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Who is using "without an Oracle license"? | 234 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Oracle v. Google - What's the Deal With the Java Specification License?
Authored by: darrellb on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 01:57 PM EDT
It seems that Oracle is attempting to control use of the specifications like
one would control software. That is, restrict use and enforce via EULA.
Oracle ignores the fact that written specifications are not software.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle v. Google - What's the Deal With the Java Specification License?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:00 PM EDT
So, basically, Google aren't complying with a license that they never asked for,
needed, or asked for? The scoundrels.

[ Reply to This | # ]

"In its opening Google that" > "In its opening Google states that" ?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:02 PM EDT
...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle Specification EULA
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:02 PM EDT
I think this clearly is going down the path of an EULA.

The purported license seems to be saying you can't download a copy of their
specifications unless you agree to these terms, which require you to give up
rights you would otherwise have.

Was the Specification available in other forms? Like could you buy a copy?

---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections
Authored by: SilverWave on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:05 PM EDT
:-)

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic Here
Authored by: SilverWave on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:06 PM EDT
:-D

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | # ]

News Picks Here
Authored by: SilverWave on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:07 PM EDT
;-)

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes Thread
Authored by: SilverWave on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:08 PM EDT
:-|

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | # ]

Screven says his team had 2-3 days to evaluate, do due diligence before Oracle bought Sun.
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:16 PM EDT

From Brandon Baileys tweet feed



2-3 days for $7.4Billion is not due diligence.

It's a punt at best, corporate negligence at worst.

I don't care how big your team of advisers is, you can't even check the asset
register of a company like Sun in 3 days.


Heads they win.
Tails you lose.

If Oracle fail to win the purported billions they are owed, that light at the
end of the tunnel is a more likely to be a shareholder class action steam
locomotive at full speed.



[ Reply to This | # ]

You don't need to accept that license
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:18 PM EDT
All this seems completely irrelevant since to just read the publicly published
API (class names, method names) you don't need to accept that license. And you
don't even need to go read them on Oracle's website, you can read the IBM
version, the Apache version, the GNU version, buy a book in a bookstore, or just
yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk-docs and read your local version.

Unless Sun/Oracle somehow got everybody to agree (click-through EULA?) to a
license before reading these public documentation I don't see how they can even
claim such a license is relevant.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Why doesn't the Judge intervene?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:47 PM EDT
When you do or do need a license (for what BTW. copyright, trademarks, patents?)
seems like a simple question of law.

So why does the judge just let them go on and on about this hypothetical license
nobody even really needs? Shouldn't he just intervene and make clear to the jury
Oracle is just making stuff up?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Spotting The Truth
Authored by: sproggit on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 02:47 PM EDT
There is an interesting aspect to this case that mirrors what we witnessed when
SCO accused IBM of putting SCO copyright materials into the Linux Kernel.

In both cases, one party remained consistently vague and evasive with respect to
the evidence that they would bring to trial, the exact alleged infringing code
and the exact alleged nature of the infringement. The other party was able to
respond with flawless clarity, specificity and accuracy to any accusation, once
it was clear what was being accused.

In both cases, one party continually adapted the story relating to the alleged
misdeed. There were patents involved. Then there weren't. Well, there were
thousands of lines of copyrighted code involved, then there weren't. In short,
one party continually adapted their claims as their opponent continued to
refute, fact for fact, each of the claims being made.

I've been thinking about the reasons for that.

Now, it would be simplistic to say that the party with the variable story was
just lying at the outset, and has had to continually adjust their tune to match
events as they unfolded. This would be a little unfair in Oracle's case given
that much of their case was built around patents that legitimately existed but
which were subsequently overturned by re-examinations of the USPTO.

It might also be simplistic to say that in both court cases the party with the
flexible case happened to be represented by BSF. Though we might infer that such
a variable set of legal arguments is merely part of their "MO" - so as
to not permit the other party to prepare adequately for trial. [ Let's leave to
one side the fact that the lawyers in the courtroom are supposed to be, first
and foremost, officers of the court.

