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Google Java Oracle The Courts Your Rights Online

Oracle and Google To Finally Enter Courtroom 175

Posted by samzenpus from the high-noon dept.
Fluffeh writes "After around 900 motions and filings, not to mention a timeline of two years, Google and Oracle are finally putting their case before a jury which will be selected on Monday. While Oracle originally sued for billions, the possible damages have come down to a more reasonable $30-something million (the details vary depending on if you ask Google or Oracle). However, the sides are still far apart. Oracle's proposal was a minimum, not a maximum, and Oracle has asked for a tripling of damages because of the 'willful and deliberate nature of Google's infringement.' For ongoing royalties from future sales, Google has proposed payment of just over one-half of one percent of revenue if patent infringement is proven, but Oracle wants more. Beyond financial damages, Oracle has asked for a permanent order preventing Google from continuing to infringe the patents and copyrights. The case is planned to start on Monday afternoon, after jury selection or Tuesday at the latest."
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Oracle and Google To Finally Enter Courtroom More

Oracle and Google To Finally Enter Courtroom

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  • This really is a bizare course of action for Oracl (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @12:45AM (#39697693)

    I still have no god damn idea why Oracle is doing this other than amazing short sightedness.

    Android is one of the few things left stopping coders fleeing to dot net , its literally a lifeline keeping java alive, and Oracle in their stupidity want to sever that.

    *WHY* would they engage on a path so god damn harmful to the health of one of their most important intellectual properties. Its frigging bizare.

    I mean ok, sure get a pound of flesh for licencing costs, whatever, billionaires suing billionaires is not my interest. But their "rememdy" seems to effectively involve killing davlik, which would be catastrophic to java coders who have had a huge new source of work from android.

    • Actually no...Android is here to stay and won't move away from Java and Oracle knows that very well. So they're trying to have their cake (Java made more popular by way of Android dev) and eat it too (grab lots of monies from Google for using Java in that manner).

      • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @12:57AM (#39697767)

        Seriously dude. Oracles remedy seems to involve killing davlik. That means no java on the android. Its a scorched earth aproach to IP litigation, and you better hope oracle fails on that.

        • They're probably playing hardball...ask for too much in order to receive a lot. Like you said, killing Dalvik would only hurt them, it wouldn't make any sense to actually enforce that even if they get the authority to do so.
          Unfortunately, that's business....

          • Extortion =! Business (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @06:40AM (#39698757) Journal

            Unfortunately, that's business....

            I've been in the business field for decades, and I will tell you that 99.9% of business people on this earth do not include extortion as a part of normal business practice.

            What Oracle is doing is extortion, pure and simple, and unfortunately, Google isn't their only target.

            Hundreds of million Android users will also be affected

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Forever Wondering ( 2506940 )

          Seriously dude. Oracles remedy seems to involve killing davlik. That means no java on the android. Its a scorched earth aproach to IP litigation, and you better hope oracle fails on that.

          Yes, I noticed the scorched earth approach. However, there may be a ray of hope against that approach. Because Java is a standard [if only de facto], Oracle may be compelled to offer a license under FRAND [fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory] terms. Google's offer of 1/2 of 1% is in the FRAND ballpark for a mass market item.

          In the Apple/Moto fight in Germany, Moto got an injunction against Apple for infringing some Moto patents. They got the injunction because Apple had not negotiated in good fai

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by shutdown -p now ( 807394 )

            In the Apple/Moto fight in Germany, Moto got an injunction against Apple for infringing some Moto patents. They got the injunction because Apple had not negotiated in good faith [stalling for five years]. However, latest ruling appears that Apple might reverse this on the FRAND argument.

            They can argue FRAND in that case because Moto has actually signed a bunch of disclaimers [slashdot.org] when they submit their patents to the standard org. I very much doubt you can argue FRAND on a random technology by claiming that it is a "de facto standard".

            • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Informative)

              by Forever Wondering ( 2506940 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @05:11PM (#39704209)

              They can argue FRAND in that case because Moto has actually signed a bunch of disclaimers [slashdot.org] when they submit their patents to the standard org. I very much doubt you can argue FRAND on a random technology by claiming that it is a "de facto standard".

