecode, and calling it a JVM when it didn’t conform to Sun’s standards.
In contrast, Google aren’t providing a JVM, and make no attempt to support Java bytecode. Dalvik is source-compatible with the Java language, but compiles to a different bytecode, running on an incompatible VM. Any patent claims must stem from the fact that for source compatibility, Dalvik must provide implementations of some of the Java APIs (i.e a lot of packages like java.lang.reflect, java.util, etc).
I know this bit. That is why I linked the article. Google used Dalvik so they didn’t need to have Sun’s approval.
I wasn’t talking about the Patent Claim, I was talking about Schwartz’s apparent blessing of Android.
If he did know it was Dalvik and had not assumed it was Java … He may have not given it such a blessing.
Edited 2011-07-27 04:15 UTC
Speculation is only appropriate when a parson is no longer with us. If you need validation of your point, you are free to contact Mr. Schwartz and ask for clarification. I am pretty sure Oracle will have him on the stand for some clarifications.
I don’t care enough to email him
Sun has always kept tight control of Java in the mobile, and even the embedded, space. They’ve never let that “go free”. We don’t know what state the Google / Sun licensing negotiations were in when this blog post was made. Schwartz was always a cheer leader, and it’s easy to see him being out front on this while still working out the details of Java on Android.
Dalvik isn’t really Java technology though … It like saying the Jaeger monkey and Google’s V8 JS engines are the same because they compile/interpret JavaScript … the only common factor is the language being used.
Exactly, Sun thought they would be using the Sun VM. Ofcourse the people at Sun would be happy about that.
When Google announced Dalvik, Sun did not like it and probably made this very clear to Google.
And Google did not announce that they are even going to use Java. Their original announcement was very dry on actual technologies involved.
He new enough to know that Google had not licensed and they were using Java. While not many people actually knew at the time.
Not sure why there are so many fans of google. The “do no evil” corp sure seems to do plenty of it. They borrow heavily (steal) from open source to make huge profits, and yet somehow they are not evil like apple and microsoft?
Not that I’m necessarily contradicting you, but how is Oracle any better, or even any different?
I agree with you that Oracle is no different. It seems to me that some are quick to take googles side when these issues come up and I don’t think google is the saint that many believe.
I’m not completely comfortable with Google’s dominance, but there are demonstrable differences in attitude and behaviour between Google and Oracle.
Google appears to fundamentally understand it must continue to earn customer loyalty through furious innovation in order to maintain its market position.
By contrast, it is difficult to point to many concrete innovations in Oracle’s core “cash cow” enterprise software products in the last five years – they appear all too willing to do everything possible to lock-in organisations and milk them for annual maintenance revenues.
Most large IT vendors get to the point where much of their growth is by acquisition. Some genuinely acquire strategically useful capabilities and work hard at integrating the acquired technology with their existing products. Others simply ‘buy and milk-dry’.
Oracle’s recent behaviour is just sleazy. The “redistribution” of RHEL is one OSnews-relevant example – what value were they really adding with a 100% binary compatible clone?
And this – frankly disgusting – patent-license grab is another; with any luck the case will be thrown out. Can you seriously imagine Google acquiring ailing companies to build a patent portfolio simply in order to ‘tax’ innovative companies? (Nortel was for defensive reasons).
Are you referring to furious innovation in Android or you mean in Google products generally? I don’t find much innovative about Android, but I’d love to learn more if you think there are aspects to Android that are particularly innovative. They are playing catchup to Apple/RIM pretty quickly, that’s for certain. Also Android was an acquisition. Not clear whether it would have succeeded to compete with Apple/RIM without Google’s vast resources, reach, and brand but given Rubin’s previous commercial successes, it stood a good chance on its own.
And I think generally Google is running out of steam wrt innovative products. Buzz, Wave, Health, Power, Games, Apps, ChromeOS, Latitude, Places. All google product failures, and either dead or soon to be. Apps Marketplace is still alive but I don’t know of anyone making alot of money. Are there some other innovative products you had in mind?
Plus is interesting and has a fresh UI but I don’t know whether it’s very innovative. It’s also kind of a ghost town once you get very far away from the “celebrity” early adopters and they had that whole ban-stick snafu last few days, hopefully it was one-time problem. The run-of-the-mill early adopters (like me and people I connect with!) seem to log in 1x or 2x, create a little content and then disappear back to twitter/fb/whatever, but I’m sure my experience is not universal. I think they continue to innovate in search but only to stay ahead of the SEO dorks from poisoning their system. And some of the innovations are downright ghastly, (e.g., personalized search).
They like Oracle have been trying to acquire anything that smells like talent in the past few years, they both have the cash reserves to do it.. (rumors Google offered US $200 million for Color and got turned down, lolz but not sure which will prove to be more laughable, the offer or the rejection).
