Re: Only Novell will get sued

Posted Oct 16, 2009 21:09 UTC (Fri) by mikov (guest, #33179)
In reply to: Re: Only Novell will get sued by drag
Parent article: Monomania (Tux Deluxe)

No.

Considering that Java predates .NET by a significant margin and that Sun and Oracle, no to mention IBM, have their patent portfolios, it is very unlikely that Microsoft can win a patent case against Java. As a matter of fact Python and Perl also predate .NET by about 10 years.

Microsoft's patents would have to have been filed in the 1980-s, which is very unlikely.

It is actually more plausible to think that .NET violates some Sun Java patents than the other way around.

Re: Only Novell will get sued

Posted Oct 17, 2009 22:03 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

And I suppose that the Java from the 1990's is the same Java that we use today, right? :)

Re: Only Novell will get sued

Posted Oct 17, 2009 23:11 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Not quite the same. It's not the in thing anymore.

(The cup has gone cold, one might say.)

Re: Only Novell will get sued

Posted Oct 18, 2009 3:54 UTC (Sun) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (1 responses)

Yeah, and my C compiler is not the same as the one I used in the 1990's. And your point is?

Of course Java is generally vulnerable because anybody can get sued for anything in the US. However the existence of .NET does not increase Java's vulnerability to a patent lawsuit from Microsoft specifically. So, the initial claim, that Java's patent vulnerability is similar to Mono's because they are both VMs, is invalid.

Re: Only Novell will get sued

Posted Oct 19, 2009 4:57 UTC (Mon) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]

The point is that changes in that there might be patents that read on code introduced to Java in that time. The existence of Java from before the patent was filed is not a defence if that old version of Java didn't infringe the patent.

And it seems pretty clear that there has been some cross-polenation of ideas between Java and C#/.Net, so the possibility exists. Of course, there it is likely that Sun would examine patents issued to direct competitors like Microsoft to see if they might cause problems.

Re: Only Novell will get sued

Posted Oct 18, 2009 22:42 UTC (Sun) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

Java is much older than .NET. It has now been released as GPLv2 and used as the foundation for a number of open-source projects including Hadoop, Android, Eclipse, etc. It's not a perfect language by any means-- but that's a whole other debate.

I think it's unfair to attack Java as "just as vulnerable as .NET." Any patents that bear on Java are almost certainly held by Oracle, who in general make a lot of money off of Linux and related technologies. They're not going to sue you for using Java because they *want* you to use Java.

On the other hand Microsoft (quite rationally) sees Linux as a threat to their stranglehold on the PC desktop. In general, Microsoft's strategy involves building interlocking pieces of infrastructure. If they can get you to use one or two pieces, they can usually force you to use the rest. Microsoft Visual Studio integrates well with Microsoft SQL Server, which works well with Microsoft .NET, which works well with... etc. Of course, the product at the end of the chain is always the same... Microsoft Windows.

Patents are just one trick-- there are a lot of other ones, like keeping key .NET libraries Windows-only. If you're doing Linux, just stay away from .NET.