Let's apply Occam's Razor and go with the simplest solution:

the party with the shifting story is prepared to go to any lengths - including
misdirection, sleight of hand, and perhaps not telling the entire truth - to win
the case.

I can only hope that this becomes apparent during the trial and that the jurors
draw the appropriate conclusions from that.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Great! All Oracle needs to do is ultimately make enemies with Apache
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 04:56 PM EDT
We need to drop all this nonsense, port hadoop to some other language and exclusively adopt postgresql for big data.

We'd be better off performance wise and in every other way.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Who is using "without an Oracle license"?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 04:57 PM EDT
Seems Oracle is pressing Google to come up with other "unlicensed"
examples. Even though I don't know how/why Google would have to know, here are a
couple just in case it matters.

Apogee sells virtual machines their news page mentions which versions use GNU
Classpath or Harmony as their core class library http://www.apogee.com/news

Aicas http://www.aicas.com/ sells JamaicaVM some versions which are based on the
GNU Classpath core library. For example this one:
http://www.aicas.com/jamaica/3.4/doc/html/index.html
They worked together with ESA (European Space Agency) on AERO-VM

Boeing uses OVM for unmanned aerial vehicles using GNU Classpath.
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA456895
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/jv/soft/ovm/n.html (scroll down to see Gosling
present it at JavaOne!)

Transvirtual used to market Kaffe, which was a completely independent
implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffe
http://linuxpr.com/releases/2225.html.
As was Wonka from Acunia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonka_VM
http://www2.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=74791

Sadly both companies don't exist anymore, so maybe the market for alternative
java implementations isn't that big/great. But now that Google has shown it can
be big/great suddenly Oracle pays attention?

And obviously everybody that distributes GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) which
contains GCJ (GNU Compiler for the Java programming language) which includes
lots and lots of big and small companies. Including of course two of the biggest
IBM and Oracle:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/freeSoftware/aixtoolbox/RPMS/ppc/gcc/
http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/1/base/x86_64/libgcj-src-4.4.5
-6.el6.x86_64.rpm

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle v. Google - What's the Deal With the Java Specification License?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 05:10 PM EDT
In the 90s SUN Microsystems copied the Windows APIs and Windows Designs into a
SUN Product: "WABI" (Windows ABI) which was sold and suppoerted by
SUN. It was a clone of Windows 3.1.

How do SUN's claim of ownership of the Java Design and copying them contrast
with SUN's copying with WIndows Desing and copying those?

Also Larry Ellison claims that when founding Oracle they copied the designs of
the relational database technology developped by IBM and used those papers and
public documents as their design documents. So Oracle copied the relation
database designs from IBM.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Whacky Theory
Authored by: sproggit on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 05:51 PM EDT
Tin foil hats at the ready please...

Oracle paid $7.4 Billion for a company then valued at $5.6 Billion. The deal
included Oracle essentially buying up all of Sun Microsystem's debts. As Sun's
10Q showed, they were burning cash at a frightening rate, and racked up
significant operating losses in their most recent 10Q.

So along comes Oracle and pays very significantly over-the-odds for Sun. For
now, for this speculative theory, it actually doesn't matter what their prime
motive was. [ If you've read my other posts you'll know where my suspicions lie
].

But how about it?

Oracle pays $1.8 Billion over-the-odds for Sun. Let me re-state that. $1.8
*Billion* more than the company was worth. That's more than 30% over-the-top.

If you were an institutional shareholder in Oracle, how would you feel about
that? Annoyed, maybe? Perhaps you'd feel that the value in Oracle that you'd
bought into was being diluted with this rash business deal?

Well...

Oracle got:-

Hardware and maintenance contracts [but the engineers left]
OpenOffice [but they upset the community, so it forked to LibreOffice]
MySQL [but that was available free anyway]
Solaris [but that only generates revenue off the back of hardware sales, which
were falling]

and...

JAVA...

Kerching!!!


