Oracle and the End of Programming as We Know It

http://www.drdobbs.com/jvm/232901227

by MrFoof • 14 years ago

73 73 14 years ago

skrebbel• 14 years ago

Good observation. I wonder what would happen if programming and selling software in the US suddenly becomes too dangerous to do. Would it impact the rest of the world?

marcusf• 14 years ago

I'd hope it'd help to further flame innovation in Europe and Asia. Crippling US innovation with onerous IP laws (like this might lead to) would probably lead short-term to a dip in global tech innovation (and a correlated rise in IP law expenditures :)) until money and talent moves elsewhere on the globe. One can hope.

On the other hand, the US has always been good at exporting copyright provisions and IP laws so worst case, we'll all be at the behest of rent-seekers like Oracle, etc.

fierarul2• 14 years ago

Since the US has a habit of forcing it's practices on the rest of the world, I'm sure it would have an impact on the long term.

Because of software patents, I already see programming and selling software in the US as a dangerous thing to do.

Irishsteve• 14 years ago

Any idea how much would this license that Google possibly needed may have cost? Or would it have been one of a kind?

pron12• 14 years ago

From what I've read, price wasn't the issue. Google tried to buy a license, but Sun was afraid of losing control over Java (while Google wanted control over Android, or, at least, wanted handset vendors to be able to do what they want with it, which, apparently, has proven to be a mistake as well). Some middle ground would have been the best choice, but the two sides couldn't find one.

ZeroGravitas4• 14 years ago

The Sun CEO at the time claimed that they would have paid Google to use Java, the disagreement was who got to make decisions and neither side trusted the other to get it right (personally I think history has vindicated Google on this point).

pron12• 14 years ago

Well, considering the success of Amazon's Android fork, I think that vindication is still pending.

And no matter who's been right - legally or business-wize - I find it seriously annoying to have two Javas.

nl2• 14 years ago

That's not the case.

Sun wanted to charge Google for the license, but also wanted there to be a per-handset license fee. That per-handset fee was what Google couldn't agree on.

fierarul2• 14 years ago

>However, a silver lining could present itself: The jury could affirm that the APIs are copyrighted but that the syntax of the function signatures are a fair use exception.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but aren't APIs a documented bunch of function signatures and class hierarchies? According to the silver lining above, what's not covered by the fair-use?

pron12• 14 years ago

Hmm, maybe publishing the API in book form?

pron12• 14 years ago

I don't care who wins this case, but as a Java developer I hope that eventually Android will come into the Java fold, adhere to standards and run on an awsome, standard JVM. Imagine using all JVM languages, unmodified, on Android. Both Oracle and Google will gain from this, as well as the entire Java developer community.

(Side note: a ruling on API copyrights could have far reaching ramifications, some might be quite unfortunate, but it's important to make clear that Oracle did not start out trying to establish API copyrightability. They simply set out to nail Google for Android, and API copyright was simply a tool in their legal toolbox.)

magicalist2• 14 years ago

> Side note: a ruling on API copyrights could have far reaching ramifications, some might be quite unfortunate, but it's important to make clear that Oracle did not start out trying to establish API copyrightability. They simply set out to nail Google for Android, and API copyright was simply a tool in their legal toolbox.

Er, I'm not seeing the part of that which makes Oracle look better.

pron12• 14 years ago

It's not supposed to, except to say that Oracle isn't trying to fight developers - it's just fighting Google (though innocent developers may be accidental victims).

Frankly, I can't bring myself to whole-heartedly support either party. They're both big, fat, super-rich and super-powerful conglomerates who have no one's interest in mind except their own (and, possibly, their shareholders').

saket123• 14 years ago

what difference would it make to run android on JVM instead of DVM? Isn't android too far along to take a u-turn and change the roots.

shadowmint• 14 years ago

Is that a defence? That they didn't start with the copyright on APIs as their goal, it just happens to be something they stumbled on as an idea and decided to use to pursue google?