I’m sure the new(older?) CEO is hoping to turn the dial back a few years and get Google back into “startup” mode. Will be interesting to see how it works out.
Paradoxically, I believe that list of Google product “failures” points to a healthy Darwinian approach; It’s inevitable there will be innovations which don’t work, but what matters is how Google deals with them. They tend to be reasonably open about their failures and I respect their lack of spin. No corporate-babble about ‘changing directions’ – Eric Schmidt has stated they think of themselves as following a “scientific” approach in that they try promising avenues and discard those which don’t meet expectations.
I like and use Android, but mainly because of the openness – I think there are certainly incremental innovations (efficient mobile multitasking, interface malleability for different form factors) in the platform, but appreciate the argument they are in some senses reimplementing a user experience pioneered by the iPhone – despite Android development significantly pre-dating the public announcement of the iPhone.
Some recent Google innovations worthy of the name:
– Google Ideas – http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/15/google-to-open-google-ideas-… (Perhaps geek hubris, perhaps a legitimate innovation in the provision of aid & philanthropy)
– Google Go – A beautiful language, and bold in terms of what it discards.
– Driverless Cars –
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-driverless-cars-nevada-2011-6
– When you look the uptake of HTML5 technologies, I feel that ChromeOS as a concept isn’t yet dead – though I can see them collapsing it into Android at some point
– Continued innovation in Google Apps and Google Docs – we extensively use the productivity suite in our company and find it an extremely good fit.
What marks them out as different is their continued willingness to take risks – Google+ is a bet-the-farm kind of move which is seldom seen from organisations their size. We’ll see how it pans out.
Google Scribe is a cool tool. Helps to write documents faster.
Thanks for the link to Google ideas. Kind of interesting endeavor.
Have the recent pricing changes affected your orgs use of Google apps much?
I’m not as enthralled with Google+ It could make a pretty good blogging platform, (e.g., replace posterous, tumblr, and google’s own blogger). Time will tell though!
I agree, I hope Google gets back to its roots. They have sucked up a ton of cash and talent with not much to show for it lately.
Activity framework. You tried to counter by stating that UIML templates did it? When UIML is a XML layout engine and activities aren’t.
http://developer.android.com/intl/de/guide/topics/fundamentals/acti…
What platform had a properly working back button? (So that pressing back would return you to the middle of another application with data filled in an you are ready to continue)
That just points that they are still maintaining startup mentality. Aren’t you supposed to be a startup guy?
I’m sorry thought you were referring to the fragment API which is a fairly recent (3.0ish) “innovation” and is what UIML templates and parts are prior art for.
If you think the “activity” framework which is just yet another component framework is innovative, you really are a hopeless fanboi. They added a couple nice things like persistent state, but not really innovative.
UIML is a specification, there are a few implementations, one for swing that is what you should be what you should be comparing.
Stop being a tool.
Oh just about any multitasking os. You know, like Blackberry?
They bought most of those products. Also, grow up.
Yes… 10 years working with Swing, 11 with Java, 5 with J2ME and 3 with Android, and I’m incapable of comparing those frameworks…
So far your counterargument to the activity framework(the whole framework) was “just yet another component framework”.
I challenge you to show me where they copied it from. In particular this thing:
http://developer.android.com/intl/de/guide/topics/fundamentals/task…
“An application usually contains multiple activities. Each activity should be designed around a specific kind of action the user can perform and can start other activities.
…
An activity can even start activities that exist in other applications on the device. For example, if your application wants to send an email, you can define an intent to perform a “send” action and include some data, such as an email address and a message
…
Even though the activities may be from different applications, Android maintains this seamless user experience by keeping both activities in the same task.”
Me: “inter-Activity interaction” from http://www.osnews.com/thread?481617
I would be very happy to credit the original authors.
Same yo you dearie… same to you.
Even if that app got closed?
PS: fanboi is an Apple fanboy. The usage of the lower-case letter i is a mockery of Apple’s usage of that letter as prefix. I’d prefer fandroid or Android fanboy, if you have to.
Counterargument to what? Let’s see, you think that a software component that you can “activate” from another component or from another process via an underlying IPC mechanism based on a registry lookup with a specified lifecycle is wholly original or unique? Really, this is your claim?
Btw, if you look closely at history of the IPC plumbing in Android that powers your Intents/Activities you might see alot of code/design “borrowed” from BeOS Binder framework if it hasn’t been scrubbed. May or may not be true that they subsequently had to rewrite large portions of it because the ownership and licensing status of the stack was not exactly clear. Let us know what you find. Some pretty talented engineers from Be found their way on to the Android team.
Copied would mean they stole something. Has that been asserted, by like anyone? The concept is hardly innovative (which is what you blindly assert), and I seriously doubt you will find anyone who hasn’t started writing code in the past six months who will agree with you. As I said earlier, the persistent state via URI was a cute implementation but precursors are easily found.
