Google calls Oracle Android lawsuit 'baseless,' says Java goes 'beyond any one corporation'
By Nilay Patel 
posted August 13th 2010 4:21PM
posted August 13th 2010 4:21PM
We are disappointed Oracle has chosen to attack both Google and the open-source Java community with this baseless lawsuit. The open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform.
What kind of phone is that?
@rmbrown09 - A Droid X I think...
Aside from that though... really, how can Oracle sue them? Google doesn't sell the Android OS do they?? The only money I can think of that Google gets in regards to the Android OS is from people who sign up to be developers...
@rmbrown09
Droid X...
@rmbrown09 Round...1...FIGHT!
@quarleslt
Oracle ... Stop stealing from us and pay us our due
Google ... But this is open source we can use it however we want!
I am actually kind of happy the leeches over at Google are finally going to get spanked.
@rmbrown09
i wish i would have got a patent on the alphabet... I'm really surprised Apple hasn't tried that yet
@rmbrown09 Google, please buy oracle and kick all these execs to the street, kthx
@Ardentra You must be an iFool huh? You can't ask to get paid for something you give away freely. Worse yet you can't ask to get paid for work you didn't do. Google isn't using anything of Oracle's. Oracle just think that because they bought Java they have a lock on the idea of a VM. You'll have way more than Google railing against Oracle. The majority of the Java community is pissed about this and so are many in the overall developer community. Oracle is basically saying you can't implement a non-native code language.
@elijahblake when they do they will make iAlphabet
and everyone will say ibefore ithey isay ianything iever
isad
@Ardentra
Please explain how Google is going to get "Spanked" as u put it....
@rmbrown09
iLOL
For the record, I love Friday the 13th on Engadget!
@Blaque14K Google does not own Java... You do know that right? Oracle would be doing a disservice to all of its other already paying licensees to give Google a free walk here. Why are you bothered with Google paying up for something they did not create and did not come up with. Isn't it fair for Oracle to monetize their investment they put into Sun?
Google can not just walk into markets and destroy everyone but Google and not expect to have repercussions. They are shortly going to end up existing in a world where it is Google vs. everyone else.
@shogunmaster
don't you mean
iFriday the 13th!
@Ardentra
well, i guess i'll be on Team Google! I like to be on the winning side of things
@elijahblake
OMG, another Apple hater, if Engadget ran a story on yard rakes, someone would try to throw Apple into the story, yawn.
@4u2nv Google is going to get "spanked" by paying a huge fee to Oracle. Why don't they just license it and be done with it? Now they are going to pay the lawyers to get involved and probably still end up having to pay Oracle a big licensing fee. This will ultimately end with Google settling out of court with Oracle for an undisclosed sum of money (which will most likely be way more than had they just licensed it anyways).
Next up is WebM getting sued by MPEGLA for patent violations. Google is about to get sued by an awful lot of people. Good job Google! You are the new Nazi Germany. Have fun fighting battles on multiple fronts.
@elijahblake
Apple is still trying to trademark the letter "i". After that, they will try for the rest of the alphabet.
Someone needs to plug in their Droid. :)
@elijahblake
well Apple does a good job of making anyone with common sense and desires to do whatever they want with the gadgets that they purchase feel ill towards them..
Free will is hard for SOME people to understand!
@Plazmic Flame
you do not need to sell a thing to infringe on a patent. even if you give it for free, if it infringes on patents, then it is wrong.
also, Google directly derives money from providing the android (search and commercial) google did not do that android out of sheer goodwill.
last: java might be opensource , yet additional java components can be patented, and owned. (same as a SW for linux could be sold and patented.
@Plazmic Flame
They also make money from app sales. And from people using Google services from their Android phones (and I'm sure 99.9% of people with Android phones use Google services -- at least search).
I love Google's statement. I love the fact that they say they are "disappointed" by Oracle. I'm not disappointed by Oracle, I'm disappointed by Sun Microsystems for selling to Oracle and then letting this happen. This would have never happened under Sun, they were always OSS enthusiasts. Oracle, however, bring their dark corporate ways and ruin everything.
Next up, they'll sue Facebook for using MySQL. Yeeeeeah!
@rmbrown09
Google can not possibly win. Google will have to pay huge sum of money. Nothing is free!
@rmbrown09
I don't believe Google is infringing on these. But in Android version 3, just work clearly around the patents entirely, from the patent descriptions I read .. there was nothing that couldn't be worked around in the patents. I guess one or two may cause rare performance hits .. but even that should be minimal/unnoticeable. Also, non of the patents seemed worthy of gaining patents in the first place .. that's the shittiest part of this lawsuit.
@elijahblake
I think it's very difficult for YOU to understand. Java is given away FOR FREE. Whatever you want to do with it, go ahead. If you want to make some prior code part of your code, as long as it's open source (which most Java code is), it can be a part of your code. And you can even SELL Java code! It's all part of Java being open source.
Oracle's claims are baseless.
@Plazmic Flame
The funny part is how totally oblivious of Googles business strategies you fanboys are. I'm not a hater, just making an observation. The same goes for ppl who _just love_ Apple/Nokia/etc.
I bet you guys won't see that MeeGo is what you hope Android would be, in every way.
@Ardentra Google does not own Java...nor are they using it in Android. Thats the point. People are licensing mobile Java. Java SE is free to use by anyone anyway...or at least it was. Google isn't using ME. They built up their own VM just like the .Net CLR, or the VM behind Python. Their VM uses a totally different bytecode from Java. The only thing is does is compile Java syntax to Dalvik bytecode and convert Java bytecode to Dalvik bytecode. So tell me why would Google pay Oracle for something they don't use?
