The shit finally hits the fan....(James Gosling on Oracle vs Google)

http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/the_shit_finally_hits_the

by bitboxer • 16 years ago

188 119 16 years ago

I... I only carried it for protection! To scare off the bad guys. I never meant for anyone to get shot!

At my previous company, we had a patent lawyer who would always ask around if anything we developers did were patentable. I would always downplay what I was doing and come up with things that might be prior-art.

My thinking is this: Even though the company would only use it for "defensive purposes" (which I believe), you never know who owns the company tomorrow. And you are not going to work there tomorrow either, so you might be the one being sued.

Instead, I would try to get permission to blog about it, so it is available for everyone -- including my future self.

I recommend everyone else do the same!

(Throw-away account - I'm not sure future employers want this)

jacquesm6• 16 years ago

What a fantastic position to take.

adnam• 16 years ago

It's amazing that for fear of future repercussions, someone would create a throw-away account to express a sentiment such as this.

technomancy4• 16 years ago

> we had a patent lawyer who would always ask around if anything we developers did were patentable.

Easy answer: "of course there's nothing patentable here--it's software!"

16s• 16 years ago

If RMS were your cube mate, the lawyers would run in fear. They might walk around asking these sort of questions once but never again.

jacquesm6• 16 years ago

This week seems to be particularly bad for Big Names and their stance on such things as Net Neutrality and Software Patents, first Vint Cerf (who after Jon Postel was my internet hero #2) and now James Gosling, who seems to imply prior knowledge that this one was in the cards.

So, if he saw their eyes sparkle that means that he is saying that he had an inkling that they were going to use that patent, and then he says "I hope to avoid getting dragged into the fray".

Great guy, not only does he sell a cocked gun to a company that is well known for using guns, on top of that he hopes that he's not even going to have to testify.

davidw• 16 years ago

I don't think it was his decision to sell. He was forced out/quit/whatever soon after the acquisition anyway.

jacquesm6• 16 years ago

Ok, that is probably true.

So he must have been in on the negotiations only because of his name being on those patents, or his unique understanding of those patents or something to that effect.

I find it strange to see him talking to the Oracle lawyers explaining the patent situations in a 'we're selling you this asset with which you can attack google' mode, and to come out now and act all surprised and 'I hope I don't get dragged in to it' mode.

He should probably expect to get dragged in to it, most likely by Googles council as a witness for the defense.

If he presented it to Oracle in a way that 'made their lawyers eyes sparkle' that sounds like he presented it in a very favorable light (for Oracle and Sun) during those meetings, if he's going to be dragged in to it he will have to repeat his stance on why this is something that Oracle can do in court or he'll risk being sued by Oracle for misrepresentation during the meetings with Oracle if he comes down on the defense side with his point of view.

I really wouldn't want to be in his shoes, this could get very nasty. And it could damage the Java brand considerably.

waterlesscloud2• 16 years ago

Wait, has Cerf said something on the Google/Verizon thing?

jacquesm6• 16 years ago

this was linked a few days ago:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/10/vint-cerf-comments-on...

fno• 16 years ago

Could someone be so kind to explain why this is bad for Java instead being bad for patents? I guess we all agree that software patents are bad. This issue seems to be just about them. Why is Java dragged into this? (Genuine curiosity.)

wazoox3• 16 years ago

Because people will use something else instead of Java to avoid being sued by Oracle. Just like they stopped using OpenSolaris to avoid being sued by NetApp (like CoRaid). One by one, the open Sun technologies will fall into irrelevance.

IdeaHamster• 16 years ago

Hold on a moment there... Java is still #1 on the TIOBE index and hasn't been lower than #2 since the index began in 2001. Oracle could declare by fiat that it was going to sue every single Java shop in existence, and it would still probably be cheaper for most of them to pay Oracle's settlement fee then to switch away from Java.

gaius2• 16 years ago

But... Isn't it baked into the HN DNA that you should be using something other than Java? http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html ;-)

sgift• 16 years ago

I'll try: Decisions for one "platform" (it's not just Java, it's J2EE etc.) are based on many factors, but one of the most important factors is trust. Examples:

  * Companies (more specially: Enterprises) must trust you or they won't use your technology
  * Library makers must have trust in you or they will not continue building libraries for your platform

Only two examples, but I think they highlight the point: Nobody will invest in a technology/platform/programming language they do not trust. And starting patent lawsuits against companies that use your platform is a great way to loose trust. While Android/Davik technically is not a Java VM that is not what most people will see. Most people will see "Oracle starts lawsuits against companies using Java"

Nelson69• 16 years ago

It's just more anti-java noise. There are a lot of anti-java folks out there and I don't see how this isn't more ammunition.

