3 Votes
Oracle, Google and the Future of Programming
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There appears to be damning evidence for both sides; be it Google’s internal documents recognizing the possible copyright issue during the development of Android or Oracle’s admission that Oracle management decided it wanted to compete with Android prior to deciding to sue Google or even conflicting testimony from two former CEOs of Sun, the previous owner of Java intellectual property.
What is ultimately at stake is still debatable, but the editor-in-chief of Dr. Dobbs, Andrew Binstock has a few predictions in his article, Oracle and the End of Programming As We Know It. Perhaps not the most unbiased take, but a chilling look at the consequences of this battle of tech behemoths.
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Oracle Wins by VnutZ
So I caught in the news the other day that Oracle won the lawsuit. Obviously, Google is appealing the matter which continues the limbo status.
But it really seems like a poor ruling. If I understood the case correctly, Google did not copy Java but instead simply made an API clone that functioned the exact same way so that apps could run on either platform. And Java was supposed to be free right? What’s especially stupid about this ruling is what else potentially becomes illegal should the originator decide to push the matter:
So dumb.
Paltry Winning = Genius Decision by VnutZ
Recent articles have shown that Oracle may have won, but they were awarded a paltry $150K in damages. (bwa-hahahaha). That’s actually a great precedent the judge set in that, yes, your intellectual property was copied but no, that intellectual property was relatively worthless if not obvious. I think the judge’s quote was something to the effect of their “9 lines of code are not worth billions in damages”.
If such a case can be used in the future as precedent, it may very well diminish the patent trolling over features that are inherently obvious and not necessarily the work of vision or complexity.