Maybe - just maybe - Oracle needed something to "justify" their
decision to buy Sun. Justify it to their shareholders. So how do you justify the
purchase? Well, one way would be to start to generate some revenue from all the
various bits of the company that you just bought, even if it meant trying to
find ways of charging for things that weren't previously charged for...

We can all see from Oracle's case that they are changing the rules with respect
to charging for JAVA [ witness the way that Apache and Google have been treated
so differently ].

Maybe Mr Ellison is actually running scared? Maybe the directors actually really
need to have a big deal on the table to justify the purchase of Sun. Maybe the
$4 Billion or $5 Billion or whatever the original sum they demanded was actually
calculated to offset the loss of a rash purchasing decision.

You think?

Like I said, a whacky idea...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross-Posted from Ars Technica
Authored by: MDT on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 07:43 PM EDT
I posted this in response to someone who wanted to know where the line was
between the non-creative functional bits and the creativity, given that APIs
were creative.

-----------------------------

Why would you say an API specification is 'creative'. Have you even considered
what you're talking about?

Assignment : Please write an API specification for our new programming language,
called FU. The API in question is an Average function. Please see any
mathematics text book to find out what 'average' is. It should be able to handle
multiple numbers at once in some way, not just two. Ensure that the
specification follows standard object oriented programming rules. This is the
first mathematical function for our new language, so your solution will be used
as a guide for future API specs (Mean Value, Maximum Vale, Minimum Value, Etc).

Response : Hmm, a function specification for an average function? Ok, let's see.
We're using OOP rules, so we should have a class library. Since we're doing
mathematical operations, I'll call it MATHEMATICAL. No, that's too long, I don't
want to type that all the time. Ok, MATH it is. And multiple arguments huh?
Well, I can either have an unlimited argument list, or I can have an array of
numbers. I'll write up both. Hmm, call it Average_Numbers? No, too long again.
Average? Nah, AVG will work. Ok, I probably ought to handle multiple number
types too, integers, decimals both.

decimal math.avg(num1 decimal[, num2 decimal, ... , numn decimal])
decimal math.avg([]numarray decimal)
integer math.avg(num1 integer[, num2 integer, ..., numn integer])
integer math.avg([]numarray integer)

There, one API specification. Written in 2 minutes flat, using standard class
nomenclature. This is not creative, it's the natural result of applying
programming best practices. If you go look at any class oriented language, it's
going to have something REALLY similar to those two lines as the spec for an
API.

The creative part, if you want to call it that, is the code that IMPLEMENTS
those API specifications.

---
MDT

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle v. Google - What's the Deal With the Java Specification License?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 08:19 PM EDT
The express intent of the license is obvious - to protect
the Specification and it's distribution, so the point about
Sun "not claiming confidentiality" should be simple to
defeat. And if the Specification can be copyrighted as
creative work, whatever limits Sun/Oracle puts on use and
distribution of their copyrighted material is their own
business decision.

Whether API specification can be protected as creative work
is another question. Google in their slides compares
Specification (API) to Source code, which is known to be
protected as creative work. They imply in the slide that API
is akin to metaphorical "problem" or "result" definition,
and source code is akin to of of the creative "solutions" to
that problem.

Unfortunately for Google, that claim is incorrect. Any non-
trivial programming project consists of higher-level
function/class/structure specification (API), implementation
and use. Programming effort is spent circling between those
3 modes, and, generally, most of the time of high-level
experts working on project is normally spent in the
"specification" stage. That's why some have titles like
"architect". The implementation and use part can generally
be offloaded to underpaid "code-monkeys" if the high-level
specification is well defined and explained.

This means that most of the "creative work" spent on the
source-code is actually spent on it's API, protecting that
API as major part of creative work.



Imagine for a moment if that was not the case:

Say you get your hands somehow (either by working at MS or a
worker's forgetfulness) on source code of Windows 8
operating system. If specifications are NOT copyright-able,
you can remove all function implementations, or replace them
with explanations of results expected, and you would be free
to distribute that specification as well as make
"Independent Implementations" based on those, and sell them.
Even better, the documentation that pertains to the
functions in the code, except where it explains
implementation details, can be distributed and used as
well..

