Email In Oracle-Google Case Will Remain Public 114
itwbennett writes "When last we left the Oracle/Google patent infringement saga, Oracle had been ordered by Judge William Alsup to lower its claim for damages to $100 million, give or take. Today Judge Alsup denied Google's attempt to get a potentially damaging e-mail redacted. 'What we've actually been asked to do by Larry and Sergey is to investigate what technology alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome,' Google engineer Tim Lindholm wrote in the Aug. 2010 e-mail. 'We've been over a hundred of these and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java.'"
Oracle are the good guys here (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I'm serious. This is not about emails and licenses but about whether we tolerate monopoly ownership of ideas, i.e. software patents (or patents at all). Up until recently Google has been deliberately naive about the problem, shrugging it off and allowing others to take the hit. It's allowed Microsoft and Apple to accumulate large patent portfolios intended to stop free competition.
Google need to get hit, and they need to see software patents as a real threat to their plan of world domination. They need to realize that $100M buys a lot of lobbyists, and they need to spend that money in Washington to end the software patent system. Oracle is doing us a favour by forcing Google into court here. They're greedy enough to not want a nominal settlement, and they're smart enough to win their case.
So despite the fact that I'd rather stab myself with a blunt fork than install a piece of Oracle software on any machine I own, I'm rooting for them in this case, and I hope they win big.
Re:Oracle are the good guys here (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen this suggested before. The media industry is *small* compared to Google et al. It's amazing that they have so much control in Congress. Google, IBM, Microsoft, etc. should each just buy one or two media companies and be done with it.