              Fair enough. That doesn't mean Google won't try [and may be successful]. This may be strengthened slightly by Sun's previous two separate attempts to submit Java as a standard to JTC1 and ECMA.

              Oracle is playing a dangerous game [for themselves] on several fronts.

              The reason that Java became popular was the "write-once-run-anywhere" [WORA] and that Oracle [nee Sun] would provide access for any platform. If Oracle wins, this collapses and many independent developers would see the need to reconsider their strategy in light of the fact that Oracle [on a whim] could deny access to a platform that is the developer's primary market.

              The implications go far beyond Google. If Oracle wins, this would imperil not just Google, but telcos, handset makers, and tens of thousands of software developers. Legalities aside, the court will be aware of the potential widespread economic chaos that might ensue and temper its judgement accordingly. The court might refuse the injunction and compel Oracle to offer a license [Google might have to pay the $30M damages + license fees but it would be free to pursue Dalvik/Android]

              Further, if Oracle prevails, the federal government might view Oracle as a "sole source supplier". In other words, no government contract would be able to use Java in it. For example, because Apple is considered to be a sole source supplier, the FDA will not approve any medical system that uses Apple/Mac technology. That's why you always see PC's (or Sun's) at your local doctor's office. Or, if Java has found its way into certain gov't systems, the federal gov't may seize/nullify the patents under national security grounds.

              Also, I believe Google has filed with the USPTO for a reexamination on the patents, arguing they are obvious or there is prior art, etc. Personally, I'm not currently up on what patents are being asserted. But, as a computer engineer, I'm hard pressed to see what could patentable in the JVM as machine architecture simulators/emulators have been around since the 1960's.

              In the 1980's, when [AT&T] Unix was the only variant around, they were controlling it and didn't want a formal standard. That's how POSIX came about. Using [court tested] "clean room" techniques, they were able to come up with a standard that gave rise to other implementations (e.g. minux and linux). That's why linux is called POSIX-compliant and not Unix-compliant. This could happen for Java (HP had a clean room Java implementation for embedded systems in the 90's).

              In the late 1990's when Microsoft was creating a Windows specific variant of Java [mainly to eviscerate Java], Sun took them to court and got a preliminary injunction. The appeal [which MS won] was that the punishment did not fit the crime. In other words, a breach of contract should not be punished by means of an injunction. No doubt this ruling will be cited in the current case.

              Google didn't clean room the Dalvik JVM for the same purpose as MS. The Sun/Java JVM assumes, more or less, a fairly powerful machine (e.g. a PC/Mac/mainframe, etc.). It is too slow/bloated for "low power" (e.g. CPU speed, memory, disk space) handset/tablet. Likewise for the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). It's meant to be a one-size-fits-all kitchen sink approach. Way too big to fit on a small nimble device, yet it would need additional handset specific classes and the generic classes that have no use in a handset would need to be trimmed.

              Weaning off Java might be as herculean a task as the U.S. converting to the metric system. At worst, Google might have to call it something other than "Java". But, end users kn

              • The problem is that there's more than Java at stake. Oracle also has a bunch of patents pertaining to VMs in general, especially JIT-compiling. From what I've heard, those are broad enough that e.g. Microsoft licenses them to cover .NET - and .NET is fairly different, implementation-wise, from HotSpot. Now Oracle is arguing that those same patents also apply to Dalvik's JIT. If that's still on the table in this lawsuit, dodging it would be much harder than just changing languages.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by jaseuk ( 217780 )

            Does google even have any direct revenue for android?

            Jason

            • Does google even have any direct revenue for android?

              Jason

              Not in pure form directly. It is completely free.

              They encourage developers to download the source SDK (all 8.1 GB of it). I have it on my machine and take updates all the time. This doesn't include the Android kernel, but this is also freely available for download. In fact, the Android mods to Linux have [just recently] been added back to the mainline kernel tree.

              All of the "front facing" [to app developers] APIs are common. If you're a small shop app developer, you're good to go.

              But, handset ma

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by msobkow ( 48369 )

          If Dalvik is killed, there is always the option of porting the official Oracle produced Java stack to Android with little or no effort. Personally I think this is what Oracle is after -- they want royalties and for Android to pay for their Java branding, the same as IBM does with their stack and Websphere, or a host of other vendors that use Java.