All things being equal, Oracle suing somebody and doing it in part because of "java" does have to make you take notice if you do anything with it. It's not like there is some open standard for Java and 10 different yet fairly equal implementations to choose from like it is with a C compiler. For serious java work, there still are maybe 3 implementations (Sun's, IBM's and maybe OpenJDK?) and they share some common components and ancestry.

Time will tell though, we'll see what happens. The java haters will continue to hate it, the java lovers will continue to love it and then those in the middle will have a raised eye brow and sort of pay attention.

OoTheNigerian• 16 years ago

I am not a programmer so permit my probably naive questions.

1. How difficult will it be for Google to 're do" Android and base it on another language say Objective C/UNIX like iOS? 2. Do you guys think this will affect Symbian? 3. What other OS's will this affect? 4. Is MYSQL next?

baxter• 16 years ago

This is not my area of expertise but in answer to question 1: Really hard.

dagw4• 16 years ago

The answer to 1 is probably "very, but not impossible". They'd basically have to rewrite everything above kernel (which is Linux) from scratch. More importantly it would be a PR nightmare. Who wants to base their product on a platform where the platform owners are happy to throw away all your hard work and make you start from scratch every once in a while.

As to 2 and 3, this probably won't affect anybody else. Symbian (and everybody else) use an officially licensed JVM from Sun(now Oracle) and as such should be safe. The reason Google is in trouble is that the wrote their own VM rather than licensing the VM from Oracle.

As to 4. Well that's anyone's guess.

telemachos• 16 years ago

Re 4, I would add that if you have already started to think hard about moving away from MySQL, you really should now.

Tichy3• 16 years ago

I wonder if it couldn't be largely automated. The actual API that is exposed to end users is not that big, and I assume they can keep using Dalvik. They just need another language that compiles to Dalvik and then automatically transform the Java code to that other language. Or something like that...

Wouldn't it be great if Android would be based on a better language than Java?

tyuikolkjhgfh• 16 years ago

Doesn't help - the patents aren't for Java as such, they were on the basic concept of a JVM. The same thing could apply to any other JVM or even C# and dotNet

But Oracle doesn't want a patent war with IBM and Microsoft just now. Microsoft could simply ban Oracle from running on windows, or ban any windows machine from connecting to a site using Oracle (a bit of Apple style licensing text is easy to insert)

And you don't want a patent fight with IBM - they probably have a patent on using oxygen for breathing!

nadam• 16 years ago

"it on another language say Objective C"

Maybe they could use Go for this purpose. (This would be a nice opportunity for Go.)

http://code.google.com/p/go/

slig• 16 years ago

My understanding is that they chose Java for being easy and mainstream. So, that said, it's easier to they choose Python over Go.

S_A_P• 16 years ago

The long and short of question 1 is that there will likely be a large cash transfer from google to oracle some PR spin about how googles vm is now "official" and life/litigation moves on.

akshayubhat• 16 years ago

I think Google will hit Oracle with a counter lawsuit. Google posses a lot of patents in area of Information Systems. Or they can cross license using patents like Map-Reduce, E.g. Google allowed ASF to use MR patent for Hadoop, however if tomorrow Oracle comes up with a proprietary solution for MapReduce, Google might not be so generous.

ergo98• 16 years ago

Many of the patents that Oracle is suing over could as easily be targeted to .NET. Of course Oracle isn't dumb enough to target Microsoft (having a much deeper portfolio of superficial but deadly patents). In fact they could as easily target many other virtual machine runtimes.

forgottenpaswrd• 16 years ago

1- I expect Google to support python on Android better and better. Is something they can control, hey Guido works there!. And I would love (but don't expect) they supporting c/c++ better.

