Google have created their own DB: BigTable
So does this mean that patent trolling has officially started? I mean, after Oracle bought Sun, and started shutting down stuff, all signs were pointing that they mean to use Sun IP for something like this.
This is a bad sign. Not for Google or Android, but for the Harmony VM. Since the Android Dalvik VM is based on the Harmony VM, this move means that Oracle is attacking an independent Java VM. Sure, the Sun JVM is still the best on desktop, but some serious competition doesn’t hurt.
Huge conclusion to jump to. Google decided to use Sun’s IP, modify and not provide any compensation to Sun. Oracle has the means to pursue this, Sun did not.
As for an earlier comment about Oracle creating their own VM and moving to it, too late. Too much momentum in the market and would be a massive issue, even for Google.
What you describe is not necessarily a problem of the patent system itself, but more of the process of granting patents. Especially in the US but also in some national patent offices in Europe many patents are granted too quickly with too little research, which leads to many invalid patents out there. This is not only a problem with software patents, but patents in general.
The thing is, despite all its problems it is still pretty much proven that the patent system in general has served its purpose: Stimulating technological advancement by giving inventors the opportunity to get their investments back during 20 years, and making the inventions public knowledge. The system is not perfect, but it’s better than no patents at all.
Take for example patents on medicines. It’s hugely expensive to make them, and without patents it would be pretty much impossible to recoup the necessary investments so either nobody would bother, or would keep them a secret.
However bad it may seem (and I’m no fan of Oracle and I like Android), but it’s probably fair that Google is being sued if they indeed infringed on java patents.
[quote]As Sun tried and failed, morally I see no problem with Google coming along and doing it better - even if it does infringe on a few patents.
[/quote]
I don’t see a problem with Google coming along and doing it better either (and neither does Oracle probably), but would it not have been morally more acceptable if they would have paid respect to java that it reserves by simply licensing the tech it needed? It’s not like Google is a poor little company.
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear, I’m was only talking about software patents. Of course in other fields it is a reasonable protection of R&D costs. And yes, the process across the board is flaw…but let’s not go there. My intended statement pretty much boils down I don’t think that software patents should not exist. I think that copyright protection (flawed or not) should suffice.
My main concern here is the message that Oracle just bellowed out from their castle towers. We’ve heard almost nothing about client side Java plans, or what they’ll be doing about Sun’s prior decision to open source Java… and now, the first public thing that occurs is litigation of another company that actually did something really good with it all.
I can only hope that they approached Google in talks before going straight to their lawyers. Either way though, this is just another jab at developers to beware of what might happen to an otherwise great platform.
Even if Oracle did, its likely Google told them to get lost, probably to see how serious Oracle are and if they actually have anything that’ll stick in court before deciding whether to make some sort of settlement.
Oracle does not strike me as a company that leaves when you tell them to get lost, no matter how big they may be. Now, how about the fact that Larry and Steve Jobs are best friends? HMMMMM???
If someone creates a Java VM Oracle has no business in it. AFAIK Java is open technology. Google did not use any Oracle (Sun) software, they just tailored the open-source Harmony VM to their needs. How can Oracle ask for any compensation for a software they have nothing to do? This is patent trolling.
Since when is the Dalvik VM based on the Harmony VM ??? It uses the class libraries of the Harmony project (or at least a subset of them) but the VM itself is different. It isn’t even a Java VM, i.e. i doesn’t execute Java byte code. It’s register based, not stack based like the usual Java VM and it converts all java byte code into its own format.
Just because they are suing for patent violation does not mean they are simply trolling. Google knew what was in the Java code base and Oracle, now the holders of those patents, are pressing Google for compensation. It’s not as if Google was blind to this, Sun just never pursued.
Note that I am not picking sides here as I have no corporate/personal stake in either side.
I have read that they “based” it on Harmony VM. Just how much of it is changes i don’t know. Yes it is not stack based, but nevertheless its a VM which executes programs written in Java (after compiling and translating the byte code).
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Aug-13.html
There is the list of allegedly violated patents. On first look, those are software patents, related to memory management, threading, permissions, used in the VM.
If someone would try to enforce a patent on me, because my code does: “determine code permissions by reading the stack trace”, i would call it patent trolling.
I’m against software patents, and regarding this i’m against Oracle.
further proving his point 
OpenSolaris is dead!
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/opensolaris-discuss/2010-August/059310.html
Solaris Express 11 will take its place: it will (still) be free, but not open source. I wonder what the next phase in this transition is.
Begin construction on a Death Star?
Likely to be that they are going to kill OpenJDK, guess its time to start preparing a fork. Too bad they never did release the source for Java Web Start and Java Applets for OpenJDK.
OpenJDK is not yet dead and please don’t fork 
Java is already fragmented on mobiles, I don’t want to get the same on desktop computers.
I hate software patents. Dalvik VM is very slow. I would like Oracle and Google to work together on something like “J2SE for Mobiles” in order to replace both DVM and J2ME by something really cross-platform, fast and reliable.
Well that OpenSolaris post linked to above does mention that the open source development model has been axed, might just refer to Solaris but you never know. As for a fork Redhat already has one called IcedTea, so would just be a matter of jumping to it.
Am I the only one that had to replace OpenJDK with the Sun JVM because things tend not to work on it?
No, you aren’t. OpenJDK tends to basically not work in all sorts of irritating ways.
I so wish they’d stuck to just specifying that the VM was just the VM and bootstrap classes. Sigh.
Cas 