          Where this might be more of an issue is if Oracle continues to demand that only Java ME can be deployed to portable devices like Android. Now that would be sh

          • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Informative)

            by INeededALogin ( 771371 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @12:19PM (#39700935) Journal

            Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oracle Java isn't open source.

            Straight from wikipedia:

            On November 13, 2006, Sun released much of Java as free and open source software, (FOSS), under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). On May 8, 2007, Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code available under free software/open-source distribution terms, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright.

      • So they're trying to have their cake (Java made more popular by way of Android dev) and eat it too (grab lots of monies from Google for using Java in that manner).

        Are you sure you understand the meaning of that proverb? You usage of it suggests you don't because you most certainly can have a company make your product popular through their use of it and also reap the rewards of that popularity.

      • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Interesting)

        by moderatorrater ( 1095745 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @02:22AM (#39698109)

        Android is here to stay and won't move away from Java and Oracle knows that very well

        Yeah, it's not like Google has made their own language [golang.org] or uses popular, high level language [stackoverflow.com] internally that could replace java.

        Since there's already C++ support for those needing the support, python could easily replace new development. Freeze the java API, only release the goodies in the new python API, and watch as java rides off into the sunset wrt new development.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 )

          they did that research already and came to conclusion that going with something like dalvik(a java ripoff) is the best way for them to take, they didn't want to go with native code for whatever reasons.
          besides, mostly the lawsuit is not about the syntax of the written language, but of the bytecode / vm side.

          and if they switched away from dalvik they might just as well call the new product cyborgzzz or whatever since it wouldn't be android..

          thing is - there were platforms like android developed within and in

          • besides, mostly the lawsuit is not about the syntax of the written language, but of the bytecode / vm side.

            Say what now? The Oracle/Google lawsuit is about copyright infringement of the Java library APIs, as thoroughly documented at Groklaw. I don't know which lawsuit you're thinking of.

          • and came to conclusion that going with something like dalvik(a java ripoff) is the best way for them to take, they didn't want to go with native code for whatever reasons.

            what reasons? I mean, someone at Google might have said "and it'll run our own version of Java" and that was it, or whoever did the initial prototyping wrote some code in Java and that was enough for it to be Java from then on. No-one really needed to go into in-depth analysis of the benefits of Java v Python or C++ or javascript.

            At least,

          • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Interesting)

            by ZombieBraintrust ( 1685608 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @09:35AM (#39699631)
            No the patent side of the lawsuit is pretty much gutted. The patents Oracle was suiing over were mostly tossed by the patent office. That is why the $$ went from billions to millions.

    • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:05AM (#39697815)

      You have to be kidding. Java is so firmly entrenched in the enterprise application space that Android is a blip on the radar. It could go away tomorrow and people who write real applications - booking engines, investment monitoring, vehicle tracking, stock management, supply line tracking - will never even blink.

      • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anrego ( 830717 ) * on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:12AM (#39697849)

        Yup.

        Java is huge in the kind of stuff that doesn't make the news very often.

        More importantly, a lot of these systems are so large that "switching to .NET" isn't really a practical option.

        Even if all Java development ceased tommorow.. I suspect Java would still be around for a long, long time. Java could become the next COBOL!

        • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Informative)

          by rve ( 4436 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @05:05AM (#39698529)

          Yup.

          Java is huge in the kind of stuff that doesn't make the news very often.

          More importantly, a lot of these systems are so large that "switching to .NET" isn't really a practical option.

          Even if all Java development ceased tommorow.. I suspect Java would still be around for a long, long time. Java could become the next COBOL!

          Java is also huge in the kind of stuff that does make the news. It's either the #1 or #2 most used programming language for applications, depending on what you try to measure.

          The reason why switching to .NET isn't practical doesn't have anything to do with size. There is nothing preventing anyone from developing a Java-to-CLR compiler (google says http://www.janetdev.org/ [janetdev.org] but I haven't tried it), and writing any new parts of your application in some other CLR language. I think the biggest hurdle would be switching the IT infrastructure to windows and then being committed to sticking with that choice for ever.