If you want to really expand your horizons and find something comparable look at the NewtonOS persisting frames into soups. If you weren’t around then, the Newton always returned to previous state even on sudden power loss because it fostered app design centered around frames (sorta like classes) that persisted into soups (sorta like an ODBMS). And yes, there were global soups. You could look at perhaps the MIDP push registry or CHAPI since a j2me developer with your level of experience would certainly be familiar with those, right? There is any number of IPC mechanisms/software componentry paradigms from which to choose.
You suck at etymology too. Label me, unsurprised. The list of adjectives I would place before your name remains off-topic no matter your stated preference.
No, Google simply ignores techology licenses which it finds inconvenient and uses them, anyway. That isn’t “innovation”. That’s intellectual property infringement.
The difference is that while Google don’t always hold to their “don’t be evil” ideal, they’re generally pretty good about it. In contrast, it sometimes seems like “be evil” is a philosophy Oracle follow with great enthusiasm.
When it comes to picking a favourite between the two, it’s not much of a contrast.
Try rarely holds to their former “don’t be evil” ideal. They dropped it because they realized they’re fundamentally evil.
To all “don’t do evil” idealists, including google, who do you think was the authoritative source that defines “evil” the ISO? The problem is we defined evil based on our own experiences thus we have varying opinions of which company does evil things frequently.
Well, regardless of your definition of evil, Google more so than any other company has the greatest CAPACITY and HUNGER for evil, precisely because it collects and controls so much information about us. Plus, they seem to have absolutely ZERO moral compunction about stealing information (StreetView, anyone?), abusing copyright (Google Books), and pretty soon they’ll have our medical records. God help us if they put it all together with social networking. Combine that with the kind of behavioral prediction engine that their CTO seems to embrace — and ties to law enforcement agencies — it’s like Big Brother on steroids.
Edited 2011-07-27 04:06 UTC
Here’s an example of the slimebag stuff that Google has been doing…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20070742-281/exclusive-googles-we…
Sure, they can. But are they? EVERY carrier and EVERY map service can do the same thing. Your phone is a GPS device. Did you not realize that it can track you no matter what you are doing.’
Google is making these identities PUBLIC. Don’t you see anything wrong with that?
Ever heard of Hanlon’s razor?
Then your bank is the most evil operation on this planet. And your family is satan himself! LOL
You seem to forget the contributions Google has made to the Linux kernel over the years.
They rely heavily on open source, but they’re giving back just as heavily: Chromium, Android (in large parts open), Protocol Buffers, V8 … need I go on?
Have a look:
http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=label:Google
Edited 2011-07-26 17:33 UTC
oh, yes, please go on! since Apple:
Webkit
CUPS
OpenCL
Grand Central Dispatch
launchd
…
it looks like that Apple is even greater fan of OpenSource than Google
and they “giving back just as heavily”
WebKit and CUPS are not Apple’s.
How is WebKit not Apple’s?
Becuase it’s an evolution from KDE’s khtml, and has been receiving more contributions from outside Apple than inside?
oh yes, they are !!!
Apple are sponsored both of this projects!
please try simple wikipedia for: CUPS and WEBKIT
…and, most important is story about webkit version 2 ! http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit2 Google hack webkit to add some security! Webkit team add same stuff through API so everyone benefit from it!
KHTML would rotten if Apple was not around. Google, Nokia.. all all others benefits from Apple pushing webkit/html5 so hard!
CUPS: please try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS
M$ is company that patronized 3th rated product and technologies just to keep monopoly granted by IBM. …for more than two decades! M$ IS DARKEST AGE OF COMPUTING!
welcome to Google/Apple OpenSource initiave
(Google just need more practice
)
kovacm,
CUPS originally stood for “Common Unix Printing System”.
I didn’t know that apple acquired cups in 2007, but I get the feeling that’s not what people here are talking about when they speak about “contributing” to open source.
From the wikipedia article:
“Michael Sweet, who owns Easy Software Products, started developing CUPS in 1997. The first public betas appeared in 1999. The original design of CUPS used the LPD protocol, but due to limitations in LPD and vendor incompatibilities, the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) was chosen instead. CUPS was quickly adopted as the default printing system for several Linux distributions, including Red Hat Linux. In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2.] In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code.”
yes, Apple bought and maintain CUPS for years now…
BUT let me clear things!
oriqinal poster wrote:
So he talks about Google CONTRIBUTIONs to OpenSource.
Do Apple invest (money/time/people) in all this technologies?
– Webkit
– CUPS
– OpenCL
– Grand Central Dispatch
– launchd
– CLANG
– LLVM (I forgot these two)…
Does other companies can use these tech. and have benefit from it?
kovacm,
I think you may have missed my point.
Saying that apple contributed these technologies to open source is a stretch. Did oracle contribute java to open source? No, they just bought it that way.