@Johnsonaye
I have nothing against Meego. I would love to try it; it looks very interesting in theory. Get it out there on some phones, and let's get to it!
@Mike10010100
dude are you meaning to comment towards me? Because I totally agree with you on that.
@rmbrown09
To people who are saying "Oracle has the right to make money." Umm, no they don't Java was supposed to be free and open and marketed as such. It was this very nature that made it grow. There is no way Java would have gained nearly as much acceptance and thereby technological improvements if it was not open. Google would have chosen a different technology if Java was not open. They would have either developed their own, or chosen some other open technology. There are many to choose from, and there would have been something else that was as good or better than Java if Java was not widely marketed as open and free. So the answer is no, Oracle is being really shitty here and reneging on promises in my opinion. It's similar to the Unisys GIF tactics of the early to mid 1990's (where they said the GIF image format was free and then allowed it to become popular and then suddenly announced that the language of the fine print meant they could suddenly claim royalties.)
@Ardentra Your argument would hold water if Java wasn't released under Open Source GPL.
@Mike10010100
K. My point is GOOG is making a s*it load of money with Androidjust not the usual way. They managed to push a sort of a paradigm shift in the mobile business, and obviously Oracle wants a piece. IMHO they are right.
Moreover, I find Android/Dalvik wanting. I want real Linux! :)
@elijahblake
God dude, I'm so sorry. I meant to respond to that troll up there talking about how Google is going to get spanked: Ardentra.
So yeah, Ardentra, that rebuttal was meant for you, and all the other folks who think that Oracle has some leg to stand on.
@Johnsonaye - You are an idiot for calling me a fanboy when I was clearly just asking a question from my innocent-thinking mind. Luckily, I got my answer, explained in full from some more logical people.
Thanks @D1Only1 & @Znupi
@Plazmic Flame
@Ardentra Godwins Law. You lose.
@Ardentra
Did you really just compare Google to Nazi Germany? You should spend more time researching facts instead of making analogies.
@Mike10010100
This is far more complicated than we (non-patent attorneys) think. Oracle wouldn't be pursuing this if there wasn't some level of case to be made and Google has gone to great lengths to work around the Java intellectual property (which is significant). Both companies have deep pockets and the only real winners will be the legal teams. Meanwhile, this is a game billionaires play because its more fun than counting money. Minimally, it will cause the markets to evaluate the possible impacts and possible winners and losers (not just these two, but Microsoft, for example). The rest of us can just watch and wonder about whether we'll be out of work next week.
mini
@Znupi If Sun didn't just sit back like a grinning idiot while other companies took IP from under their noses they wouldn't have been in a position to be acquired by Oracle.
Typical Google , play the open card. It's meaningless. It doesn't matter if it's open if it is not yours to give away.
@elijahblake Why are you making that statement against Apple ?
It is about Oracle and Google !!!! there is always one of you ......
@Plazmic Flame using that logic, if I copy the works of JK Rowling or Stephen King, or copy the Apple iOS or Microsoft Windows 7 and give them away, they can't sue me since I didn't make money off their copyrighted works or patented software?
@Ardentra Godwin's Law. Get off our internets
Actually there is a twist to this, read this here from 2007.
http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/110/
Stefano the writer of that page, thought Sun would be suing Google over this in 2007.. Now that Oracle has bought Sun and the smoke is clearing and Oracle has a better understanding, it seems Oracle has decided that they do have a case here.
Oracle are actually pretty big Linux proponents they even have their own Distribution Unbreakable Linux.. They are funding a lot of the development for BTRFS which will soon be the default Linux File System for many distributions and thats all under the GNU/GPL actually you would be wrong if you thought Oracle doesnt support FOSS, it does..
There is a lot of grey clouds around the Dalvik Virtual Machine Google are using.. Java is all under the GNU/GPL , but Sun left a major caveat for Mobile Device implementations.. The link above explains it better than I can..
Which has really left me thinking here.. Android the Kernel is Linux and that is all licensed under the GNU/GPL and Google have to comply, but what about the rest of Android how much has Google Open Sourced so far ?
Looking into the wikipedia page for Dalvik, it says its licensed under the Apache Open Source License ..
Are there any Android devs reading this that can shed some more light ?
@Canucker In a Financial Times interview, when asked whether he believed the open source business model would be disruptive to Oracle's plans, Larry Ellison said, "No. If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it...Once Apache got better than our own Web server, we threw it away and took Apache. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it -- a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all --you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane."
@Znupi
Actually this is why C# came into being. At the time (97) MS had the best virtual machine for Java in IE but they wanted to add platform specific hooks. Sun sued them (eventually won the lawsuit, but lost the platform war). Oracle should be thrilled that Google is extending the Java platform, and are just likely looking to get a licensing fee, which they are probably going to get.
@KenJr and that is exactly why Microsoft is only destined to fail in the operating system space.
The thing to not forget though is that Oracles main bread and butter business is the database systems its developed.. How long before one of the open source database systems out classes Oracles ?
@cryptic Microsoft tried to modify the Java VM so that it broke the main fundamental aspect of Java - cross platform compatibility..
In your opinion it was the best JVM, in reality it was a load of crap that tried to lock down Java to Windows and to force people to use Internet Exploder..
Sun very rightly sued Microsoft and told Microsoft were to stick it..
@Znupi
Sun sued Microsoft for doing something similar to what Google is doing now... and won, big-time. That's part of the reason we now have C# instead of J#.
@psych2l Google loses
@Plazmic Flame Google is making money with Android based on mobile ads viewing and mobile ads in applications.