Does Google Pin Copyright Violations On the ASF? 136
An anonymous reader writes "Florian Mueller claims to have produced new evidence that he believes supports Oracle's case against Google on the copyright side of the lawsuit. Oracle originally presented one example to the court, and that file was found to have been part of older Android distributions, with an Apache license header. Mueller has just published six more files of that kind and believes the Apache Software Foundation will disown those just like the first one because those were never part of the Apache Harmony code base. Furthermore, various source files from the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit were found in the Android codebase, containing a total of 38 copyright notices that mark them as proprietary and confidential, but Google apparently published their source code regardless."
No they do not (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I am confused. (Score:4, Informative)
Google does have serious problems with Android, mainly because Oracle owns a lot of patents relating to virtual machines. Microsoft ended up paying $700million or so because of that, for C#. It will not be easy for the Android creators to get out of it.
(Note: if you're going to reply telling me that Microsoft had to pay because they were copying Java, you are right, but please go find some links talking about Sun's other lawsuit over C# and inform yourself before replying).
Re:I am confused. (Score:5, Informative)
Since Slashdotters have more than once tried to dismiss this guy as some troll or just some blogger, perhaps you should do a little research. Florian Muller [wikipedia.org] is the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents [nosoftwarepatents.com] campaign, fighting the EU's directive on the patentability of computer-related inventions, which they eventually rejected. He's received several awards for his intellectual property activism and is considered one of the most influential in the field.
But yeah, because this is a potentially negative Google submission, people around here are going to attack the messenger and try to dismiss him outright, because they're biased toward pro-Linux companies like Google. This site's comment section is becoming a real trash heap.
Re:I am confused. (Score:3, Informative)
I like how you left off the part about him lying to the EU commission about the effect on MySQL during the Oracle buyout of Sun:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091204095942328 [groklaw.net]
When the FSF's Eblen Moglen has to side with Oracle against his FUD, clearly something is up.
Florian set up a FUD campaign against IBM in the TurboHercules:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100408153953613 [groklaw.net]
Pamela Jones stated "It seems Groklaw will have to open a new category, answering Florian Mueller FUD."
Florian managed to delay and possibly kill the high-profile Munich migration to Linux:
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/application-development/2006/03/29/munich-linux-migration-delayed-by-pr-stunt-39260037/ [zdnet.co.uk]
Then he bragged about it:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091021164738392 [groklaw.net]
His attitude seems to be "the end justifies the means".
Of course, I'm sure it's a coincidence that Florian is connected with CCIA, which is a Microsoft-funded proxy:
http://techrights.org/2010/04/11/florian-mueller-and-erika-mann/ [techrights.org]
Florian seems to have a lot to write about... well anyone that Microsoft needs to spread some FUD about. It's always quite timely too, where he can start streaming out articles on something he never seemed to care about a short time earlier.
Believe who you want, but I'm with the FSF and Groklaw on this one. In many cases I may not like the companies Florian is attacking (Oracle, for one), but that doesn't mean you can just start making stuff up (FUD about the Sun acquisition).