Would apple have open sourced it if they had developed it themselves? Maybe, maybe not.
The fact that they bought the project outright might just mean they wanted to make changes for themselves without releasing source as required under the GPL. I’m not asserting this to be the case, but there could be selfish motivations for buying out open source projects.
not possible.
yes, technically it is possible, but look what happened to Oracle and OpenOffice if you try to close it !!
on other hand, Apple make profit from products (hardware+software) and they do not lose money if they gave some code for free if that code in the and will support selling their hardware! (Webkit, OpenCL or GDC)
this is completely opposite to e.g. software company like Microsoft – it is completely devastating for Microsoft to share code, protocols or file formats with rest of industry.
Apple own CUPS for years now, Apple add security API to webkit so everybody could use sandboxing (in contrast to Google fork of webkit), they make OpenCL and hand it to Kronos, they work on CLANG and LLVM… all these technologies they will use to make better PRODUCT (HARDWARE!!), to add VALUE to their hardware, and at the end – to sell hardware at higher price.
“not possible”
What do you mean not possible?
“yes, technically it is possible, but look what happened to Oracle and OpenOffice if you try to close it !!”
I don’t think oracle ever wanted to maintain openoffice. It didn’t give them a strategic advantage, it simply came with the rest of the package.
“on other hand, Apple make profit from products (hardware+software) and they do not lose money if they gave some code for free if that code in the and will support selling their hardware! (Webkit, OpenCL or GDC)”
I still wouldn’t rule out that they purchased CUPS in order to avoid GPL requirements in their own software.
From a business perspective, it’s a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do.
In fact, taking a glance at the license, this is no longer speculation, it’s explicit:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/cups/cups-218/cups/LICENSE.t…
1. Apple Operating System Development License Exception;
a. Software that is developed by any person or entity for an Apple Operating System…
b. An Apple Operating System means any operating system software developed and/or marketed by Apple Computer
c. This exception is only available for Apple OS-Developed Software and does not apply to software that is distributed for use on other operating systems.
Edited 2011-07-29 13:18 UTC
Maybe we could count the time and $$$ Google spends on GSoCs? Where a lot of projects aren’t even valuable to Google in any imaginable way…
As FOSS supporters go, Google is the least self-centred of them. Sure Apple contributes a lot, but look what they contribute? Mostly stuff they are using internally and will benefit from a greater community.
I don’t think there are many “fans” of Google commenting regularly on OSnews.
If you’re thinking in broader terms, then it seems to me that in some senses Google benefits from the attention other companies get. Its browser got a lot of coverage early on, but in terms of publicity, Firefox and Explorer will always generate more headlines. Google’s attitude towards privacy occasionally sparks some brief interest but the spotlight for a long time has been on Facebook. When Google does find itself on a collision course with one of the more infamous companies, generally it’s Google on the receiving end and this gives it a “less evil” sheen.
There’s only so much information we can absorb these days and the result is that some companies, and some people, aren’t put under as much scrutiny as perhaps they should.
If Google are found to have been in the wrong regarding Dalvik, it may well happen that Dalvik will be removed and replaced with a flavour of Go, or Google and Oracle will settle out of court and Dalvik will be retained, and this chapter will fade into the background as life goes on and a Sony online service gets hacked (again), Microsoft and Apple do something evil to their competitors (again), a new version of Explorer beats all other browsers in various benchmarks (again – except in those benchmarks it doesn’t, of course), at least until a new version of Firefox is released, Facebook gets embroiled in another privacy issue (again) and so on.
Some facts. And corrections.
A) Google is “Don’t be evil”, not “Do no evil”. Two expressions have different meanings.
B) They are really big contributors to FOSS projects. GSoC should not be underestimated in any way.
C) Microsoft’s FOSS reputation has such pearls as Get The Facts campaign.
D) Apple has a love/hate relationship towards FOSS. I get confused by their stances very easily…
E) It’s really hard to steal anything from a community that prides itself on giving stuff away.
PS: Google is as hypocritical as the next company, but today they are my temporary ally.Just like my employer is my employer only because my temporary goals coincide with their.
I hope that Google wins this case and that estoppel is one of the core issues.
Not only would it be good for Java but it would be good for the whole industry. I would love a high-profile case like this to shut-up the zealots that claim that it is suicide to re-implement an open-source version of a commercial API.
Specifically, I would love it there was a concrete court decision to point the anti-Mono people at. Microsoft has done far, far more to encourage the use of Mono than either Oracle or Sun ever did for Android. I have been posting all over the Internet that estoppel prevents Microsoft from enforcing any supposed .NET patents against Mono. This case could go a long way to illustrating that.
Tell me how an informl “Congratulations on your use of JAVA” can be read as “I’m granting you a free and unconditional license to use our patented technologies.”