4-Yes, MySQL competes with Oracle, so... they will let it die slowly. They want db systems to be expensive, not cheap.

jc-denton• 16 years ago

They start arguing about it instead of improving it :(

reneky• 16 years ago

Sun poured billions into Java; is it so bad to ask for one of the biggest benefitors to share the profits?

mojuba• 16 years ago

"Asking" doesn't mean suing first thing in the morning.

dagw4• 16 years ago

I'll bet good money that there was a lot of negotiation going on behind closed doors between Oracle and Google before this suit was filed. We're only seeing this suit because Google must have turned down Oracle's best offer.

zyb09• 16 years ago

Well they could have just gone with python if they had known this was coming. They probably picked Java on the basis that it is free to use and fits into the open-source community.

joubert• 16 years ago

Google didn't create Android. They bought it.

gvb• 16 years ago

Android, Inc. (the original company) chose Java because their target market (smartphones) nearly universally supported Java (JVM) at the time of the inception of Android, so the phones ran Java and phone developers knew and were comfortable with Java.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29#...

I was unable to ascertain whether Dalvik came from Android, Inc. or was created by Google after acquiring Android. My memory says the later.

The Dalvik VM is an end-run around the Sun JVM licensing issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_virtual_machine

See especially the reference http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/110/

This raised more than one eyebrowse, and sure did make me raise mine: how did Google manage to get Sun to license off a platform that could very well kill their own?

Turns out, they didn’t: their move was even smarter than Sun’s.

Today Google released the Android code and I took a serious look at its internals... and found the solution for the licensing problem. It’s called Dalvik and it’s the new name of Sun’s worst nightmares.

weavejester• 16 years ago

Oracle are not suing Google because they've made a profit from Java. They are suing Google for making a competing VM which allegedly infringes some of Oracle's patents.

JoachimSchipper2• 16 years ago

This sort of things makes me think that http://www.illumos.org/ (formerly OpenSolaris) could run into trouble sooner rather than later...

wazoox3• 16 years ago

They don't even need Oracle for that. NetApp already flexed muscles and made clear they'll go after anyone daring using OpenSolaris and most probably anything sporting ZFS (including *BSD), in a storage oriented product. Frankly, I don't see any reason to use OpenSolaris if not for ZFS.

IMHO OpenSolaris won't represent much more than NetBSD pretty soon.

JoachimSchipper2• 16 years ago

(Open)Solaris has other nice stuff, including dtrace, zones, and some big iron features (hotswapping CPUs and memory, for instance, and apparently an advanced hardware error detection system).

I don't use it, but it does have some things to offer.

tocomment2• 16 years ago

Dumb question, isn't Java free and open source now? What are they suing about?

dagw4• 16 years ago

Google didn't use Sun's open sourced version of Java as the base for their VM. They implemented their own VM from scratch and are thus not covered by the patent protection offered by the open source license.

tocomment2• 16 years ago

So why didn't they just use the open source version?

ericd• 16 years ago

Not that it needed the help, but Oracle just became an even less attractive place to work, as a programmer.

aaronbrethorst• 16 years ago

Saying Oracle could be less attractive for developers is like saying there's a -1 Kelvin ;-)

eru2• 16 years ago

Just for nit-picking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature

jcromartie2• 16 years ago

That's what happens when you sell your hacker company to a bunch of douchebags.

bonzoesc2• 16 years ago

That's what happens when your hacker company runs out of money and sells to a business with money and customers.

jcromartie2• 16 years ago

Sorry your dose of reality got fewer upvotes than my hyperbole. Here, have some karma!

Aegean2• 16 years ago

OK but, did google not really think about this possibility? I think it was a very obvious risk and I would think they probably had a plan for this.

cookiecaper• 16 years ago

It probably seemed relatively remote when Sun was still around, as Schwartz and Sun had a history of being very friendly to open-source philosophies. Most viewed Sun's patents as defensive. Schwartz has written about how the patents kept Sun out of this mess before -- Microsoft came and said "Cough up because OpenOffice violates our patents" and Schwartz countered with "O RLY, well, while we're at it, why don't we discuss licensing for our Java-related patents re: .NET", etc. But now what used to be Sun is the aggressor.