          By the way, if you think all COBOL development has ceased, you are wrong.

          • I think the biggest hurdle would be switching the IT infrastructure to windows and then being committed to sticking with that choice for ever.

            See Mono [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Serious Callers Only ( 1022605 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:06AM (#39697817)

      In spite of the sunk cost of Davlik, I think at this point it would be better for Google to simply deprecate Java and tell developers that new development will happen in some other language (like Dart, python, whatever). They could continue to support the Java API indefinitely, but give new apps all the new features and optimisation. Android has had a lot of stick for being a slow, unpolished platform, and this is an opportunity to ditch some of that reputation, at the same time as ditching an unwilling partner (Oracle) who obviously doesn't appreciate what Google have done for Java with Android. The alternative doesn't bear thinking about - constant antagonism with the management of the language standard they are using. If Oracle loses this case they will not take it lying down - expect other moves against Google in the future, hell, even if they win I expect they'd come back for more at some later date. Oracle is obviously in a death spiral and determined to take the rest of the world with it - Apple has also ditched them recently, it seems because of friction with Oracle and new licensing terms, so it's not as if this is going to get better.

      Java has caused Google serious issues with performance [android.com] on a mobile platform anyway - they'd be better off with a language and platform that they control entirely. Unfortunately changing the platform like this would be a huge wrench and would have to be managed very carefully over a period of years, but it can be done.

      • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:25AM (#39697905)

        Go would actually be an excellent option. Its a really clever language that solves a whole ton of C related pain-points, and compiles surprisingly snapilly.

        I mean google might be concerned that not many people know it, but Apple took the exact same punt with objective C, but ultimately objective C's strengths as a rapid development platform won over a lot of coders who might otherwise be spooked away from it.

        • Haven't really looked at Go, thanks for the tip.

          There are a lot of options, and as you say Apple is a good example here - it is possible to take most of your developers with you, with the right combination of threats, cajoling, and incentives, even through multiple huge transitions, as Apple have managed over the last decade.

        • I mean google might be concerned that not many people know it, but Apple took the exact same punt with objective C, but ultimately objective C's strengths as a rapid development platform won over a lot of coders who might otherwise be spooked away from it.

          It wasn't really Apple that took that punt, it was NeXT, sometime around 1986. And yes, ObjC's dynamic, smalltalk-like OOP runtime helped a lot with designing a powerful and straightforward framework for application development. But the other main selling point was that ObjC was fully backward compatible with C, so all of your existing C code could be used. And these days, even C++ can be used. And C/C++ basically runs the world, even today. It has huge momentum. ObjC(++) at its core was just a small runtim

      • I don't know if that's still in the game, but previously Oracle was also claiming patents on JIT that Dalvik was violating (and that, apparently, pretty much any JIT-compiling VM would violate; so MS is paying royalties for .NET, for example). If that's still the case, switching languages won't help.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Cyberax ( 705495 )

        Not going to happen. Android platform is BIG. And it works quite OK, actually.

        Python is not going to cut it. It's interpreted (i.e. 'too slow') and has miserable multithreading. Dalvik VM is by now JIT-compiled with decent multi-threading. Besides, Python is a dynamic language and they are a pain for complex apps.

        Go isn't going to cut it either because it's a purely compiled language.

    • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:46AM (#39697995) Journal
      Java constantly is listed among the top three most popular programming languages. It's not because of Android.

      Android chose Java because Java was popular, not the other way around. You must be unaware of the other uses of Java in this world.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dkf ( 304284 )

        Android chose Java because Java was popular, not the other way around. You must be unaware of the other uses of Java in this world.

        Exactly. Java's got a huge number of server-side programs written for it, and it mostly gets on and supports those pretty well. Its somewhat chunky startup costs aren't a big problem in that situation (you don't need to start processes very often and you can usefully throw hardware at it) and its both fast and safe; fast because this is the case that JITting does best with, and safe because there's no loading of strange native code or user-supplied classes. The only real competitor in this space is .Net (ye

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Traiano ( 1044954 )

      Android is ... literally a lifeline keeping java alive

      As an enterprise infrastructure technologist, I can tell you that Java is very much alive. With or without Android, it is not going anywhere anytime soon.