Absent mindedly creating an hitherto unknown revenue stream that lets you apply licensing fees to everyone under the sun and destroying the software industry as a sort of half-baked by-product is just fine, if you didn't mean to do it at the beginning?

really?

I'm sure the business majors of the world will rejoice in that. I don't.

pron12• 14 years ago

The business majors of the world will rejoice no matter which of thse fat-cats prevails. I find them both equally disgusting (see recent discoveries about Google's breach of privacy in WiFi-gate).

I just hate to see people rushing to either side in what is essentially a business war. I hate seeing corporations brainwashing people into believeing they have good intentions. They don't.

codeka3• 14 years ago

You can run other JVM languages on Android today. The Android compiler take Java byte code and translates it to Dalvik byte code.

See here for Clojure: http://dev.clojure.org/display/design/Android+Support

"Works out of the box with 1.2.0+" -- other JVM languages should have a similar story.

pron12• 14 years ago

Not really. Many languages emit bytecode at runtime. I saw a Clojure solution to this once which involved writing the bytecode to a local file, running the Dalvik compiler (locally, on the mobile device!) to create an apk, and loading it. Clearly, that's jumping through hoops.

spacemanaki2• 14 years ago

That's not really fair, tbh, (and I'm a huge fan of Clojure). It's dog-slow on Android. I don't know the details, but I think it's has a lot to do with differences between Dalvik and Hotspot.

jzoidberg• 14 years ago

Scala runs perfectly on Android

pron12• 14 years ago

Yup. Other languages don't, though.

cageface3• 14 years ago

Dalvik is optimized for low-power, low-memory devices. If you tried to run the full HotSpot VM on your phone you'd suck the battery dry in minutes and you'd have to at least double the onboard ram to even boot it.

waterlesscloud• 14 years ago

"You might recall that the Lotus v. Borland suit (1990) originally resulted in a ruling affirming the copyrightability of a menu hierarchy."

Well those resources were certainly well spent, as the current dominance of these two companies indicates.

bluedanieru2• 14 years ago

Here's to the pattern continuing in the case of Oracle. They are a blight.

kijin• 14 years ago

I'd be a tad bit concerned about a patent troll obtaining Oracle's IP if they ever go down, though.

Oh, the joy of having to choose the lesser of two evils.

fpp• 14 years ago

A ruling could also go along the line that Sun / Oracle might have a copyright to the API but Google was free to use them.

In any case I guess we will see appeals from either side.

The author mixed in C# and VB in Mono - while MS has in the past applied and received patents on their APIs they have explicitly provided this use. This might be the way forward - company who created those APIs keeps control but let everyone use them.

Nevertheless, IMHO if I provide a solution like the Java language into the public domain / license it under GNU, parts like APIs become elements of speech - otherwise the whole thing becomes rather philosophical (and solved far more than 100 years ago by Hegel - 100% information is not possible).

lucian1900• 14 years ago

Actually, if APIs/languages turned out to be copyrightable, IBM might just sue Oracle for using SQL and other related APIs. Oracle are even trying to invalidate the defence of implicit acceptance (same situation with both Sun and IBM).

Really stupid move on Oracle's part.

DrJokepu• 14 years ago

That would be actually very good for Oracle. Oracle would pay a certain amount of money to IBM in exchange for licensing these APIs. As they say, business is IBM's middle name so it's not like they're going to make this a political question, they will happily take the money. Suddenly, the barrier to enter to relational database market is a lot higher, and PostgreSQL (and MySQL copies without a license from Oracle) are illegal. How is this a stupid move on Oracle's part?

jurre3• 14 years ago

I guess it would speed up nosql adoption quite a bit if things would actually get that far.

bunderbunder• 14 years ago

There's a big distinction between SQL and Java in that regard. SQL being published as an ISO standard implies that its creators intended for others to be able to produce their own implementations of it.

Sun/Oracle did no such thing with Java, and has always officially claimed that implementations needed to be licensed by them. It was almost 15 years ago that Sun sued Microsoft for implementing Java in a way they didn't like.

liotier• 14 years ago

IT lawyer and digital liberties' advocate Carlo Piana mentions at https://plus.google.com/u/0/115445134403759043734/posts/coVx... that such API copyrightability has been largely denied by the SAS v. WPL case that came out today (nice coincidence !) : "[...] neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression of that program and, as such, [they] are not protected by copyright in computer programs" - http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&...

viraptor2• 14 years ago

Fortunately that happens in Europe, but that also means the ruling doesn't apply abroad. With US being very keen on trying to apply local laws to companies/people in other countries... We'll see what happens.

codeka3• 14 years ago

One question is what will happen with Apache Harmony? From what I've read of the case, Apache have basically done the exact same thing that Google did, but Sun/Oracle never bothered to go after them. How will that project survive with the proverbial sword of Damocles hanging over it?

dteoh• 14 years ago

The Apache Harmony project has been discontinued.

codeka3• 14 years ago

Oh, you're right! I only wondered because of what I've been reading about the case, since it was mentioned a few times.

Though I guess the same question could be asked of GNU Classpath, which as far as I can see is still actively maintained.

WildUtah• 14 years ago

API copyrights is a terrible idea that would promote vendor lock in and block interoperability. It would be a disaster for companies writing to a small niche API or who lost access to a flaky vendor's approach to their problem.

This wouldn't really be so bad as far as programming languages go. AT&T already cross-licensed the C and UNIX ecosystem to the University Of California's open source BSD project and you could inherit their license. Java VMs and compilers could be distributed under GPL (and Android would be a better platform under GPL with less fragmentation). Python, Ruby, Perl, and the like license themselves to the world freely and easily.

I can't think of any really major programming languages that would be harshly damaged. C# is largely effectively proprietary because Microsoft rattles the patent sabre at non-Windows implementations. I don't know what the status of Javascript might be, but the standard API is fairly tiny.

Of course, no unfree language or API in the future would ever gain traction without a monopoly platform provider of some kind to require it and still it would never spread beyond that platform. Users would be too terrified of vendor lock-in.

Things like Wine would need to take development overseas, but the need for them is shrinking along with the use of proprietary platform binaries.

batista5• 14 years ago

>C# is largely effectively proprietary because Microsoft rattles the patent sabre at non-Windows implementations.

C# is an open standard, submitted to ISO and ECMA (at least for versions < latest). MS also signed a legally binding patent pledge to not sue anyone for the language and runtime IIRC.

There exist at least two C# open source implementations that I know of, Mono and some GNU project.

gouranga• 14 years ago

The runtime is a hodgepodge of standardised bits and Microsoft extensions though.

regularfry• 14 years ago

Its being an open standard doesn't stop Microsoft asserting copyright over the APIs it describes. As far as I can tell, while ECMA controls the copyright of the standard document itself, they make no claims about the software described within it. Neither would the patent pledge.

scott_w• 14 years ago

I would be surprised if such a pledge would be legally binding.

What section of law does it fall under? Contract? Can you sign a contract with "the general public"?

pavanky• 14 years ago

This is a sad situation. I don't want to name names, but the startup I am working at is being sued by a much bigger company for exactly the same thing. Copyright infringement over their APIs.

cageface3• 14 years ago

I know it would be extremely traumatic to the entire Android ecosystem but I'd personally be happy if Google just shat out Java entirely and put their efforts into making Go the native tongue of Android.

grogs• 14 years ago

Why?

cageface3• 14 years ago

Go is a cleaner, more elegant language that makes better use of memory.

rfugger• 14 years ago

According to Groklaw, the jury will not decide whether copyright applies to APIs. The judge instructed them to assume it does, find whether there is a violation, and if so, the judge will decide whether APIs can be copyrighted at all. If they find no violation, he doesn't have to rule on the matter.

Oracle and the End of Programming as We Know It

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