Ellison: "Who am I winning for? Am I winning for Oracle shareholders or is it simply a matter of personal vanity? I'll admit to it. Mea culpa. An awful lot of it is personal vanity."
Yes, maybe Larry Page "did evil" in some abstract but tangible way. But Ellison, you're just a greedy SOB and you admit it. No wonder it's not exactly one of the "best places to work".
Larry would have to be one of the tech world's experts on making "evil" decisions! Ask anyone who's encountered his company before, ask the Open Office guys, the former Sun employees who came across to Oracle, any company that has ever dealt with his company in virtually any capacity, but most importantly ask his company's customers! They know evil.
The court decision in Oracle vs Sun and Java was right and if it is overturned on appeal then the whole industry will be in deep trouble. The ramifications will go far beyond Android alone. If the names and parameters of functions are copyrightable, as opposed to the code that implements functions, then the whole open source movement is doomed, reverse engineering is dead, indie development will be almost impossible and software development in general will become a lawyer's picnic that chokes off any chance of innovation. Copyrighting API definitions is the software equivalent of patenting genes.
Larry would have to be one of the tech world's experts on making "evil" decisions! Ask anyone who's encountered his company before, ask the Open Office guys, the former Sun employees who came across to Oracle, any company that has ever dealt with his company in virtually any capacity, but most importantly ask his company's customers! They know evil.
The court decision in Oracle vs Sun and Java was right and if it is overturned on appeal then the whole industry will be in deep trouble. The ramifications will go far beyond Android alone. If the names and parameters of functions are copyrightable, as opposed to the code that implements functions, then the whole open source movement is doomed, reverse engineering is dead, indie development will be almost impossible and software development in general will become a lawyer's picnic that chokes off any chance of innovation. Copyrighting API definitions is the software equivalent of patenting genes.
You know, I have to agree with this, because it gets really critical there and it shouldn't be possible to patent API definitions.
However, to be fair one has to consider the bigger picture here and also think beyond what could be proven in court. Fact is, Google didn't just implement a similar API, they lifted almost the complete API, they copied the whole concept, including the runtime environment and that's where things get hairy, because they essentially stole the whole technology, even if they implemented most methods themselves. Let's be serious, you could take most non UI related Java code out there and run it 1:1 in Dalvik, unchanged and yes, I think this is a problem.
Essentially this is a similar argument Samsung is using against Apple, where it comes to "you can't patent a rounded rectangle". And by this definition, everyone should be free to implement whatever they like. I could start with basic shapes, which by definition you can't protect and at the end of the day I will end up with a product that is only almost identical to yours and I sell it as mine. I think you'd have quite a problem with that, no matter how I got there.
"Ellison suggested that Apple will not be as successful in the post-Jobs era. He told Rose that the world had already seen the company Apple without Jobs once, and it did not go well."
Except that first time Jobs didn't give them the inside scoop and train them for 10 plus years. This time things are much different. He hand picked his successor because he knew he could do the job. Tim Cook has worked side by side with Jobs for a long, long, time. That's the difference Mr. Ellison which your statement will fall very short about Apple this time round. Tim Cook has Steve Jobs knowledge, advice, insider. Tim Cook plays everything really cool and people think he's weak but I think everyone is wrong about that.
But only the future will tell and were not there yet.
"Fact is, Google didn't just implement a similar API, they lifted almost the complete API, they copied the whole concept, including the runtime environment and that's where things get hairy, because they essentially stole the whole technology, even if they implemented most methods themselves. Let's be serious, you could take most non UI related Java code out there and run it 1:1 in Dalvik, unchanged and yes, I think this is a problem."
Google did no such thing. Android is the combination of an open source Linux operating system modified for mobile, the Apache Harmony Open Source Java implementation, and the Dalvik VM. Google didn't implement anything, they shipped Harmony. There are three implementations of the Java APIs, all of them open source. There's Apache Harmony under ASL. There's GNU Classpath under GPL, and there's OpenJDK under GPL. Usage of the terminology "stolen" with respect to open source is a non-sequitur. You can't steal something meant to be distributed and allow derivative works. Did Apple "steal" KHTML when they created WebKit?