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110723095928839
see also: estoppel
It’s not. However, it *does* demonstrate that Sun (right up to the level of CEO) was aware of what Google was doing, and that despite the likelihood of patent issues, took no steps to address the issue.
It doesn’t kill Oracle’s case, but under estoppel rules, it does make it hard to claim damages.
Well to me, that sounds like an implicit support and encouragement. It clearly indicates that Sun was happy by Google’s actions. It is not hard to realize.
Edited 2011-07-26 23:21 UTC
It’s called common legal system. It wouldn’t fly in a civil legal system.
think of it this way: a girl picks you up in a bar, tells everyone she’ll f*** you till your brains pop out, she films it, posts it online, and then she accuses you of rape!
Your analogy is bollocks. Sun praising Google for embracing the “Java Platform” does not mean praising them for “creating an alternative platform to Java”.
So, Google’s justification in its defense against alleged patent infringement claim made by Oracle has been steadfastly to maintain that (essentially) Android(tm)/Dalvik is not Java(tm), and that Android does not infringe because certain patents are invalid.
Now a public statement by Sun CEO which states that Rubin’s creation uses Java and he welcomes the future use of Java in any device that might possibly ship Android in the future is supposed to support that defense.
Yes, Google is now going to drop that defense strategy and say that yes, actually Android/Dalvik is Java but it’s acceptable that we infringed because a Sun executive said in a forward-looking statement that he welcomed it, embracing an extremely weak defense of estoppel in order to avoid paying damages.
Lol, OK. I’d wager that will not happen and instead they will continue to assert that the patents in question are invalid and that Android/Dalvik is not Java.
I can see why the new “editor” of Groklaw is no longer in the business of providing sound legal advice or education. I also like how you have decided to start baiting people by name (FM, Gruber) in an effort to insert yourself unsuccessfully into flamewars. Hope it works out for you. However, what I don’t understand is why you are intent on dragging this useful, community-supported site down into that category by posting daily, nonsensical editorial ranting based on apparently nothing but anecdote on the same topic day after day, because it’s kind of a slippery slope. Whatevs.
Vacuous FUD bullshit-spreading and PR spinning here at its worst to be recognized as such. As pointed out before, it can be argued that Rubin engaged in a perilous theft/recreation/reimplementation of his own J2SE and JVM for HipTopOS at Danger. It’s obviously not improper on its face to do so but it is pretty easy to cross the line (.bndl v .jar for example) He got caught stealing from a much tighter-controlled and licensed (and more obvious!) revenue stream when Danger began to ship a “proprietary implementation” of j2me MIDP classes around 2.2 or 2.3 (or I would assume he became “educated” or perhaps decided to negotiate) and began to pay proper j2me licenses to Sun, but only for j2me. Schwartz just as well may have been commenting about Android’s use of Java in consideration of past business relationships and future licensing revenue (at the time Android could still be seen by outsiders as basically “Danger 2.0” strapped to a RedHat-esque “pay for support and services” business model utilizing Linux instead of a proprietary kernel which had been sold to Microsoft). The whole OHA had been announced for what a matter of days if memory serves before this Schwartz statement?
Does the timeline for the Groklaw “interpretation” of that statement even match a smidgen of historical reality? When it was made, not a single Android device had ever been shipped (I think it may have been booting on the Nokia N810 then, about it), no SDK, no source code was available, and yet a CEO is supposed to know that it contains infringing elements and make legally binding public statements about it. Sure, ok, that makes a lot of sense. Turn that dial to Spin and set the switch to On! Instant pageviews!
I’m also getting a little tired of this fanboi reality distortion field that is being allowed to surround the topics of Google and software patents that is beginning to take on Jobsian proportions. Google spent what ten years trying to defend/assert one of those grotesquely absurd overly broad patents everyone around here scorns on its homepage Google Doodle? http://1.usa.gov/dR6UBy Could some of you Google apologists please tell me how that fits into your Google spin cycle? Are they being “ironic”?
No, if what is alleged is true they are simply trying to destroy/ignore intellectual property rights, but only when it is in their own business interest. Definitely not Evil! The hypocrisy on this topic is unbelievable, and the extent to which people are demonizing individuals on both side of the issue at hand (Larry Ellison is Gollum, etc etc) is counterproductive, uncivil and tbh childish.
First, read my previous post of the differences between the VM and the platform. Second, you CAN put forth multiple arguments during a lawsuit. They are not mutually exclusive.
As for Groklaw, the editor has vastly more knowledge about the subject than anyone here especially you.
As for time lines, do you honestly think that these two companies weren’t in talks about this new OS for years before the public knew about it? I am also pretty sure it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Schwartz accepted it publicly after Android had shipped. If he had doubts, which seems unlikely because they had been in talks about co-operating on development, he should have lawyered up, not congratulated Google.
