Well said Fabrizio. People are spinning this issue in all sorts of directions according to each one's biases and agenda. FLOSS advocates claim it's a war against FLOSS; Mono enthusiasts are blogging how Microsoft's .NET is really safer for FLOSS, and so on.
What's really going on here is simple: one huge corporation suing another huge corporation. I personally don't care a lot about the outcome - I don't own stock, or work for, either company. Just crossing my fingers so the larger Java community is not much affected. But this is always a possibility when we accept to use a platform that's de-facto controlled by some big company (or a few). I'm sure most people here can be tracked, in the pre-Oracle years, in criticism of many Sun moves: took too long open source Java, didn't release control over the JCP, didn't provide a TCK with acceptable terms for Harmony, etc. Many ex-Sun hotshots (especially some now working at Google) are denouncing Oracle publicly, and maybe they are being coherent with personal values now; but in that case they certainly didn't when they worked for Sun (or they just quiesced to Sun's strategies because Sun was a much cooler place to work - or didn't have enough power to be really evil... whatever). On Oracle vs. FOSS: I don't see much relation here. Google didn't use any of OpenJDK or other FOSS code published by Sun/Oracle. Oracle is not suing Apache Harmony, Linux, or other projects that contribute to Android, or any users of these technologies. The fact that Google published Android under a FLOSS license does not magically grant to Android (or to Google) some kind of moral protection against patent & IP law or anything. (Yeah that law sucks, but it's the current law.) Google will certainly be playing this PR card, but it's bunk: making some software open source does not make it better or privileged in any way, this is just part of early FLOSS propaganda. We used to believe that FLOSS software was automagically superior technically (famous Linus quote "given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow"); or that FLOSS licensing meant guaranteed success to any software (this particular myth was destroyed by Netscape: open crappy code is just crappy code...). Free software _is_ better for the community that depends on it; it's the programming equivalent of democracy. But the fallacy is that, creating FLOSS code that you keep under your de-facto control, but allow a participative community to grow around it, makes you "own" that community, so you can use this community as a shield against competing corporate warfare - this is the programming equivalent of demagogic populism posing as democracy. (And of course, the vast majority of companies-leading-FLOSS-projects do this kind of demagogy in some extent; it's just part of the game.) A+ Osvaldo On 13 ago, 04:38, Fabrizio Giudici <[email protected]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > I'm extremely annoyed by these news because Android is one of the > strategic technologies in my portfolio and I hope it will spread and > beat iOS4. And generally speaking I don't like patent wars, I agree > that this is damaging the community (that is: us), etc.. > > Given that, I think that the point is different. Google is not free > from faults - indeed they are the ones that started playing bully > against Sun, by introducing Dalvik, by forbidding Sun to port JavaFX > on it (bad or good idea that it could be) and other forms of > behind-the-scenes hostility against Sun that I can't tell you because > I know from confidential sources. Sun was dying and couldn't react, so > it was easy to play bully against them. > > Now Oracle is in a position to react and obviously they are doing, I > think more to estabilish the relative strengths of the two corporates > than to actually prevent Android from being distributed. > > So, please let's not play the drama "poor Google open minded guys > versus the arrogant Larry Ellison" or I'll start laughing. It's just > business as usual between healthy corporates, unfortunately. We reap > as we sow, right? > > - -- > Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager > Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." > java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici -www.tidalwave.it/people > [email protected] > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla -http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iEYEARECAAYFAkxk9nIACgkQeDweFqgUGxc8NwCfaNX40PzhiJR9o8j6BACdUTGR > 6LEAn33RDIRozwcYWXYfoYfxe+9Bs5N9 > =4uEe > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
