Perhaps you're right on that one, Cédric. What I was trying to convey is that the tech crowd (and, thus, the top brass too, sun was engineer- led, mostly) didn't really like the legal route. They learned their lesson and defended well, but even their attack on microsoft was very different. What microsoft was doing was definitely different in spirit from what google is doing now with android. The biggest difference: They peddled their non-certified offshoot of java as a real "java", and even called it that. This also resulted in a court case where the legal strategy was something I had absolutely no problems with, and I doubt anyone else did either: (I looked this up to be sure I have this right:) they sued microsoft based on their trademark of the term "java" and breach of a licensing agreement inked between sun and microsoft. Fantastic. And much more defensive in legal strategy compared to the course Oracle is taking today.
If Oracle had been suing google based on them trying to sell android as a "java", and also using the notion that Android *ISNT* java as proof that Google was in breach of contract because there is a contract between Sun/Oracle and Google that states Google must build Android on Java, I doubt *anyone* would have supported google. But, google explicitly has not been trying to sell android as a Java, as Dick is so often cajoled with by the rest of the posse, and there is no such contract. Thus, Oracle had to result to this cheap trick and very very dangerous weapon: A patent attack using a bunch of dubious patents that, if held up in court now, could be used to deal many billions of dollars worth of damage to the IT community. I know I'm preaching to the choir, just thought I'd provide some more background on why I'm very concerned about Oracle becoming a patent troll. NB: Love Robert Casto's observation that if you have to be financially strong to protect patents, then the inevitable conclusion must be that the patent system is broken :) On Sep 25, 4:38 am, Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 6:00 PM, Reinier Zwitserloot > <[email protected]>wrote: > > > They aren't legal averse like sun was, > > I'm not sure what makes you say that, they protected their software patents, > trademarks and intellectual property aggressively like most companies do > (did we already forget the Microsoft lawsuit?). > > They just couldn't afford to litigate in their last years. > > -- > Cédric -- 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.