I have no idea what you point is about the Google patent. Yes, Google has patents. I can’t find a case of them asserting it against anyone.
The trolling against Google is unbelievable on this topic. People think that Google should just burn for having the audacity to create Android.
Your understanding of the elements in dispute here is tenuous.
Yes you can put forth multiple arguments, no I don’t think Google will because the claim is legally baseless, absurd and would be a PR disaster (that’s what I wrote, sorry you chose not to read). Who knows, crazier things have happened!
Really, and your basis for that claim is given that you have zero knowledge of either?
Yes, it’s pretty clear they were not in talks. Otherwise it would have come up in discovery, with all your extensive legal experience wouldn’t you agree? Do you have some actual evidence to point to in support of your claim about these negotiations are you just assuming and making grand assertions as fact?
Lol, the comment by Schwartz(McNealy lol!) pointed to was made long before any device shipped, or perhaps you can educate us? Also, if you think that timelines, context, and apparently even reality doesn’t matter in a legal setting in making an estoppel ruling, well ok, but your “knowledge” differs from well, every probably established legal precedent in the Western world on the matter where the intent of the speaker’s representation is paramount.
Sorry, I really don’t feel the need to rehash your fanboism over again from the last thread on this subject. Good luck and thanks for the comment!
Actually my understanding of the differences between Java the platform, and the JVM, and what it takes to get to use the Java name are pretty much spot on. Another poster pretty much posted the same thing I did.
All you have to do is look up Mark Webbink on wikipedia to see his credentials. Are you by chance a practising IP lawyer?
According to Gosling: “Oracle finally filed a patent lawsuit against Google. Not a big surprise. During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer’s eyes sparkle. Filing patent suits was never in Sun’s genetic code. Alas….
I hope to avoid getting dragged into the fray: they only picked one of my patents (RE38,104) to sue over. ”
This indicates that Google and Sun had been in talks over Android. When they couldnt reach an agreement, Google created a clean room version of a VM based on the open source JDK.
Sun’s Schwartz made the blog posting on the same day as Google announced Android to the public along with the open handset alliance. At this point, Schwartz knew that Google had gone ahead without the license from Sun, choosing instead to write its own platform. While that doesn’t make things all go away, it certainly is a big ding in Oracle’s case.
Edited 2011-07-27 02:43 UTC
You brought up some obvious point about the difference between a “JVM” (you know there isn’t just one) and Java(tm). Which has absolutely no bearing on the case at hand and about which I don’t really think anyone has any misunderstanding.
Congratulations, I guess.
Thank God for wikipedia. The roots of your clue tree run deep to water. And yes, I am a practicing IP attorney. I also ride the 14th circuit, own several Fortune 500 companies and launched 3 startups.. yesterday!
Give me a break.
It indicates none of those things. It means that as part of Oracle’s due diligence in purchasing Sun (btw have you ever been part of a M/A of that scope?) they reviewed its patent portfolio for risk/revenue. How you extrapolate to some (what would be illegal at the time) conversation between Oracle and Google is beyond me, but hey, I’m sure the Illumanti were also involved. This also occurred like I dunno YEARS after the alleged estoppel and is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. You are making such absurd conjectures, I really can’t continue.
No. Thank God for the internet and search engines. You should try them some time. Just a simple search and, a second later, I had these links (you can find them also at Groklaw):
http://www.nyls.edu/faculty/faculty_profiles/mark_webbink/
http://www.law.duke.edu/fac/webbink
[/q]
Umm the parent quoted wikipedia. I’m pretty sure just about everyone on the planet above the age of 10 is now fairly conversant on how to use search engines. Thanks for the “wisdom”.
I could give 2 cents about what some profile page has to say. Anyone claiming grounds for estoppel based on that bullshit timeline, history and context has about as much legal sense as your 5 cats.
Article was just pageview pandering with no analysis or insight. The kind of nonsense that does its readers a disservice to the complexities involved in the subject. Very similar to what OSNews is becoming with its daily stream of “useful” patent hyperbole.
You lost me there. Are you talking about Google’s lawyers, a straw man, or what? Because nowhere in Groklaw’s article does the author make that kind of claim. He just reported that Google included estoppel to its defense, and gave a (kind of shallow) example to explain that concept. Nothing less, nothing more. He even said that it won’t be easy to make that argument.
Apparently reading is not your strong point; it is unsurprising you can’t follow, I suggest you reread the Groklaw “news”
Google has not and in all likelihood will not include estoppel claims in its defense. The article is pure speculative piece of trash reasoning. You are correct at least that its reasoning is shallow.
What he is doing is spreading FUD. Here’s a recipe for how to pander for pageviews:
a) Point to some inflammatory “new” finding.
b) Lay out an extremely unrelated example of estoppel.
c) Let idiot readers spread the uncerainty and doubt!