Complaining about someone shipping a clean-room implementation of a virtual machine that can run code compiled with other tools is a ridiculous. Imagine I wrote an iOS game by using Microsoft Visual C/C++ tools for 99% of the work, and then at the last step, I linked it with XCode and a Cocoa<->WPF library to produce a working iOS app. Should Microsoft sue for someone to ship such a tool? It's fundamentally outrageous to tell a developer what he can do with his code. The fact that you use tools to create code doesn't entitle you to ownership of the result. That would be a crazy regression of rights.
If I write some Java code with Oracle's tools, they have no rights, zero, to saying what I can do with the results or where I can run it.
Also, Ellison is completely ignoring what Android is doing for Java -- making it relevant on the client again. Java died on the client, and the only place it survived was in the enterprise. Now there are almost a billion devices that run Java code on the client. Rather than trying to extract a tax out of Google for rescuing the platform that was dying a rapid death of relevance on the client, he should have been looking at ways to make Oracle relevant in this new universe of Java phones.
The real issue is, Ellison bought venerable Sun, a company which produced many innovative technologies, Java, the SPARC processor, Solaris, DTrace, et al, and he did not buy it to continue their tradition. He bought it to be an IP troll, thinking he'd be able to sue to get a slice of every Android handset sold. He destroyed the Open Solaris community. He cancelled Sun research into revolutionary future CPUs like MAJC. He basically shredded the company and kept the rolodex and IP. Basically, Larry Ellison is a corporate raider in the sense of Gordon Gecko of the 1980's Wall Street, who doesn't really care about innovation.
I do think Apple will be on the decline now. All companies fall apart once the man in charge is not the man who started the company.
It's happened so many times, I've lost count. There is a lot of mediocre executives out there who simply do what the board wants, and that's raise their pay continually. They're just overpaid mediocre mercenaries out to bleed their companies dry.
When you're Apple, though, it really isn't that hard to look so much better than the competition when the competition are run by a bunch of totally overpaid Ivy League-educated morons.
Larry would have to be one of the tech world's experts on making "evil" decisions! Ask anyone who's encountered his company before, ask the Open Office guys, the former Sun employees who came across to Oracle, any company that has ever dealt with his company in virtually any capacity, but most importantly ask his company's customers! They know evil.
The court decision in Oracle vs Sun and Java was right and if it is overturned on appeal then the whole industry will be in deep trouble. The ramifications will go far beyond Android alone. If the names and parameters of functions are copyrightable, as opposed to the code that implements functions, then the whole open source movement is doomed, reverse engineering is dead, indie development will be almost impossible and software development in general will become a lawyer's picnic that chokes off any chance of innovation. Copyrighting API definitions is the software equivalent of patenting genes.
I would argue this is hyperbole.
As someone pointed out, Google was allowing others to PROFIT on Sun/Oracle's work for free (like Samsung). And Google knew it was in the wrong from their own statements in the internal emails presented in court.
I personally always believe that Ellison sues google not because he truly believe Android was stolen from them. But because of his friendship with Jobs, I can see them having a discussion over a glass of wine and it going something like this.
Steve - I hate google and page, they stole the iphone and page stayed on my board and never said a word about making a phone.
Larry - Steve, I think I can help you with that problem,
Steve - How is that
Larry - Well, Rubin has made it known they were using Java and they are not paying me. So I will sue them for you and this way you do not looking like you're vindictive. then you go and sue all the Android licensee for their use of Android and infringing on Apple IP.
Steve - Hey that is a great idea, let wage thermonuclear war on google.
So what about Google wiping out Oracle's chance to monetize Java for mobiles, which was doing quite well prior to Dalvik?
As someone pointed out, Google was allowing others to PROFIT on Sun/Oracle's work for free (like Samsung). And Google knew it was in the wrong from their own statements in the internal emails presented in court.
Kind of funny to see Larry E. calling Larry P. evil because he's mad he didn't win in court in a decision that would have demolished the tech industry...
So Oracle buys Java and then really really wishes it wasn't open source and tries to sue as though buying it 'unopen sourced' it. NOT. Loses that argument...
They then try to claim copyright on software. This would totally demolish the software industry and be such a major roadblock to innovation, but Larry E is good with that as long as it puts $ in his pockets. I'd love to be the first guy that wrote x=x+1 since nobody can now use that line nor any sequence of code that has the same result.......... erm........
