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Authored by: jjs on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 06:25 AM EDT |
Please read the responses. They did NOT "reimplement to get around the
licenses." They created their own VM that works BETTER on smartphones, and
chose to allow (promote) the Java programming language to be used for
programming apps on the phones. As a part of that, they used Apache Harmony to
build the APIs needed to allow use of the Java programming language.
Now Oracle, seeing 250,000,000 Android phones out there comes out and says
"hey, despite the past and what we allowed Apache to do, and the fact
there's no code of ours actually on those phones (modulo 9 lines of code that
are so basic most high-schoolers would do that, and it might not be their's
anyway, since the guy who copied it into Android wrote it in the first place to
go into Sun code), we want a piece of the action. Let's invent WHOLE NEW
meanings for copyright! Let's drag up our (not so good) patents to go after
them - because they'll back down (oops, Google went searching (what they do
well) for prior art, most of the patents are now not only out of the lawsuit,
but destroyed for future lawsuits)."
Not claiming Google is a great company, but Oracle is clearly in a very weak
position here - when they depend on / hope the judge will extend the law into
new areas in order to win.
---
(Note IANAL, I don't play one on TV, etc, consult a practicing attorney, etc,
etc)
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 11:06 AM EDT |
So are GNU, Linux, OpenOffice, etc also "nasty business tricks?" in
your
view? If not, how are they different?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Wol on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 11:42 AM EDT |
Except they did.
It's called Dalvik.
As far as I can see, the ONLY thing they've copied from Java (by way of Harmony)
is the code that says "call subroutine X with arguments Y".
In other words, the only stuff that's copied is that stuff which HAS to be
copied if you want to be compatible. Everything else is a rewrite from scratch.
This is what Oracle want to confuse you over. I look at an api as like a door.
On one side of the door is the app. On the other side is the VM. The api tells
you which door to use to pass between the two, but the door itself is just a
hole you pass through - there's no "there" there :-)
Cheers,
Wol[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: xtifr on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 03:15 PM EDT |
It was perfectly clear (because it was explicitly stated) that
Sun did everything in its power to prevent others from implementing Java on
mobile devices.
That's simply not true. If Sun had done everything
in its power, it would never have set up the JCP, and would never have agreed to
the JCP changes championed by Apache in 2002 that allowed "open source
implementations".
From Apache's Open Letter
FAQ:
As part of the process that led to changes in the JSPA,
Sun Microsystems made a public commitment to the Java community that Sun-led
specifications would be implementable in free and open source software. That
commitment can be found here :
ht
tp://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/announce/LetterofIntent.html
Field of use restrictions are inherently incompatible with
free and open source software. And from Sun's Letter of
Intent:
The changes support the notion that those providing the
work product should be able to produce technologies for compatible
implementations of specifications under licenses of their choosing, including
open source licenses such as the Apache license.
You may quibble
because of the word "compatible" there, but one of the features of an open
source license is that it guarantees the right to make
derivatives!
--- Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for it makes
them soggy and hard to light. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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