Sun CEO Explicitly Endorsed Java's Use In Android 204
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet writes: 'If you believe Oracle's patent lawsuits against Google for its use of Java in Android, Google has stolen not just patented ideas but directly copied Java code. In short, Google is a red-handed thief and should pay Oracle over a billion in damages. There's just one little problem with this portrayal of Google as an intellectual property (IP) bandit. When Android first came out, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, then Java's owner, greeted the news with 'heartfelt congratulations.' Whoops.'"
congratulations, now pay me. (Score:1, Informative)
Schwartz offered a public "congratulations" and privately Sun notified Google they would need to license it.
Just exactly how does his public congratulations waive any right of payment. In fact it doesn't even address it. Cheers to the ignorant, wishful thinkers that believe this is any way, shape or forum constitutes a license waiver.
Part of Google's defence (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fuck Oracle! (Score:4, Informative)
No, they killed Open Solaris.
Despite all the things Oracle has done wrong, dropping Open Solaris was probably a good idea. Unless they had some big idea on how to make using Open Solaris less painful than stabbing oneself repeatedly with sharp objects, which I doubt they did. I'm using Open Solaris for a ZFS / Samba file server, but even if I wanted to do almost the same thing again I'd pick almost any other OS. It's a pain to admin, doesn't make sense, and is just downright unpleasant to work with. Only reason I've not abandoned it is the file server is actually working properly for now at least. From a performance standpoint, it's actually doing a fairly good job, I just never want to touch it again.
Re:Won't stop Oracle (Score:4, Informative)
The University of Oregon has been able to show a picture of Walt Disney shaking hands with the president of UofO, and mentioning in an article how he liked the mascot (which was based on Donald Duck) to settle a lawsuit from Disney on infringement.
Re:Dalvik VM - clean-room? (Score:4, Informative)
Well there was two issues initially.
First of all, the source file contents/code has nothing to do with patents. A patent with regards to software covers the function of the software, not the code itself. There is no alternate way to describe a function to sidestep a patent. Oracle initially submitted 132 patent claims, and Google brought hundreds of prior art references to counter these. The judge whittled the number of claims down to 3 and allowed Google 8 prior art references, so as to have a more reasonable number of trial claims. Clean room implementation won't sidestep patent infringement. The only outcome is whether, or not, these 3 patent claims are in fact valid. Also Google could potentially get a ruling that this was "willfull" infringement meaning the damages would be increased just by Google knowingly infringing upon said patents.
So the other issue was copyright infringement. The story is that some unit tests to verify whether some given code is compliant/compatible with the Java standard, were accidentally committed to the public Android repository. Sun rightfully had a restrictive copyright on this code, so there is really no question about infringement on this issue. It really doesn't even matter that the code never shipped to a production Android device. Its a clear-cut case of unauthorized re-distribution of copyrighted material. Google couldn't get out of this one, and will pay a minor damages fee. I think the maximum is $30,000 if it was unintentional, or $150,000 if it was willful infringement. Really, this thing happens all the time. Especially within Open Source, infringing parties are given a chance to correct such mishaps before it ever sees a court room. Most of the time this kind of thing is dealt with in an amicable manner, because it rarely is intentional by the infringing party or damaging to the copyright holder.