They then continue to spew 'copy copy copy' as though saying it enough times makes it a reality. In their 'ta-da' moment in court Oracle decompiled Googles code and found 9.... 9 lines of code copied exactly by Google. Out of over 15 million lines of code. Its actually one of the compelling reasons they lost.
Larry would have to be one of the tech world's experts on making "evil" decisions! Ask anyone who's encountered his company before, ask the Open Office guys, the former Sun employees who came across to Oracle, any company that has ever dealt with his company in virtually any capacity, but most importantly ask his company's customers! They know evil.
The court decision in Oracle vs Sun and Java was right and if it is overturned on appeal then the whole industry will be in deep trouble. The ramifications will go far beyond Android alone. If the names and parameters of functions are copyrightable, as opposed to the code that implements functions, then the whole open source movement is doomed, reverse engineering is dead, indie development will be almost impossible and software development in general will become a lawyer's picnic that chokes off any chance of innovation. Copyrighting API definitions is the software equivalent of patenting genes.
So why are you happy that Google stripped out the GNU licensing and switched it to Apache?
Allowing them to close off area's of a supposedly "open" platform.
So why are you happy that Google stripped out the GNU licensing and switched it to Apache?
Allowing them to close off area's of a supposedly "open" platform.
Google did not "strip out" any GNU licensing. Java is a specification, and anyone is free to implement it. The only licensing requirement previously imposed was trademark use. If you wanted to call the result "Java(tm)" and use the Java logo, you had to pass the TCK (Technical Compatibility Kit). Otherwise, you could do anything you want, and for 20 years, many many Java implementations were produced. There is a 20 year history of open, free, third party Java implementations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines
The vast majority of those used no code from Sun nor Oracle.
Android did not "strip out" GPL licensing. It shipped Apache Harmony, a free, open source, alternative, clean-room implementation of the Java APIs. It was never GPL'ed in the first place. This is not any different than someone shipping something like WINE - the Windows API emulator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software) ) or Samba, the open source windows file server. Actually, it's different than WINE in this respect: Sun openly encouraged other implementations, and they even tried to make it an ISO specification (http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/JSG/docs/m3/docs/jsgn3-6.htm). They clearly wanted things like Android to exist.
As for destroying Oracle's ability to monetize Java on phones, that was destroyed by Sun and Apple. Apple did more to destroy Java on mobile than Google even did. Remember Steve Job's comments when iOS launched? Remember the dream of Java on OSX when it launched vs the reality years later?
Before the iPhone launched, J2ME was on a billion feature phones. But all Java provides on mobile, J2ME, CLDC, CDC, PersonalJava, all of them sucked very bad. Sun's reaction to this was not to make Java better on the client (which is what Google did with Dalvik), but to go after Adobe Flash and SIlverlight by dumping resources into JavaFX. For the next few years, Oracle continued JavaOne keynotes showcasing JavaFX on mobile devices, and no one cared: It wasn't Java, and it wasn't efficient.
The simple fact of the matter is, Google shipped the first version of Java on a mobile device that actually worked semi-decent. In doing so, they rescued Java on mobile, whereas Sun and Oracle were destroying it with incompetence and with no ability to answer the iPhone threat. Had Android went with say, C++, Java would be completely dead on mobile today.
I'll say it again, Larry Ellison had no intention of reviving the Java platform. When Oracle buys a company, they destroy it. This has happened numerous times in the past. People say Google bought Motorola for just the patents, but at least they are plowing money into it trying to rescue it. Larry Ellison would have handed the patents to the lawyers, and fired 30,000 employees.
I don't think enemy-of-enemy-is-friend reasoning applies here. However much you blindly hate Google, Larry Ellison is far more of a douche-bag.
All the important stuff he said first goes here...
I'll say it again, Larry Ellison had no intention of reviving the Java platform. When Oracle buys a company, they destroy it. This has happened numerous times in the past. People say Google bought Motorola for just the patents, but at least they are plowing money into it trying to rescue it. Larry Ellison would have handed the patents to the lawyers, and fired 30,000 employees.
I don't think enemy-of-enemy-is-friend reasoning applies here. However much you blindly hate Google, Larry Ellison is far more of a douche-bag.
Well said. Larry Ellison and Oracle are the real epitome of evil in action. That's technology douchebaggery at it finest.
The issue is not using / distributing. The license clearly says the sharing / distributing has to be done by following some rules. For example: you cannot run threads in android which is against the java definition. This is just one example. there will be hundreds of conditions like these. This is an issue for Java brand image and Google should respect this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by closure
"Fact is, Google didn't just implement a similar API, they lifted almost the complete API, they copied the whole concept, including the runtime environment and that's where things get hairy, because they essentially stole the whole technology, even if they implemented most methods themselves. Let's be serious, you could take most non UI related Java code out there and run it 1:1 in Dalvik, unchanged and yes, I think this is a problem."
Google did no such thing. Android is the combination of an open source Linux operating system modified for mobile, the Apache Harmony Open Source Java implementation, and the Dalvik VM. Google didn't implement anything, they shipped Harmony. There are three implementations of the Java APIs, all of them open source. There's Apache Harmony under ASL. There's GNU Classpath under GPL, and there's OpenJDK under GPL. Usage of the terminology "stolen" with respect to open source is a non-sequitur. You can't steal something meant to be distributed and allow derivative works. Did Apple "steal" KHTML when they created WebKit?
Complaining about someone shipping a clean-room implementation of a virtual machine that can run code compiled with other tools is a ridiculous. Imagine I wrote an iOS game by using Microsoft Visual C/C++ tools for 99% of the work, and then at the last step, I linked it with XCode and a Cocoa<->WPF library to produce a working iOS app. Should Microsoft sue for someone to ship such a tool? It's fundamentally outrageous to tell a developer what he can do with his code. The fact that you use tools to create code doesn't entitle you to ownership of the result. That would be a crazy regression of rights.
If I write some Java code with Oracle's tools, they have no rights, zero, to saying what I can do with the results or where I can run it.
Also, Ellison is completely ignoring what Android is doing for Java -- making it relevant on the client again. Java died on the client, and the only place it survived was in the enterprise. Now there are almost a billion devices that run Java code on the client. Rather than trying to extract a tax out of Google for rescuing the platform that was dying a rapid death of relevance on the client, he should have been looking at ways to make Oracle relevant in this new universe of Java phones.
The real issue is, Ellison bought venerable Sun, a company which produced many innovative technologies, Java, the SPARC processor, Solaris, DTrace, et al, and he did not buy it to continue their tradition. He bought it to be an IP troll, thinking he'd be able to sue to get a slice of every Android handset sold. He destroyed the Open Solaris community. He cancelled Sun research into revolutionary future CPUs like MAJC. He basically shredded the company and kept the rolodex and IP. Basically, Larry Ellison is a corporate raider in the sense of Gordon Gecko of the 1980's Wall Street, who doesn't really care about innovation.
Comments
Ellison: "Who am I winning for? Am I winning for Oracle shareholders or is it simply a matter of personal vanity? I'll admit to it. Mea culpa. An awful lot of it is personal vanity."
Yes, maybe Larry Page "did evil" in some abstract but tangible way. But Ellison, you're just a greedy SOB and you admit it. No wonder it's not exactly one of the "best places to work".
Quote:
Originally Posted by dysamoria
So you're saying that all is fair when you have obscene wealth as a result?
I'm just saying that calling a self-made billionaire a moron, when you're not one yourself, is a little... moronic.
The court decision in Oracle vs Sun and Java was right and if it is overturned on appeal then the whole industry will be in deep trouble. The ramifications will go far beyond Android alone. If the names and parameters of functions are copyrightable, as opposed to the code that implements functions, then the whole open source movement is doomed, reverse engineering is dead, indie development will be almost impossible and software development in general will become a lawyer's picnic that chokes off any chance of innovation. Copyrighting API definitions is the software equivalent of patenting genes.
Originally Posted by nht
There should be a Godwin's Law for invoking quantum mechanics in any discussion thread...
What about here?
Quote:
Originally Posted by dshan
Larry would have to be one of the tech world's experts on making "evil" decisions! Ask anyone who's encountered his company before, ask the Open Office guys, the former Sun employees who came across to Oracle, any company that has ever dealt with his company in virtually any capacity, but most importantly ask his company's customers! They know evil.
