How Oracle might kill Google’s Android and software patents all at once

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/08/14/how-oracle-might-kill-googles-android-and-software-patents-all-at-once/

by raganwald • 16 years ago

44 26 16 years ago

roughlydrafted.com

pvg• 16 years ago

This probably will win some sort of award for 'most apt domain name'.

dublinclontarf2• 16 years ago

>Google is nothing but a series of infringements snowballed together.

From the tone of the article, it seems that no one is able to build anything without infringing on someone elses patents.

ulrich• 16 years ago

That's the whole trouble about software patents, isn't it?

dublinclontarf2• 16 years ago

Yes it is, I'm just not sure that that is the point the article is trying to make or if it does so by accident.

russell_h• 16 years ago

This whole article is absolutely bizarre, from the title onward.

A few of my favorites:

"Oracle might kill Google's Android"

"the tech-liberal... are being deluded into thinking that Google is the open side of this new conflict, and that Oracle is the big, old and closed company"

"Oracle likes Linux so much that it funds Btrfs, a GPL licensed, futuristic and advanced new file system that supports pooling, snapshots, checksums, and other features that sound a lot like Sun’s ZFS, which Oracle now also owns. The difference is that Oracle didn’t mire Btrfs in legal quandary the way Sun did with ZFS before Oracle bought them.

That fact not only highlights that Oracle is just as “open source friendly” as Google, but that it’s also more responsible in developing open source software in such a way that it doesn’t recklessly expose itself to being sued the way Sun did, or the way Google did."

"Google doesn’t even have any experience in creating software platforms"

YuriNiyazov• 16 years ago

Considering Oracle just killed OpenSolaris this week, it is very difficult to view Oracle as "open source friendly"

igravious• 16 years ago

I remember when Linux was trying to get validation in the enterprise space and Oracle porting their DB wares to Linux accomplished this almost single-handedly over night. (This was circa '99, 2000, don't remember exactly.) I want to stress that the geeks had already known that Linux was ready on the server-side by this time but now we had a nice talking to convince the suits, "Oracle takes Linux seriously". I have always thought that Oracle has not been antagonistic to Linux because Oracle is not an OS shop whereas, for instance, Microsoft _is_ so Oracle's core business has not been in danger. IBM made sure to differentiate AIX away from Linux and definitely grokked Linux before Oracle. SUN never could give up on Solaris and now we have Oracle Solaris so we'll have to see how that fares.

I wouldn't say that Oracle has been open source unfriendly, witness as somebody else has said BTRFS. It would be sanguine to say that Oracle like other large corps behaves hot and cold towards free and open source software depending on who in the company is doing the talking.

Also as others have pointed out, Oracle seems to have had (up until this point at least) an admirable stance on software patents as far as I can tell, issuing public statements on patent reform.

However Google (rightly or wrongly) is seen as very open source friendly. This is doubtless due to Chris Di Bona and their summer of code thing and noticeably employing a lot of people to work on Linux and open source stuff. Android is way freer than Apple's IOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 and RIM's offerings. (Nokia has opened Symbian and Meego is open but they are not considered relevant at the moment.) So Oracle suing Google over Android is going to be seen as open source unfriendly regardless of the legality of the patent lawsuit. Surely, all this could be cleared up without recourse to lawsuits?

I think taking sides in this is silly. The law (however crappy) is the law. Yes, software patents need reform but until then it'd be nice if we could get on with the business of coding without worrying about litigation. The article's author, this Daniel guy, is obviously an Apple partisan and (thus?) a Google hater and seems to have a very bizarre recollection of computing history.

dododo• 16 years ago

people keep citing btrfs. oracle could still kill this: it conflicts with ZFS and presumably oracle now owns patents in this domain too.

po• 16 years ago

I still don't get how this lawsuit is supposed to bring down software patents. Dilger states:

"It might also result in a concerted effort by Google to join Oracle and other tech giants to decommission the nuclear threat of software patent proliferation in the future."

The problem is that Oracle will change their tune and be pro-software-patents if they have Google on the ropes. I doubt they'll be loyal to the cause. They will just say "Yeah, we were wrong about that."

barrkel• 16 years ago

This article reads like it was written by a deluded madman. Hard to take seriously.

jsz0• 16 years ago

I don't think we should discount this as purely a financial move by Oracle. They're a very rich company but who doesn't want to be even richer? Imagine if someone had cashed in on a small license fee for every copy of Windows circa 1992? The SmartPhone market is even bigger and upgrade cycles are shorter. That's an awful lot of money to leave on the table.

kprobst• 16 years ago

If this guy had his head any further up Steve Job's rectum he could tell us what Stevie had for breakfast yesterday.

I can't believe I'm seeing something as trashy and useless as this promoted to HN, unless it's intended as a general statement on irony.

drats2• 16 years ago

A lot of negative comments here. They are totally justified however; this guy is off the planet.

Edit: Three points.

* He has a series of whiny/smug youtube videos defending the ipad's flaws http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wpjK60io0E

* He has a book on OS X that he makes money off.

* He also mentions in another video that he owns Apple shares.

raganwald4• 16 years ago

Your comment is known as "Playing the man and not the ball." Do I have to link to "How to disagree" to underscore my point?

drats2• 16 years ago

Sorry, read the section on Google in the article which finishes with "Google is nothing but a series of infringements snowballed together", and tell me again that this demands a serious response.

If you post an inept trolling article you are likely to get an antagonistic response.

"http://www.timecube.com play the ball not the man please", really?

qwzybug• 16 years ago

Usually you'd be right, but roughlydrafted is an exception. I hate to apply the "fanboy" sobriquet, but he has earned it. The guy has never written a measured, well-considered sentence in his life. Once this ceases to be the case, there will be a HN headline: "Daniel Dilgar no longer batshit loon!" Until then, feel safe to ignore anything from that URL.

ck2• 16 years ago

The one thing I don't see anyone mentioning, if there's anyone that can afford to defend themselves, it's Google.

Oracle kinda picked on the wrong company if Google decides they want to fight.

lhnz• 16 years ago

How was this allowed on HN?

sprout• 16 years ago

Posted late on a Saturday night when everyone's out doing stuff or home asleep, artificially upvoted to 8 or so at which point everyone assumes it's not a load of crock. Also, people upvoting without reading; wishful thinking on seeing the title (though I do think that the Google/Oracle showdown does have some capacity to knock down software patents depending.)

Flagged.

gubatron• 16 years ago

Resented Apple Fanboy, nothing to read here.

illumin8• 16 years ago

There are a few good points but this guy goes into lala land with his extreme Apple fanboyism. This guy drank some serious kool aid.

raganwald4• 16 years ago

> There are a few good points

Precisely: http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/how-to-use-blunt-instrum...

raganwald4• 16 years ago

I posted this without agreeing with the author. I thought it was interesting to contemplate without actually needing to agree with its premises.

But anyways, I came on here to express some surprise at the tone of some of the responses. Can we take a wide detour around the ad hominems? The most valuable comments are the ones that dispute the words themselves rather than speculating about the author.

nitfol• 16 years ago

Compare this article to the recent Groklaw article. While my view is closer to Groklaw, both articles seem to offend me. They both worship a leader (Jobs or RMS) and seem to call for hate of their enemies (Google, Microsoft, Mono). But if you snip the objectionable parts from each essay, I think each brings something to the discussion. And I really wasn't expecting an Apple fan to share Groklaw's fantasy of an end to patents.

How Oracle might kill Google’s Android and software patents all at once

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