Oracle bought Sun and everyone was concerned because Oracle is very evil.

Aegean2• 16 years ago

OK but it's not convincing to think Google would have thought, oh Sun is a company that is nice to open source, so lets base our whole Android operating environment on this open source friendly Java language and JVM and disregard any possibility of being sued. I would think such companies would think about the possibility of someone else taking over or generally anything else happening. Its unprofessional to base your business decision on something as vague as attitude. You need something more solid like an agreement - especially for something as big as Android.

So anyway my understanding is probably Google has some agreement or plan at hand for this situation. Ideas welcome.

smokinn• 16 years ago

There has to be more behind this. They can't be suing Google just because they wrote their own embedded Java VM because if they were they'd be suing RIM too.

And they certainly know RIM develops its own since they say so right on their own site: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/index-139239.html

RIM's support for J2ME includes development of its own Java virtual machine (JVM) 1, which supports the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP).

X-Istence• 16 years ago

"RIM's support for J2ME [...]"

The gist of the matter is right there. Since RIM supports J2ME, it means they have paid Sun, now Oracle for a J2ME license. That was one of the things that Google bypassed by writing their own implementation.

See this comment on the other discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1599834

cwp• 16 years ago

The crux of the matter is that Dalvik is not a JVM. It cannot run Java bytecode. Google supplies a tool to convert Java bytecode to Dalvik bytecode.

I won't even pretend to understand Sun's ownership of the JVM IP, the licensing agreements it had with JVM implementors, patents etc. But my view from afar is that Google tried to route around all that by using a different VM architecture, but (possibly) exposed its self to a different set of legal vulnerabilities.

mhd3• 16 years ago

I guess somewhere RMS is grinning from ear to ear.

bigmac• 16 years ago

I wonder if you're right... To the casual observer this seems to undermine the GPL.

mhd3• 16 years ago

I'm not talking about RMS priming the lawyers, I'm talking about his general stance about patent-laden, open-source-but-not-really technologies. He must feel vindicated today.

As many other said before, the fact that OpenJDK is GPL licensed doesn't mean anything for Dalvik.

hasenj• 16 years ago

I think he's referring to how he can use this incident to brag about how he's right with his views on open-source-but-not-really-free stuff.

stuff4ben• 16 years ago

I don't know; he's been warning people about shit like this for years and no one seems to care. If anything I'd bet he's feeling a little like Sarah Conner before Skynet goes sentient.

doki_pen• 16 years ago

Why? Rms has endorsed java since it went gpl. Goggles jvm is not gpl. If the used the gpl java then they might have less problems. I'm guessing Rms does not support either party here.

bmm6o2• 16 years ago

It seems like there's something missing from the story. I don't see how Google wouldn't have known they were infringing on Sun's patents. How could they release Android without a licensing agreement? It would be insane.

alanh2• 16 years ago

In the filing Oracle claims Google knows this because it hired Java programmers away from Sun years ago.

btilly• 16 years ago

They are saying that because if they can prove willful infringement then they get increased damages. However it is unclear at this point that said Java programmers were the ones to implement this. And some may not have been aware of the patents in question.

bmm6o2• 16 years ago

Right, my question is why didn't Google know they were opening themselves up to this kind of suit? Could they possibly have known but gone ahead anyway? That would be crazy.

alanh2• 16 years ago

“With Oracle, everything is always about money. It is the only metric they know.”

— Gosling, comment on linked article.

bonzoesc2• 16 years ago

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is a public company, so… duh?

"So say goodbye to the NAACP award […] But I'll just take the "I Got A Lot Of Cheese" award"

— Kanye West, "Everything I Am"

mhd3• 16 years ago

Okay, at least now I don't have to think about what language to learn next, Clojure or Erlang…

jimm• 16 years ago

I'd say Clojure, but it runs on the JVM.

peripitea• 16 years ago

Text for anyone who can't see it due to site being down:

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.

carterschonwald• 16 years ago

for those who can't see the page, heres the coral cache link http://nighthacks.com.nyud.net/roller/jag/entry/the_shit_fin...

The shit finally hits the fan....(James Gosling on Oracle vs Google)

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