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Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (ars technica)Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (ars technica)Posted Aug 15, 2010 22:59 UTC (Sun) by Wol (guest, #4433)In reply to: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (ars technica) by lkundrak Parent article: Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (ars technica)
Forget patents, the point everyone is missing is ...
If Google use GPL2'd Java, then ALL ANDROID APPS have to pay a licence fee to Oracle to avoid having to GPL their own apps.
In other words, if Google uses GPL2'd Java, then any commercial market for applications is totally beholden to Oracle.
Google didn't write Dalvik for patent reasons, they wrote it to get round the "all your apps are belong to Oracle" trap. As has been pointed out elsewhere, to get Java certification, you need to implement ALL of Java. And as far as I can make out, *standard* Java won't work on mobile phones, and *mobile* Java hasn't got the classpath exception permitting commercial applications. Oops ...
So this lawsuit seems to be a pure shakedown by Oracle ...
Cheers,
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Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (ars technica) Posted Aug 15, 2010 23:11 UTC (Sun) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
What utter bullshit. My GPLed JRE runs closed source just fine and Orable can't do anything about that, because programs running in a GPLed VM don't need to be GPL.
Where did all the Obstacle fan boys come from?
Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (ars technica) Posted Aug 15, 2010 23:58 UTC (Sun) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] The OpenJDK's GPLv2 has text stating that it consider apps linked together with its libraries to be derived from the OpenJDK and hence covered by its GPL licence - it then gives an exception to such linking. Basically, I'm picking a nit here, Sun considered the apps to be subject to the GPL. This is important, because certain other Java platforms besides the standard one, i.e. the mobile platform (by accounts - but which?), contained libraries that were licenced without the exception. Hence, Sun got licensing revenue from mobile Java distributors...
Epic FAIL detected... Posted Aug 16, 2010 0:00 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] What utter bullshit. My GPLed JRE runs closed source just fine and Orable can't do anything about that, because programs running in a GPLed VM don't need to be GPL. You are kind of correct. Of course programs running in a GPLed VM must be GPLed too. But you probably are using not just any GPLed JDK but OpenJDK with the following modified GPL. This modification ("CLASSPATH EXCEPTION") is what makes it possible to run closed source programs. Mobile Java was released by Sun without said exception - specifically to make it possible to obtain royalties from phone vendors. Where did all the Obstacle fan boys come from? From planet Earth where GPL is accepted as valid license, apparently. Where you come from?
Epic FAIL detected... Posted Aug 16, 2010 0:19 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Google aren't using (i.e. re-implemented) any of the GPL-only mobile libraries though, are they? It's all a subset of the Java SE + their own APIs, is that correct?
Epic FAIL detected... Posted Aug 16, 2010 14:21 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
That's correct, but the dispute in this thread was about *why* they wouldn't want to use the GPL-only mobile libraries.
Epic FAIL detected... Posted Aug 16, 2010 15:32 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Sure, but it does then mean Google could indeed have started out from the OpenJDK and availed of the GPLv2+CE. That certain parts of JavaME are GPL-only for mobiles is then not relevant.
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