On 08/17/10 08:55, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
There may be an argument: That google would have been indemnified from oracle lawsuit if only they had started with the GPL version of java, and continued developing it under GPL ... But google didn't do that. So it's irrelevant to the present lawsuit.
That is exactly the point. It is irrelevant precisely because of the manner in which they started the effort, i.e. not through the GPL version of Java.
The Java GPL license has restrictions that Google did not like. There is the obvious GPL problem, that a GPL platform is unfriendly to the corporate customers Google was targeting with Android. Plus the Java specific portions require that the implementation be complete and unmodified. Java is all about platform independence, so this is necessary to keep the platform from fragmenting. Again, this is not what Google was looking for, so they choose to start from a different, none GPL starting point. This starting point did not include a patent license, so that made them vulnerable to the current action.
Just like Microsoft before them, they took Java and made something derived from it that fragments the platform. And like MS, they are getting sued because of it.
-- blu It's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state. - Bruce Schneier -----------------------------------------------------------------------| Brian Utterback - Solaris RPE, Oracle Corporation. Ph:603-262-3916, Em:brian.utterb...@oracle.com _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