The court decision in Oracle vs Sun and Java was right and if it is overturned on appeal then the whole industry will be in deep trouble. The ramifications will go far beyond Android alone. If the names and parameters of functions are copyrightable, as opposed to the code that implements functions, then the whole open source movement is doomed, reverse engineering is dead, indie development will be almost impossible and software development in general will become a lawyer's picnic that chokes off any chance of innovation. Copyrighting API definitions is the software equivalent of patenting genes.
You know, I have to agree with this, because it gets really critical there and it shouldn't be possible to patent API definitions.
However, to be fair one has to consider the bigger picture here and also think beyond what could be proven in court. Fact is, Google didn't just implement a similar API, they lifted almost the complete API, they copied the whole concept, including the runtime environment and that's where things get hairy, because they essentially stole the whole technology, even if they implemented most methods themselves. Let's be serious, you could take most non UI related Java code out there and run it 1:1 in Dalvik, unchanged and yes, I think this is a problem.
Essentially this is a similar argument Samsung is using against Apple, where it comes to "you can't patent a rounded rectangle". And by this definition, everyone should be free to implement whatever they like. I could start with basic shapes, which by definition you can't protect and at the end of the day I will end up with a product that is only almost identical to yours and I sell it as mine. I think you'd have quite a problem with that, no matter how I got there.
Except that first time Jobs didn't give them the inside scoop and train them for 10 plus years.
This time things are much different. He hand picked his successor because he knew he could do the job. Tim Cook has worked side by side with Jobs for a long, long, time.
That's the difference Mr. Ellison which your statement will fall very short about Apple this time round. Tim Cook has Steve Jobs knowledge, advice, insider. Tim Cook plays everything really cool and people think he's weak but I think everyone is wrong about that.
But only the future will tell and were not there yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
And the Eclipse is running which JDK?
OpenJDK okay?
"Fact is, Google didn't just implement a similar API, they lifted almost the complete API, they copied the whole concept, including the runtime environment and that's where things get hairy, because they essentially stole the whole technology, even if they implemented most methods themselves. Let's be serious, you could take most non UI related Java code out there and run it 1:1 in Dalvik, unchanged and yes, I think this is a problem."
Google did no such thing. Android is the combination of an open source Linux operating system modified for mobile, the Apache Harmony Open Source Java implementation, and the Dalvik VM. Google didn't implement anything, they shipped Harmony. There are three implementations of the Java APIs, all of them open source. There's Apache Harmony under ASL. There's GNU Classpath under GPL, and there's OpenJDK under GPL. Usage of the terminology "stolen" with respect to open source is a non-sequitur. You can't steal something meant to be distributed and allow derivative works. Did Apple "steal" KHTML when they created WebKit?
Complaining about someone shipping a clean-room implementation of a virtual machine that can run code compiled with other tools is a ridiculous. Imagine I wrote an iOS game by using Microsoft Visual C/C++ tools for 99% of the work, and then at the last step, I linked it with XCode and a Cocoa<->WPF library to produce a working iOS app. Should Microsoft sue for someone to ship such a tool? It's fundamentally outrageous to tell a developer what he can do with his code. The fact that you use tools to create code doesn't entitle you to ownership of the result. That would be a crazy regression of rights.
If I write some Java code with Oracle's tools, they have no rights, zero, to saying what I can do with the results or where I can run it.
Also, Ellison is completely ignoring what Android is doing for Java -- making it relevant on the client again. Java died on the client, and the only place it survived was in the enterprise. Now there are almost a billion devices that run Java code on the client. Rather than trying to extract a tax out of Google for rescuing the platform that was dying a rapid death of relevance on the client, he should have been looking at ways to make Oracle relevant in this new universe of Java phones.
The real issue is, Ellison bought venerable Sun, a company which produced many innovative technologies, Java, the SPARC processor, Solaris, DTrace, et al, and he did not buy it to continue their tradition. He bought it to be an IP troll, thinking he'd be able to sue to get a slice of every Android handset sold. He destroyed the Open Solaris community. He cancelled Sun research into revolutionary future CPUs like MAJC. He basically shredded the company and kept the rolodex and IP. Basically, Larry Ellison is a corporate raider in the sense of Gordon Gecko of the 1980's Wall Street, who doesn't really care about innovation.
most useless really? Which search engine do you use?
Originally Posted by AttilaBorbo
most useless really? Which search engine do you use?
Bing and DuckDuckGo. Why? Is there another service known for violation of our privacy of which we should be aware?
