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| Authored by: jbb on Monday, April 16 2012 @ 09:43 PM EDT |
The "not a lawyer" part is crucial. Where he comes from and his beverage choice
really don't matter. The two things that do matter are:
- Lindholm is
not a lawyer.
- The email is from 2010, after Google was locked in to using
the Java language.
It is perfectly obvious that in 2010 it was way too
late in the game for Google to switch languages. A non-lawyer phrased this in
an email he thought was confidential as "we need a license". This shows how
pathetically weak Oracle's case really is. They don't have a similar email from
2006 or earlier when Android was being developed and other language choices were
viable options. Likewise, they don't have a similar email from a lawyer who
would be giving legal advice as to whether a license was actually
needed.
If that is the best Oracle has then it is obvious they have no
case. I don't think BS&F and MoFo combined have enough wizardry to spin
that email and a few lines of code into millions and millions of
dollars.
---
Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in
— the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: hardmath on Monday, April 16 2012 @ 11:02 PM EDT |
Okay, he was asked to write a memo in anticipation of Oracle pressing
infringement claims.
But the $64 question is, for what was the license needed?
It would make sense to say the license was needed to avoid litigation. With the
benefit of hindsight, that's clear.
However all the technical hurdles had been cleared by 2010.
Google has essentially already won the gamble. The bulk of Oracle's patents
have been invalidated by the USPTO, and the damages Oracle will be able to
marshal from the little that remains will be orders of magnitude less than what
Ellison would have pressed for in license negotiations.
---
Do the arithmetic or be doomed to talk nonsense. -- John McCarthy (1927-2011)[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: rocky on Tuesday, April 17 2012 @ 12:29 PM EDT |
The opinion he's trying to communicate is that they need to stick with something
that enables them to process and use Java-written programs. His non-lawyer
assumption was that it probably requires a license to be able to do that, so
that's what he said. When the actual lawyers checked into it, they found that
they actually didn't need a license to make something compatible as long as they
didn't go for the certification to use the Java trademarked name.
Google's initial steps were working toward a real, licensed official Java-named
system, which seemed like the nicer, easier way to do it. When that wasn't
working out, that's when they switched to the legal workaround. That is one of
the things that makes this feel a little icky as I read how it's being presented
to the jury. To the non technically informed, it just feels wrong, how it looks
like Google were acting like they needed a license but then (apparently) just
went and did it anyway without a license. There are details of how they were
complying with all the legal requirements, but it may be hard for people to
process that over their gut feeling of unfairness.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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