Will Oracle's Larry Ellison Eat My HTC Desire

sundaypapers

If Oracle gets a chunk of the action, what will happen Android?. Will we all have to start paying extra for updates and stuff? Could the phones be cut off?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0813/breaking18.html

Oracle didn't say whether it would ask a court to halt use of its inventions or was seeking cash compensation. A copy of the complaint wasn't immediately available.

EasyBoy1974

It's just a software patent case - Google will either file a counter suit, or pay Oracle some cash

jimmycrackcorm

Money shall cross palms and all will be well

conor.hogan.2

I dunno - Oracle have a very very good legal case here they might go for broke on it. They are still pricks for doing it, but Google didn't think out someone big buying Sun and them having the clout and balls to sue them.

They have to - I see Java taking a massive hit here so Oracle might be going to recoup the cost of buying sun and to cover what they will loose from Java being heavily abandoned.

DublinWriter

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Money shall cross palms and all will be well

Yes, anyone remember the SCO vs The Rest of the World debacle.

In his quest to be bigger than Gates, Larry Elison has turned Oracle into Computer Associates lite.

conor.hogan.2

SCO had no basis for that though - it just took long to sort out.

Oracle have very very much a basis for this - and it will take a long time to sort out.


Unless Google throw a ridiculous amount of money at Oracle that is - and I mean a lot of money as it would have to cover everything in Android not just Google as Oracle could then possibly go after Moto, HTC etc...

TheDoc

Had an interesting conversation about this today over dinner.

Oracle are currently in the worlds largest lawsuit with SAP for roughly 6 billion euro for something similar as they are with google.

From my understanding, Google essentially took Java and went " o my thats ****, here ill do that better". This then stemmed some major scores for google. Orcale, who bought out sun Systems, who in turn own Java, said **** that for a game of soldiers and launched a lawsuit.

Most articles seem very doom and gloom but from speaking to those in the industry and in the know, it seems it wont have an ever lasting effect.

Conor there seems to be of the same mind that I was speaking to today, very much Orcale trying to recoup from a failed Sun Systems investment.

Oracle are involved in two massive lawsuits, both which have a fair shot at success. But personally I'm not worrying about the future of android, it looks safe.

General consensus is very much Oracle grabbing straws and I'm sure that might reflect badly on them.

Oracle are going to destroy Java with this action.

um7y1h83ge06nx

Don't forget that there is other big companies that will back Google's fight against Oracle. IBM for instance have a lot invested in Java with their own IDEs, jvms and Websphere (too lazy to explain to non-techies ).

Even just Google and IBM should be able to beat back Oracle but hundreds of more companies will end up siding with Google (Cisco etc. etc.) so I wouldn't worry about it.

TheDoc

ronoc wrote: »

Oracle are going to destroy Java with this action.

Java was pretty much dead in the pond anyway was it not?

The Java packages being released by Sun were being completely re-written anyway.

People take Java and their packages, look over it, see its rubbish, make it work proper or better, then get sued for it

dloob

Ashlyn Gorgeous Dusk wrote: »

Don't forget that there is other big companies that will back Google's fight against Oracle. IBM for instance have a lot invested in Java with their own IDEs, jvms and Websphere (too lazy to explain to non-techies ).

Even just Google and IBM should be able to beat back Oracle but hundreds of more companies will end up siding with Google (Cisco etc. etc.) so I wouldn't worry about it.

Why would IBM care that Oracle are suing google over Android?
IBM has a big investment in Java, but then Android doesn't run Java, it runs it's own hybrid.
I can't see the suit having much effect on Java position as the most popular programming language either.

The case has some echos of the old Sun vs Microsoft java case, back then Microsoft created a non-standard java with various extension that would only run on their VM on windows.
Today Google has a non standard java implementation that only run runs on their dalvik vm.
Microsoft lost that case and their version of java was killed off.
In this case despite the suit looking for android to be destroyed, I expect it to be more in Oracles interest to agree a licensing deal.

elderlemon

The big difference between the Google suit and previous (MS etc) is that Google doesn't make any money on its version of Java. This is important in assessing any damages should Oracle win. This is the way U.S. courts work.

I actually don't see Oracle winning this one. Their patents could be challenged and overturned as they are very vague. Also any resolution to this suit will take years so I wouldn't worry about it now. The landscape for smartphones will have changed again by the time this gets closed.

dloob wrote: »

Why would IBM care that Oracle are suing google over Android?
IBM has a big investment in Java, but then Android doesn't run Java, it runs it's own hybrid.
I can't see the suit having much effect on Java position as the most popular programming language either.

The case has some echos of the old Sun vs Microsoft java case, back then Microsoft created a non-standard java with various extension that would only run on their VM on windows.
Today Google has a non standard java implementation that only run runs on their dalvik vm.
Microsoft lost that case and their version of java was killed off.
In this case despite the suit looking for android to be destroyed, I expect it to be more in Oracles interest to agree a licensing deal.

dloob

elderlemon wrote: »

The big difference between the Google suit and previous (MS etc) is that Google doesn't make any money on its version of Java. This is important in assessing any damages should Oracle win. This is the way U.S. courts work.

I actually don't see Oracle winning this one. Their patents could be challenged and overturned as they are very vague. Also any resolution to this suit will take years so I wouldn't worry about it now. The landscape for smartphones will have changed again by the time this gets closed.

I guess they could also say they never claimed it would run Java and they never used the Java trademarks unlike the Microsoft case and I've found that Microsoft had also signed a contract to guarantee interoperability, so perhaps not so similar.
So it's down to the patents then and as Google have an incomplete Java implementation they don't qualify for the patent grant.
They may seem vague and obvious like most software patents but that unfortunately hasn't mattered in the past.
James Gosling gives some insight into why Sun started getting so many patents -

then we got sued by IBM for violating the "RISC patent" - a patent that essentially said "if you make something simpler, it'll go faster". Seemed like a blindingly obvious notion that shouldn't have been patentable, but we got sued, and lost. The penalty was huge. Nearly put us out of business.

Still no immediate impact on the platform, who knows by the time it's all sorted out every one could be using symbian^10