    • Re:This really is a bizare course of action for Or (Score:5, Interesting)

      by muon-catalyzed ( 2483394 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:56AM (#39698033)
      > have no god damn idea why Oracle is doing this

      Because Google can't axe Java now, they in their infinite wisdom allowed it to proliferate. If only they have kept C and let developers to add Java, Python, Go, Haskell runtimes (all derived and compiled from C) they would have a great and truly free&open platform, the whole Java thing would get offloaded to third parties, something that smart companies do. Now Java is mandated, and of course you can't compile Go from Java nor Python from Java etc. as it all requires C to be the default underlaying SDK, which for some uniquely flawed executive reasoning is not. So Java is now the huge drag anchor of Android development, not only creating nightmares to developers, but also this patent/copyright Oracle stink.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Google thought they were in the clear using Java in the grounds that they re-implemented, similar to how many compatible products have been created in the past using publicly available specifications. I am somewhat surprised the even offered 0.5% to Oracle, but I suppose if it makes them go away it might be worth it.

    • Oracle does a lot of stupid things, they're your typically corporation who would shoot themselves in the foot if it had an immediate benefit. Everyone in the company is driven hard by what I've heard is a tyrannical executive team, from my vantage point they have a case of PRS (performance review syndrome).

      Not knowing otherwise, I'd say they bought Sun just to destroy it. First they kill OpenOffice, then Solaris, then ZFS, and now their working on Java. Very short sighted, but in my opinion not has bad as I

    • I still have no god damn idea why Oracle is doing this other than amazing short sightedness.

      The conventional analysis is that Oracle needs some of Google's key database patents to be able to scale Oracle Database much beyond it's current state. They only bought Sun to get Java to clobber Google over the head with, so they'd enter into a patent-cross-licensing deal.

      Presumbaly Google has this figured out and either intends to drag this out until Oracle is no longer relevant, to teach Oracle a lesson and make

  • At least all of the jurors... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bdabautcb ( 1040566 ) <bodaciouswaggler@@@yahoo...com> on Monday April 16, 2012 @12:59AM (#39697779)
    will be well enough educated in technology to make a reasonable decision based on evidence. The last time I had jury duty on a first degree murder case, the person selected from my pool brought a herd of ants into the jury room with his lunch bag (plastic bag from store checkout) and kept going on about how special he was because he and his wife had the only set of twins in the world with identical fingerprints. I am a biologist and was strucken from further review by the defense because I answered the question "Do you believe that DNA technology is accurate?" with "Yes sir, I believe it is accurate." It must be great to be a lawyer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Troed ( 102527 )

      Did you at least qualify your answer with "That depends on if you're searching for someone specific or if you're just matching collected DNA to as a large as database as possible. Oh, and how many unique markers are used in the search."?

      Else I'm not sure I'd answer that it _is_ accurate.

    • Re:At least all of the jurors... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Aceticon ( 140883 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @10:04AM (#39699813)

      Actually DNA technology as currently used to investigate crimes is not accurate.

      DNA fingerprinting as used is only based on a few genetic markers, not full DNA sequencing. Sometimes as few as 8 or 12 markers are used. This means each combination of markers is the same for thousands of people.

      Typically, this is not a problem for the situation when DNA is obtained from a crime scene and in parallel obtained from a suspect and then compared (the likellyhood of a false positive is something like 1 in 8 million).

      It is however a problem when DNA is obtained from the crime scene and then a database of DNA samples (which, remember, does not contain a full DNA code, just the values for the markers) is searched for matches - because if the database is big enough, matches will be found for certain (after all, thousands of people have that exact same set of markers) and of late the government has been growing those databases as fast as possible.

      So yeah, DNA fingerprinting has to be looked at with some skepticism and it did made sense for the defense to struck you out.

  • Except of course a bunch of lawyers getting wealthy off these two companies. Case in point: The SCO debacle is still ongoing. There are lawyers still wringing cash out of that mess and it's been nearly a decade. And that is some dinky shell company versus IBM. Two giants with deep pockets slugging it out? It will never end. And why should it? Lawyers get paid by the hour.

