r/opensource • u/omgwtfchill • Jan 21 '11

Oops: Android contains directly copied Java code, strengthening Oracle's case

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/21/oops-android-contains-directly-copied-java-code-strengthening/
0 Upvotes

48% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

14

u/sidemount Jan 21 '11

The actual article:

http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-evidence-supports-oracles-case.html

-1

u/omgwtfchill Jan 21 '11

oh, thanks for that link. I thought maybe the androidpolice.com one was the original.

3

u/Bhima Jan 21 '11

So... It's probable that this is not all that big of a deal... or at least not what it appears to be.

Here's a article at ArsTechnica

1

u/omgwtfchill Jan 21 '11

Thanks for the link to this article. Ryan is an astounding tech journalist.

11

u/sfgeek Jan 21 '11

I have seriously quit jobs when I found out we were using Oracle and the DB people couldn't justify any needed feature that MySQL didn't have. Larry Ellison is a piece of shit and I refuse to help line his pockets.

10

u/uriel Jan 21 '11

I remind you that Oracle now controls MySQL, and that PostgreSQL beats the shit out of MySQL in pretty much every imaginable way.

1

u/sfgeek Jan 22 '11

I haven't been a backend developer for years, but it sounds like Postgres has come a long way. What are some of the advantages?

1

u/sfgeek Jan 21 '11

Dumb question: The article makes no mention of Google replacing the offending code, and thus ceasing to infringe. Sure, they'll have to pay out for past infringement, but what about nixing any future claim from Oracle?

1

u/omgwtfchill Jan 21 '11

Like you said, they'd have to pay for past copyright infringement, but as long as they stopped infringing any copyright, they wouldn't have to continue to pay Oracle for that.

Note, however, that copyright infringement is only part of the lawsuit against Google. Oracle is also asserting that Google infringes a number of their JVM patents.

2

u/RalfN Jan 21 '11 edited Jan 22 '11

All those comments there talking about intellectual property. You can not own intellect, you can merely lack it.

1

u/FlyingBishop Jan 21 '11

Some of Android's tests were copied from Java. There is an issue with relicensing GPL code to Apache, but this doesn't actually pertain to the JVM or Dalvik, since the tests can test either one.

-2

u/sfgeek Jan 21 '11

I have seriously quit jobs when I found out we were using Oracle and the DB people couldn't justify any needed feature that MySQL didn't have. Larry Ellison is a piece of shit and I refuse to help line his pockets.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '11

Oracle bought MySQL with Sun.

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/mysql/index.html

(and PostgreSQL is better database than MySQL anyway... ;))

1

u/sfgeek Jan 22 '11

This was years ago, but I probably should have mentioned that.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '11

[deleted]

-3

u/omgwtfchill Jan 21 '11

Even the author of this article admits the sources files were there for 2.2 and 2.3, they just aren't there anymore (removed January 14th).

As far as his second argument goes, the Judges aren't going to care that the code isn't built into the resulting binary or not, because that's irrelevant. What matters is source code files that are not allowed to be redistributed (as stated in their license) are being redistributed (via git and tarballs of the Android sources). That alone is a copyright violation.

12

u/Ring_Bus Jan 21 '11

God, just shut the fuck up and go away.

zdnet just handed down some epic ownage to the idiot from ars.

-1

u/omgwtfchill Jan 22 '11

Would you feel the same way if Microsoft took GPL'd code and re-licensed it and plopped it into their source code drops on codeplex or elsewhere?

Something tells me you'd throw a fit.

2

u/mycall Jan 21 '11

Easily corrected, especially with INSTALL_ASSET capabilities.

2

u/omgwtfchill Jan 21 '11

I'm not familiar with INSTALL_ASSET. Is that something to do with git? Or is that some automake variable?

1

u/mycall Jan 22 '11

It allows Google to install whatever they want onto all Android phones remotely. They could, using that, remove any java code present on the phones.

1

u/omgwtfchill Jan 22 '11 edited Jan 22 '11

Okay, but as has already been determined, it doesn't look like this code was shipped on any devices, so that doesn't matter.

What matters is whether or not there is a copyright violation by Google - unit test source files or not, if they decompiled those from Java 1.5 (or just copied the source code manually), then that suggests there is a copyright violation. It doesn't have to ship on a handset before the copyright violation kicks in.

I guess we'll find out how the judges rule on this eventually. That said, I'd imagine that the copyright infringement is the less significant part of the lawsuit. The patents will be the deciding factor, I think, and there's been no news on that yet.