It's happened so many times, I've lost count. There is a lot of mediocre executives out there who simply do what the board wants, and that's raise their pay continually. They're just overpaid mediocre mercenaries out to bleed their companies dry.
When you're Apple, though, it really isn't that hard to look so much better than the competition when the competition are run by a bunch of totally overpaid Ivy League-educated morons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dshan
Larry would have to be one of the tech world's experts on making "evil" decisions! Ask anyone who's encountered his company before, ask the Open Office guys, the former Sun employees who came across to Oracle, any company that has ever dealt with his company in virtually any capacity, but most importantly ask his company's customers! They know evil.
The court decision in Oracle vs Sun and Java was right and if it is overturned on appeal then the whole industry will be in deep trouble. The ramifications will go far beyond Android alone. If the names and parameters of functions are copyrightable, as opposed to the code that implements functions, then the whole open source movement is doomed, reverse engineering is dead, indie development will be almost impossible and software development in general will become a lawyer's picnic that chokes off any chance of innovation. Copyrighting API definitions is the software equivalent of patenting genes.
I would argue this is hyperbole.
As someone pointed out, Google was allowing others to PROFIT on Sun/Oracle's work for free (like Samsung). And Google knew it was in the wrong from their own statements in the internal emails presented in court.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
Why? What happens upon menopause?
Whether you're male or female, you grow a mustache...
So what about Google wiping out Oracle's chance to monetize Java for mobiles, which was doing quite well prior to Dalvik?
Reality is better than your bullshit fantasy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by patrickwalker
I would argue this is hyperbole.
As someone pointed out, Google was allowing others to PROFIT on Sun/Oracle's work for free (like Samsung). And Google knew it was in the wrong from their own statements in the internal emails presented in court.
Kind of funny to see Larry E. calling Larry P. evil because he's mad he didn't win in court in a decision that would have demolished the tech industry...
So Oracle buys Java and then really really wishes it wasn't open source and tries to sue as though buying it 'unopen sourced' it. NOT. Loses that argument...
They then try to claim copyright on software. This would totally demolish the software industry and be such a major roadblock to innovation, but Larry E is good with that as long as it puts $ in his pockets. I'd love to be the first guy that wrote x=x+1 since nobody can now use that line nor any sequence of code that has the same result.......... erm........
They then continue to spew 'copy copy copy' as though saying it enough times makes it a reality. In their 'ta-da' moment in court Oracle decompiled Googles code and found 9.... 9 lines of code copied exactly by Google. Out of over 15 million lines of code. Its actually one of the compelling reasons they lost.
So why are you happy that Google stripped out the GNU licensing and switched it to Apache?
Allowing them to close off area's of a supposedly "open" platform.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hill60
So why are you happy that Google stripped out the GNU licensing and switched it to Apache?
Allowing them to close off area's of a supposedly "open" platform.
Google did not "strip out" any GNU licensing. Java is a specification, and anyone is free to implement it. The only licensing requirement previously imposed was trademark use. If you wanted to call the result "Java(tm)" and use the Java logo, you had to pass the TCK (Technical Compatibility Kit). Otherwise, you could do anything you want, and for 20 years, many many Java implementations were produced. There is a 20 year history of open, free, third party Java implementations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines
The vast majority of those used no code from Sun nor Oracle.
Android did not "strip out" GPL licensing. It shipped Apache Harmony, a free, open source, alternative, clean-room implementation of the Java APIs. It was never GPL'ed in the first place. This is not any different than someone shipping something like WINE - the Windows API emulator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software) ) or Samba, the open source windows file server. Actually, it's different than WINE in this respect: Sun openly encouraged other implementations, and they even tried to make it an ISO specification (http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/JSG/docs/m3/docs/jsgn3-6.htm). They clearly wanted things like Android to exist.
As for destroying Oracle's ability to monetize Java on phones, that was destroyed by Sun and Apple. Apple did more to destroy Java on mobile than Google even did. Remember Steve Job's comments when iOS launched? Remember the dream of Java on OSX when it launched vs the reality years later?
Before the iPhone launched, J2ME was on a billion feature phones. But all Java provides on mobile, J2ME, CLDC, CDC, PersonalJava, all of them sucked very bad. Sun's reaction to this was not to make Java better on the client (which is what Google did with Dalvik), but to go after Adobe Flash and SIlverlight by dumping resources into JavaFX. For the next few years, Oracle continued JavaOne keynotes showcasing JavaFX on mobile devices, and no one cared: It wasn't Java, and it wasn't efficient.