    Ten years from now when this mess is still ongoing it will be a shining example of why our patent system is broken. It protects

  • How might Google try to get around the patents? (Score:3)

    by Qwavel ( 733416 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:20AM (#39697887)

    Clearly, Google having to pay Oracle millions of dollars is no big deal - chump change to them.

    But Oracle has asked for a permanent order preventing Google from continuing to infringe the patents and copyrights. Clearly Oracle is willing to go to the wall to get its way. It would certainly appear that the future of Java is of little import to Oracle compared to winning this battle and getting as much compensation from Google as they can.

    If Oracle wins, what they demand will only be limited by the importance of the patents and copyright in question. Leaving the copyright issue aside for now (since it is less clear), how important are the patents? Can Google work around them?

    It is my understanding that the principle concern is this patent:
    Method and system for performing static initialization.
    http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=18&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=6061520&OS=6061520&RS=6061520 [uspto.gov]

    How significantly would Davlik be affected if they had to work around this patent?

    • Re:How might Google try to get around the patents? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:42AM (#39697977)

      My guess is that Oracle doesn't plan on winning the copyright issues at all. As has been pointed out in previous articles, if they win they will have, as a consequence, turned Java into a derivative work of the pre-existing languages it borrowed from. They will be sued for -- and lose -- much more than they could possibly hope to win here now. If they win on copyright, they lose big time.
       
      Although they probably hope they can win on the patent issues, considering their damages have come down so much (from they probably thought were uninflated numbers) some of the execs and lawyers probably see that even if they win, they're not going to get what they want. Essentially, what started off as a hopeful money grab is now them most likely just going through the motions in order to save face. Though perhaps they are delusional enough to think otherwise.
       
      As others have pointed out, if they actually do stop Davlik entirely, then their "win" is to have less people interested in Java. From what I hear about Java for the past couple of years, though, they seem to be willfully killing it off through mismanagement anyway. So perhaps they really don't give a shit about it at all. What kind of revenues they get due to Java?

      • Re:How might Google try to get around the patents? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @02:38AM (#39698147) Journal

        As others have pointed out, if they actually do stop Davlik entirely, then their "win" is to have less people interested in Java. From what I hear about Java for the past couple of years, though, they seem to be willfully killing it off through mismanagement anyway. So perhaps they really don't give a shit about it at all. What kind of revenues they get due to Java?

        They're not killing it, they're turning it into COBOL 2.0 - a realm of humongous "enterprise" solutions chock full of incomprehensible code that requires very expensive consultants to maintain, much less update. In other words, the kind of turf on which Oracle knows how to play very well.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by msobkow ( 48369 )

          How is this insightful?

          Big, complex systems have big, complex code. It doesn't matter whether you use Java, COBOL, C#/.Net, C++, or a host of other languages. Sooner or later you have to map a bazillion communications formats and layouts into objects, manipulate them, and persist them. That takes code. That takes time. That takes complexity.

          If you don't realize that yet, you haven't been programming long enough for enterprise systems.

          • Re:How might Google try to get around the patents? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by gbjbaanb ( 229885 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @11:36AM (#39700535)

            you havn't been coding enterprise applications either., Some code is more complex than other, way more complex. Massively, stupidly, craply, suckfestly more complex.

            Not because it is somehow special, but because there was money to be made in dragging the thing out as long as possible and making it as complicated as possible with the cheapest and most useless developers and the most expensive consultants you could imagine.

            And most of these shitty shit shit applications are written in Java for people who have budgets bigger than their overstuffed bonus payouts.

          • Enterprize systems are big, you got that one. But only a tiny minority of them are complex, nearly all enterprize systems are simple.

            Now, great coders are able to fit big, simple requirements with small, complex pieces of code. Less code = less bugs and less programming time, that more than compensates the added complexity. Normal coders are able to fit big, simple requirements with big, simple code.

            Now, there is a kind of coder that fits big, simple requirements with huge, complex pieces of code. In the ol

    • The patent in question should never have been issued in the first place... Software should NOT be patentable subject matter as it is purely mathematical expressions and statements.