Does that sound realistic?
In fact, such a "specifications-only" source fork (or maybe
"header-fork") is different from Sun/Oracle's Java
specification only in amount of documentation. That is, Java
probably has much better documentation than your pirated
Windows source code ever will.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Old news
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 09:22 PM EDT
Thanks for the article but it is very old news. This is exactly why the ASF
wrote
its open letter to Sun - see http://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html.
I'd love to see Google have that read to the jury. Note though that the lack of

the TCK never prevented the ASF from developing Harmony. It only limited
Harmony in claiming and proving it was a compliant implementation of Java
and calling itself Java.

Furthermore, Oracle's actions prove what a sham the whole JCP process is and
why the ASF was right to resign. What good are specifications where the only
allowed implementations are those blessed by Oracle?

I am glad that these slides aren't evidence because the very first slide -
"when
is a Java License necessary" is incorrect. The second item should be
checked
"No", in which case the copyright issue is out the door.

I have no idea why the judge hasn't yet thrown out the copyright suit but I
expect a summary judgment motion from Google that gets serious
consideration.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle v. Google - What's the Deal With the Java Specification License?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 18 2012 @ 11:05 PM EDT
This is interesting. From a legal perspective, how does this apply to an
archtect's blue prints or Coca-Cola's secret formula? What about the
design of a microprocessor? Can i take intel's design and implement it as
specified? Are you unable to legally protect designs? Is a software design
different? Or, is this more about Sun's particular license?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Did Google even implement the 37 APIs?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 04:02 AM EDT
or are they straight copies from Harmony?

Just curious.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Is it Java or not, then!?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 05:47 AM EDT
The Oracle position just seems to confuse me more every day, glad I'm not on the
jury. They're saying that:

a) It's NOT Java and is a fragmenting fork (they stole our copyrights!!)

b) It IS Java and needs to be licensed (just like Apache Harmony... oh wait)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Fragmentation
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 06:47 AM EDT
I get the impression Oracle are claming that by GPLing they avoid fragmentation
- but surely, I can take the GPL Java, break it completely, and as long as I
publish my code, I can release incompatible VMs?

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Fragmentation - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 07:42 AM EDT
  • Fragmentation - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 08:16 AM EDT
  • No. - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 08:19 AM EDT
Oracle v. Google - What's the Deal With the Java Specification License?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 08:36 AM EDT
Oracle's arguments appear to have more holes in them than a screen door, but
this attempt to confuse design with specifications could be their undoing.

There are really three things involved;

- Design (what it looks like)
- Specification (size, dimension, weight, length, what it does)
- Construction (how it works)


Design: Parameters get passed to a function/method, the function performs
operations on the item(s) it receives and returns a result.


Specification: Provides the details of an API element, i.e.

Result = Max([numeric value],[numeric value],[...])

Max takes a set of numeric values and returns the one that is the largest.


Implementation: How it is done
This is the code, the 'how it's done'.

One could argue that API design is universal, they all get used the same way,
you give it parameters and they return results of some kind.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle v. Google - What's the Deal With the Java Specification License?
Authored by: iraskygazer on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 12:36 PM EDT
Keep the eye on the prize. What about the fact that a specification can't be
copyright protected; and the fact that Oracle seems to think that the words
specification and design are interchangeable? If a specification could be
protected by copyright how could a simple bolt for an airplane or auto be
manufactured without infringing on the rights of the creator of the
specification? Oracle is way off course on their argument. And in some cases it
seems that they are outright lying to the court and jury when reinterpreting the
words specification and design. You design specifications but you don't
specification designs.

Also, specifications provide a mode of collaboration so entities, like engineers
and software programmers, speak about the same or similar concepts and ideas.
The term specification automatically implies that the information is to be
shared.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I think it's a real bad idea to make the Apache Foundation mad
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 02:12 PM EDT
Apache could just drop support for MySQL and specifically forbid it in a new
license. I think this is a good idea. There's always drizzle.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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