http://meego.com/

All others must cease and desist at once.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/29/microsoft_royalty_tactic/

As Microsoft has watched the open source world pass it by, it has had two main responses:

1. Threaten open-source developers with lawsuits.
2. Adopt open source within its own product lines.

Microsoft has been earnest but uneven in its open-source adoption, but sadly consistent in its threats — and the Microsoft-against-open-source threat level moved to bright orange this week with news that Redmond is trying to hold Acer and Asustek hostage by levying patent royalties on them in reponse to those device manufacturers’ use of Google’s open source mobile platform, Android.

Microsoft, in its quest to relive the glory days of its past, is trying to get Acer and Asustek to cough up $10 to $15 dollars per device, according to sources familiar with the matter. Long addicted to a license-fee model, Redmond hopes to impose this model on the rest of the world. In this it will fail, even if it succeeds in its royalty blackmail against Acer and Asustek.

Note that the Apache Version of the JVM (the Harmony) has got its balls kicked lately because IBM took leave from that particular effort after a discussion with the Sun/Oracle combo (aka. The Snoracle)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/19/apache_does_not_trust_ibm/

While I have no problem with people making money hand-over-fist, this looks like a typical outbreak of 100% Larry Hellison Production – satisfied shareholders, crying customers and the industry overall worse off.

Also note that the name “Android” is being Trademark-Trolled:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/06/google_android/

And also:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/16/google_does_dick/

Barbarians at the gate indeed. And who is the enabler? Government IP law. They wont win the case, but they will sure as hell waste lots of time and money, and maybe even sully Google’s PR.

In order to prop up Java’s lagging fortunes, increase the competition against Microsoft’s .NET language/runtime, and to combat the development of open source 3rd party Java Virtual Machines from being implemented Sun Microsystems (original authors of Java, recently purchased by Oracle) decided to open source (release the source code for in a re-usable manner). The idea was that by having it open then you can leverage third party development expertise, gain greater acceptance, increase the chances of modernization, and lower overall development and quality assurance costs. This is all good stuff and has proven to be successful a few times in the past.

The open source Java implementation is called OpenJDK.
http://openjdk.java.net/

However there are two major problems with the open source Java implementation from Google’s standpoint:
1. The code is licensed GPLv2 (with exceptions for runtime linking). The GPL License turns copyright on it’s head by using copyright to force the code to remain copyable and re-usable rather then the ‘all rights reserved’ that copyright normally defaults to. Due to the nature of the GPL restrictions against closed source it makes it difficult to use it in the mobile phone industry which is still very set on it’s ways about proprietary software and special features.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt

(The GNU project has created a modernized version called GPL 3.0 that implements restrictions against Digitial Rights Management schemes and includes language to help deal with the looming patent disaster, but most people are still using GPLv2)

2. The Java implementation used by Sun (now Oracle) is not terribly well suited for what they wanted to do. The Java memory management is not that great for small devices and Google did not want all the legacy overhead, application APIs (called Class Libraries), and compatibility requirements that Java usually requires.

So Google is actually not using ‘Java’ ™ in their phone operating system. Instead they are using their own Dalvik runtime that was created by taking code from Apache’s Harmony Project.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)
http://harmony.apache.org/

So I am not 100% sure how much Java(tm) code made it into Android, but the answer is very close to zero. So Oracle has almost no chance at a copyright claim from Google ‘stealing’ anything. Google cannot violate Oracle’s copyright unless they actually use Oracle’s code. Which they don’t. They did not want to steal it in the first place. It’s no good to them.

Now Google does use Java(tm) during Android application development. When people develop applications for Android they use a ‘Integrated Development Environment’ that runs on top of Java on PC. The IDE eventually will compile the application code into Java bytecode, which then gets transformed into Android Dalvik bytecode. So during part of development Java binaries are used.

Now Oracle probably can have a Patent Claim against Google. Ironically their patent claim would not really be viable unless Google did NOT use their code. When Sun Microsystems open sourced Java they had to provide a means for licensing Java’s patents in a way that was compatible with the source code copyright license. So along with the copyright license (GPL) Sun Microsystems had to have provided a Patent license of similar terms. Since Google does not actually use Java(tm) code in Android, then they probably did not benefit from that patent licensing.

Now Android Dalvik does use Java _SYNTAX_, the Java language. But it does not use Java. It’s confusing to be sure, but one is copyrightable and the other is not.

Now…..

THE REAL REASON Oracle is threatening and defaming Google is NOT because Google stole their code. The real reason is that Google DID NOT use their code. Now this is very confusing because Oracle is trying to make it sound like Google ‘stole’ their technology.

The thing is that much of Java licensing income comes from embedded systems. Sun Microsystems NEVER licensed the full Java JRE (Java Runtime Environment) to phones and other systems of that nature. Instead they created Java ME (Java Mobile Edition) that was specifically designed for phones and other handhelds.

Java ME was often just about the best way to write mobile applications for handhelds and phones until newer systems like Android or Apple’s iOS came along. Google’s Android, however, is a very significant improvement and is very quickly displacing traditional custom phone OSes and is destroying the Java ME market. Basically Google created improvements and a OS that Oracle or Sun would never do because it would conflict with Java ME licensing.

Therefore Google is not being sued by Oracle because the used Oracle’s code. They are being sued by Oracle specifically because they did NOT use Oracle’s code.

Java ME, to put it bluntly, sucks. Android could of never existed in the first place if they had to run using Oracle’s code. I’ve been with a company in the past were we tried to licensing negotiations to create only a slightly custom version of Java ME in order to run a application originally programmed using Java JRE and their attitude was, effectively, “If you have to ask how much it costs, you cannot afford it” and blew us off time and time again. This was only a SLIGHT modification… just compiling it to run on different ARM processor. There is no way in hell that Google could of ever created Android with Java ME.

This is bizarre , but it’s true. That’s the real issue. Google has out done them using their own code and their own design and not Oracle’s. If Google did in fact ‘steal’ all this code and concepts from Oracle then Android would be a commercial failure and Oracle would actually be promoting it.

Completely screwed up. Oracle is ran by IP morons.

Do not ever release ANY code.