  • You say that like it is a long time. This is going at light speed compared to the SCO saga.

  • 900 motions and filings == how many lines of code? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:26AM (#39697911)

    I'm just trying to imagine what both companies could have done, if the money for this had been spent on R&D projects. Probably both companies and their ecosystems would have been better off. Conflict between two titans rattles the earth, and shakes and frightens smaller beings.

    Two years of hard core litigation? Which small companies can afford that? Even if a small company is clearly in the right, a giant can litigate them out of existence, before the truth comes to light.

    'tis uneasy waters, in which we tread today, my fellows.

    • I'm just trying to imagine what both companies could have done, if the money for this had been spent on R&D projects

      Good question maybe.....

      Google oceanSpray! a new product that twists the web, attracts millions of users, but never leaves beta and is closed after a few years to the protests of the small but devoted community that stuck around.

      or

      Oracle Cloudsense Exalogic. A new database that analyzes the cloud, provides a solid support package, but uses an obscure syntax that mostly annoys the programmers who need to work with it, and costs $3million a seat.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by toriver ( 11308 )

      Yeah, but that's counterfactual history, it's like wondering what scientific advances could have been produced instead with the billions spent on stockpiling nukes.

  • oh that's right, the company who squanders and kills anything decent they might have acquired (cause sure as fuck they haven't developed anything in the last decade +) for a quick buck

    Not that I feel anything for google, but its fun watching Oracle piss on their 50$ shoe to win a 3$ bet

  • Oh, if only it could be that way.... >:)

  • two giant bank accounts enter... (Score:3)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Monday April 16, 2012 @01:50AM (#39698009)

    Two rich lawfirms leave richer...

  • These "permanent injunctions" are rather stupid. They do no one any good. The only question in cases like these is: "how much does the infringer owe?" If someone figures out how to make more money with your patent than you do, then they should be allowed to do it, but they should have to pay for it. Presumably they'd pay less if they got a license first rather than going to court. Never, ever, should a court grant a permanent injunction, or stop the sale of anything. It harms the market, harms innovat

  • 2 corps enter! 1 corp leaves!

  • I wonder how the jury will be selected: will owning an Android phone be considered a factor for disqualification? And what about owning an iPhone (apple fan => android hater => oracle sympathizer)?

    • I wonder how the jury will be selected: will owning an Android phone be considered a factor for disqualification?

      Owning an iPad might. Allegedly they look identical from six feet away.

  • Instead of fighting it out in the courtroom, at this point the computer wars have gotten so personal we really need a steel cage match between Google and Oracle...

    Now you might think Google would have the advantage, what with Larry & Sergey tag-teaming against Ellison.

    But if you ever look deep into the eyes of Ellison, you will have strong reason to think even the Datariffic Duo will have trouble indeed bringing down the mighty L.

  • I'm hoping we start to see some jury's just watch the show and return the nope verdict. Of course, if juries do get smarter and start voiding these suits, the lawyers will scramble to east texas.

  • Do you think Google didn't know exactly what they were doing when the developed Dalvik? The company is awash with ex-Sun execs.

    There are already companies licensing Java on mobile who are at a distinct competitive disadvantage because they have to pay a licensing fee to Oracle for the use of Java, whereas Google (and its partner manufacturers) do not license Java on Android. If Oracle wins my guess is Android will die slowly because whatever the PR may be, Android is successful because the cell carriers
  • If for some crazy reason, the judge ends up giving Oracle everything it wants, what happens if a bunch of companies panic and try to replace their Java apps? What language and platform is ready to step in? I'm guessing C# is the most likely winner, but is there anything else that doesn't have all the possible baggage that Java now has?

    • Forget about C#. Anybody that isn't concerned about a single entity controling their future is already using it. Nobody will say: "Well, it seems we can't trust Oracle to let us use Java the way we want. We'd better put our future at Microsoft's hand".

      At first, people won't change because they've already invested too much on Java. But, slowly the cahnge will come, and will look natural since Java is already being replaced everywhere. The most obvious candidates are Python and Ruby, but some other language c

  • Oracle sucks, that's all there is to it.

    Copyright violations over APIs? And Java is supposed to be F/OSS?

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