There is zero useful information contained in the article. If Google had argued estoppel that would be worthy of note.
Oh, an by the way, I know some people think that bashing Wikipedia in its entirety makes them look intellectual (and yes, it is not the best source of information) but it does have some useful articles. It just takes a little bit of criteria to tell which ones (hint: look for references). Mark Webbink’s article has quite a few links to reliable sources that support the claims made in it.
No, that’s a red herring. People think that Google needs to conform to technology licenses — LIKE THE REST OF US.
Thats funny. Last I checked Sun open sourced Java of its own free will. Google built Android using only open source blocks to start with. Sun congratulated Google on its use of Java technology. Then Oracle buys Sun and thinks they have the right to sue Google. So where did Google not conform to the license? Because I am not seeing it.
You know, just because an organization open sources some code doesn’t mean they relinquish all rights to the code. The terms are dictated by the license. I would recommend that you read the Java license to understand what you can and can’t do with the code and intellectual property. Microsoft got slapped *hard* by the court for reimplementing Java technology. Google is essentially doing the same thing, and they reportedly rejected a licensing deal from Sun. Big mistake. They’re gonna pay whether they like it or not.
And what do you think Oracle bought when they purchased Sun? They now own ALL intellectual property that was created by Sun. That’s what ownership means. Why else would they spend that much money to acquire Sun? There’s nothing wrong with Oracle suing Google. They have every right to. If Sun were still around, they would do the same thing.
No, Dalvik is not a re-implementation of Java technology, ala MSJVM. Dalvik is Dalvik, and Java is Java. A Java JRE cannot run Dalvik apps, nor can the Dalvik runtime environment run Java programs.
Thank you, Mr. Pedantic. The point is they’re essentially re-implementing an execution engine for Java-based source programs. Whether that execution engine runs Java bytecode or Dalvik code is irrelevant.
No they didn’t. The design of Dalvik is very different to traditional JVM.
And you obviously don’t understand the GPL, which is not surprising. Anyone can use openJDK without fear of copyright infringement. As for patents, Sun didn’t try suing Google, instead they endorsed Android. People who worked at the top of Sun have stated that Sun would never have sued Google. That creates estoppel for Oracle and will certainly change the scope of the suit.
Reread my comment. You’ll notice that I was referring to intellectual property infringement (aka patents), not copyright. But thanks for erecting a strawmen, nonetheless.
Sun didn’t endorse anything. They sought to sell a license to Google, which was refused.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-21/google-rejected-java-licen…
Edited 2011-07-27 16:39 UTC
I’ve read the Java license many times, because it’s a bog standard GPL with Classpath exception. I suggest you do the same.
Therefore, although legally Google is in violation of the patents, Oracle has no ground to claim that there are damages based on sales of Java.
BTW: Open JDK can be freely used in mobile phones, without additional licensing…
EDIT:
Really? since when is code covered by patents? You are the one that is throwing unrelated statements into, what could have been a reasonably good post with which people could disagree. Instead we end up correcting you.
Edited 2011-07-27 17:49 UTC
Why, pray tell?
Irrelevant. We’re not talking about Open JDK here.
Let’s separate those things a bit… For something to “be” Java means absolutely nothing more that Sun/Oracle/Whoever-owns-the-trademark to grant an entity rights to use the name. It has nothing to do with implementation similarity – even if the code is absolutely identical unless the powers that be say it can be called Java it can’t be.
Dalvik is categorically NOT Java, because Google has not be granted the rights to use the name and they don’t use the name – and there is nothing more to it than that. The question of patent infringement (or not) is entirely unrelated. Just saying…
I actually agree with you 100%. This blurb from a blog can be explained away in about 10,000 ways and by its date of release it could have been based on quite a lot of preliminary information (Schwartz may not have had a complete understanding of what he was commenting on at the time). Unless Google can come up with additional evidence supporting that Sun encouraged them in their Android efforts than this is a red herring. There really is nothing to this blog post business – it’s just sensationalism.
That said, if there is tantamount evidence supporting the idea that Sun was “ok” with Google’s use of their patents (assuming they are valid), whether or not Google calls their product “Java” is still irrelevant.
7,912,915 is a stupid patent. It shouldn’t exist. It is evidence of a broken system. I have said as much before. When and if Google sues someone over it I’ll be the first one in line to beat them over the head with my virtual baseball bat. That fair enough?
So, who have they sued over this patent?
They will do both, and more.
In a lawsuit one lists every possible defence one can think of.
Google have every right to say that they do not infringe on Java patents because (a) Dalvik is not Java, and also (b) because of estoppel. Both are viable defenses at this point, and there are many more besides, such as perhaps (c) Dalvik does not use any of the active claims in the patent(s) (given that it is highly unlikely that a language syntax and reserved words are patentable). Perhaps they might also point out that: (d) there are any number of different languages, the only really innovative feature of Java is that it is crosss platform, so that Java programs can run on many different platforms. Dalvik is not cross platform, and Dalvik cannot run Java programs.
