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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 07:30 AM EDT |
It does. When I first saw it (and recognised that it might be decompilation at
work), I thought it was as well. However, I'm not sure how much will they be
penalised for that. If the entire copyright part of the case end up being just
those code and the range check code. I don't see why it needs to go to the jury
aside from damages.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 07:32 AM EDT |
If this is in fact true, it's dirt in the clean room. It's
disingenuous to claim you rewrote something when what you did
was run a tool on the compiled code and extracted the
structure from it.
Where in the code (and how much) are they arguing is
decompiled from the Java source. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 07:34 AM EDT |
It does, but I think it's significant that the referenced
files were
1) Only test files which don't ship on devices, or get
actually used anywhere other than whilst the SDK was being
developed (and possibly not even then). The fact that they
were removed with no
consequence to the android project indicates that they had
limited value to the overall project.
2) Very few in number and size.
I wonder if the history of those files in GIT would be
interesting to look at. If they were all contributed by the
same person.
Whilst it doesn't look great, in a large organisation with a
complex project and many coders, it seems almost inevitable
that at some stage someone will do something somewhat
against policy, or mistake a license, and/or put in
something that they didn't mean to.
It might be laziness on the part of one developer, or a
temporary shortcut (that shouldn't have been taken), or
someone emailing someone else a file without explaining what
it is or what the license is.
What it doesn't look like (to me at least) is a pattern of
behaviour. The list is no-doubt damaging, but statistically
irrelevant in the size of the project.
Given Oracle seems challenged when asked to prove the
provenance of their APIs and code WRT the JCP etc, I wonder
if the Oracle codebase would be interesting to look into
with these issues in mind...
IANAL[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Ian Al on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 07:48 AM EDT |
Google said they were literally copied in error by a third party into the
Android development stuff and were removed the moment Oracle informed Google of
the fact.
Harmony confirmed, a long time ago, that the files are not in the Harmony
project. The Harmony project is completely clean-room in conformance with their
legal agreement with Sun.
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: jbb on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 03:26 PM EDT |
| Certainly the reason Oracle put it in front of the jury was to try to show them
that the clean room was contaminated. OTOH, this may help Google if they can
convey to jury that the inclusion was an accident and it was such a tiny part of
the codebase.
Google was able to hammer home this point on cross
examination. They got the Oracle expert to admit that these tiny little things
were the only similarities they could find between Android code and Sun code.
When/if it comes to damages these minuscule amounts of copying should be
negligible. The real question is: who does it make look worse? Does it make
Google look worse because maybe the clean room wasn't perfectly clean or does it
make Oracle look worse because they are wasting everyone's time with such an
inconsequential thing?
It depends on how it is spun but I think this can be
a big win for Google because it fits in with their story that Oracle went
searching for things that would allow them to cash in on all the hard work
Google put into Android. Oracle says you can't trust Google because the clean
room was 0.00000006% contaminated. Google says Oracle's search proves the clean
room was 99.99994% clean!
It's like the dog that didn't bark in the night.
You need to look at what Oracle didn't present to the jury. If this is
best Oracle has then it proves Google did a wonderful job keeping the clean room
clean.
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Our job is to remind ourselves that there are more
contexts than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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