The simple fact of the matter is, Google shipped the first version of Java on a mobile device that actually worked semi-decent. In doing so, they rescued Java on mobile, whereas Sun and Oracle were destroying it with incompetence and with no ability to answer the iPhone threat. Had Android went with say, C++, Java would be completely dead on mobile today.
I'll say it again, Larry Ellison had no intention of reviving the Java platform. When Oracle buys a company, they destroy it. This has happened numerous times in the past. People say Google bought Motorola for just the patents, but at least they are plowing money into it trying to rescue it. Larry Ellison would have handed the patents to the lawyers, and fired 30,000 employees.
I don't think enemy-of-enemy-is-friend reasoning applies here. However much you blindly hate Google, Larry Ellison is far more of a douche-bag.
Quote:
Originally Posted by closure
All the important stuff he said first goes here...
I'll say it again, Larry Ellison had no intention of reviving the Java platform. When Oracle buys a company, they destroy it. This has happened numerous times in the past. People say Google bought Motorola for just the patents, but at least they are plowing money into it trying to rescue it. Larry Ellison would have handed the patents to the lawyers, and fired 30,000 employees.
I don't think enemy-of-enemy-is-friend reasoning applies here. However much you blindly hate Google, Larry Ellison is far more of a douche-bag.
Well said. Larry Ellison and Oracle are the real epitome of evil in action. That's technology douchebaggery at it finest.
The issue is not using / distributing. The license clearly says the sharing / distributing has to be done by following some rules. For example: you cannot run threads in android which is against the java definition. This is just one example. there will be hundreds of conditions like these. This is an issue for Java brand image and Google should respect this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by closure
"Fact is, Google didn't just implement a similar API, they lifted almost the complete API, they copied the whole concept, including the runtime environment and that's where things get hairy, because they essentially stole the whole technology, even if they implemented most methods themselves. Let's be serious, you could take most non UI related Java code out there and run it 1:1 in Dalvik, unchanged and yes, I think this is a problem."
Google did no such thing. Android is the combination of an open source Linux operating system modified for mobile, the Apache Harmony Open Source Java implementation, and the Dalvik VM. Google didn't implement anything, they shipped Harmony. There are three implementations of the Java APIs, all of them open source. There's Apache Harmony under ASL. There's GNU Classpath under GPL, and there's OpenJDK under GPL. Usage of the terminology "stolen" with respect to open source is a non-sequitur. You can't steal something meant to be distributed and allow derivative works. Did Apple "steal" KHTML when they created WebKit?
Complaining about someone shipping a clean-room implementation of a virtual machine that can run code compiled with other tools is a ridiculous. Imagine I wrote an iOS game by using Microsoft Visual C/C++ tools for 99% of the work, and then at the last step, I linked it with XCode and a Cocoa<->WPF library to produce a working iOS app. Should Microsoft sue for someone to ship such a tool? It's fundamentally outrageous to tell a developer what he can do with his code. The fact that you use tools to create code doesn't entitle you to ownership of the result. That would be a crazy regression of rights.
If I write some Java code with Oracle's tools, they have no rights, zero, to saying what I can do with the results or where I can run it.
Also, Ellison is completely ignoring what Android is doing for Java -- making it relevant on the client again. Java died on the client, and the only place it survived was in the enterprise. Now there are almost a billion devices that run Java code on the client. Rather than trying to extract a tax out of Google for rescuing the platform that was dying a rapid death of relevance on the client, he should have been looking at ways to make Oracle relevant in this new universe of Java phones.
The real issue is, Ellison bought venerable Sun, a company which produced many innovative technologies, Java, the SPARC processor, Solaris, DTrace, et al, and he did not buy it to continue their tradition. He bought it to be an IP troll, thinking he'd be able to sue to get a slice of every Android handset sold. He destroyed the Open Solaris community. He cancelled Sun research into revolutionary future CPUs like MAJC. He basically shredded the company and kept the rolodex and IP. Basically, Larry Ellison is a corporate raider in the sense of Gordon Gecko of the 1980's Wall Street, who doesn't really care about innovation.