There will be many more defenses other than just these three or four, don’t worry.
Edited 2011-07-27 05:59 UTC
Some people here seemed to be confused by the use of the word Java and what is being said. There is Java the platform (language) and then there is the specific VM Java. Google is not using Java the VM, its using a VM (dalvik) that it built itself. When McNealy stated support for Google using Java, he was talking about the platform, as he mentioned other vendors using the platform also. These other vendors have their own VMs also. For your VM to be labeled as Java, you have to pass certain specifications made by Sun.
McNealy made a public statement supporting Google using the Java platform to build Android. And Google did. As stated by McNealy in testimony, Google started with the open source version of Java and built Dalvik in a clean room environment. I think Oracle’s case is dwindling.
McNealy has been out of the picture for years. You meant Schwartz. And it’s Google that is dwindling if it hinges on a blog post. Perhaps Schwartz thought that Google was intending to license Java in that statement?
You are right. I was getting McNealy and Schwartz confused. But it is more than blog posts, its also what he is saying in his testimony.
Your understanding of the basic facts (and people lol) are way off.
Is that all your going to post or are you going to be specific?
The courts have already ruled that statements by CEO’s with a pony tail are not valid in a court of law.
Schwarz needs a new look. Maybe a pencil-thin douchebag beard, this time.
Because Schwarz didn’t endorse Google’s use of Dalvik. He endorsed its use of JAVA TECHNOLOGY . You can read that any way you like. Sun can simply say that it expected Google to play by its license.
This may make the Google fanboys wet their pants. But it won’t matter at all in court. Google better get ready to open its wallet.
Schwartz/Sun was talking about conformant Java, not Davik.
Make no mistake, Google will need to pay Oracle some type of ‘fee’ for the use of this IP. The issue is that Google has no primary revenue from Android (which is another of their arguments) and it does not want to tie this fee to their secondary revenue (advertising). If the court ruled that Google had to pay Oracle a few % for each earned dollar derived from Android that would have a huge impact on Google’s bottom line for years to come.
The goal here, for both parties, is to stockpile enough legal ‘weaponry’ to achieve a favorable settlement.
Oracle is in a better position here because if they lose on a technicality they will probably turn right around and sue the handset makers.
]{
Totally agree. Oracle is simply going to win here, and they’re going to get per-license royalties. The NET RESULT, believe it or not, could actually make the marketplace more competitive, if Google has to pass on those per-license royalty fees to carriers (and, seriously, I doubt that even Google will be willing to eat billions of dollars in royalties payable to Oracle). So, as a result, competing mobile OSes (RIM, Windows Phone, etc) will suddenly become relevant if carriers have to pay the same price for them. Bottom line: It will make Android less attractive.
Edited 2011-07-27 16:48 UTC
so you’re saying that someone who pays hundreds of euros/dollars buys a android device because the OS is free?
No, what I’m saying is that handset manufacturers choose Android over alternatives because it’s free — and they’re cheap.
…to read Thoms blabing.
instead, try this one:
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-does-5-buy-htc-from-ap…
FOSS Patents: What does $5 buy HTC from Apple? A few songs from iTunes but no patent license
– it is plain simple when writer is not biased –
Florian Mueller is not to be trusted, that has been pretty much confirmed. He refuses to disclose who is funding him – but, of course, this being the internet, we’ll find out sooner or later.
In the meantime, I’m not taking him seriously. He comes back into play as soon as we know where his loyalties lie. At least with folks like Gruber, Thurrot, or myself you know where the loyalties lie, so you know which filter to put on.
http://lwn.net/Articles/434587/
https://twitter.com/FOSSpatents/status/95842993130569728
Not to be trusted, because you say so?
Give me a break. Bunch of blowhards the 3 of you.
The ponytail was the most hated ‘manager’ in old Sun among the engineers for his utter incompetence and taking bonuses for riffing people. So whatever he said in public should be taken as pure flubber without any legal/patent/brains behind it.
He stopped Sun going private as that would have brought him less money as compared to selling the corpse he made it.
http://allthingsd.com/20110727/old-email-may-bite-google-in-java-pa…
The Google sides emails saying that Google HAS TO LICENSE Java.
I have a few-years-old-now Sony Ericsson K800i mobile phone which runs Java applets. There are many hundreds of Java applets available for the phone, including a surprising number of trivial games.
If back in the day Google had decided to have their applets for their new Android platform be compatible with this source code, then Android too would have to be able to run Java applets. If they had decided to do this, Google would indeed have had to license Java.
Google decided not to do that, they decided to go with a new VM which they called Dalvik. There were no Dalvik apps at all before Google made Dalvik.
Dalvik is not Java.