Re: The Oracle/Google lawsuits, and how it affects choice of language
On 08/23/2010 03:58 AM, David wrote:
* The Bilski case has changed the patent landscape in the US,
effectively gutting most of the claims; and
Actually, not really. The decision more or less states "the status quo
continues," and it pretty explicitly says that software patent
eligibility is not being decided in the decision. About the only clear
thing it said was that "State St. is a load of bullshit", but nor did it
endorse the machine-or-transformation test from the appeals court.
Granted, I don't think a software patent has truly been tested since
Diamond v. Diehr (a very different ballgame), and that was decades ago,
so what the Supreme Court would decide in such a case is very much iffy.
Oracle have seriously misjudged the impact of the backlash against
them. With so many people losing their fondness for Java, the impact
on their bottom line will temper this lawsuit quickly I think.
Oracle pretty much bought Sun for Java, from what I've heard. They've
killed off the OpenSolaris project, to the chagrin of many, and they
seem to be busy locking a lot of Java stuff behind paywalls too.
The best I can say is that I hope Oracle ends up being forced to
regurgitate Sun later on.
In the end, there is nothing that Oracle can do to Java to kill it
(beyond inept meddling that makes it die slowly over the next few
years), or anyone using it. It's an open spec and there exists an open
JVM released under the GPL (IcedTea). I've not used it myself but it's
something I'm looking at for the future.
Well... the brouhaha over Java 7 features shows that "improving" it is
difficult, even for Sun. In any case, at the way it's going, I wouldn't
be suprised if Oracle tried to kill OpenJDK. They already killed
OpenSolaris...
--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth