> Sometimes I think the only difference between Oracle and SCO is scale.
Whenever you think that you should probably read up on both Oracle and SCO.
SCO was a dying company that tried every dirty trick in the book to blackmail the world into giving it a free ride to newfound riches based on ridiculous claims. SCO was backed behind the scenes by Microsoft simply to attack Linux which Microsoft saw as a threat to its bottom line. As such SCO was really nothing but a proxy for Microsoft in the dirtiest fight that the IT industry has ever seen.
Oracle is a very successful company that bought the assets of another dying company (SUN) in order to safeguard a line of business and in order to buy the IP rights of that dying company, which included Java.
Note that I'm not defending what Oracle is doing here but the differences between SCO and Oracle are enormous, and are certainly not limited to scale.
In many ways the Oracle case is much more dangerous because it now openly attacks a well established principle (interoperability) and Oracle actually has the resources to do real damage. For now that damage is limited to Oracle shooting in its own foot (Damaging the Java brand in a very clear and concrete way) but that could easily change.
Google has a very long standing habit of doing or buying things that are illegal (youtube, books, caching the web, images) and getting away with them because they have deeper pockets than the copyright owners or because they strike a deal when cornered.
SCO's claims aginst linux ('10's of thousands of lines') were absolutely unfounded, Oracle's claims against Dalvik seem to have at the surface at least some merit.
And Oracle is not simply going to give up on what it perceives to be its right simply because the party they believe is infringing is Google.
Still, I'm rooting for Google to win this one and for Oracle to lose this one, the consequences of the fall-out of an Oracle win would be pretty disastrous.
SCO was a dying company that tried every dirty trick in the book to blackmail the world into giving it a free ride to newfound riches based on ridiculous claims.
Actually, ironically, it's not SCO that tried to sue every Linux vendor, but the Linux company formerly known as Caldera Systems (of Caldera OpenLinux). They purchased SCO's UNIX business and renamed themselves to The SCO Group. The real SCO was renamed to Tarantella.
It's sad, not only is the name of 'old SCO' forever associated with attacks that they did not participate in, the Linux ecosystem was actually under attack by a (former) Linux company.
None of those things you brought up are illegal. Oracle is a scourge and just a step above SCO, but that's a pretty low bar. Making it so you designate something arbitrarily as a "language" and you can be the only princess that implements it is plain evil. Fortunately the appeal is going no where.
Whenever you think that you should probably read up on both Oracle and SCO.
SCO was a dying company that tried every dirty trick in the book to blackmail the world into giving it a free ride to newfound riches based on ridiculous claims. SCO was backed behind the scenes by Microsoft simply to attack Linux which Microsoft saw as a threat to its bottom line. As such SCO was really nothing but a proxy for Microsoft in the dirtiest fight that the IT industry has ever seen.
Oracle is a very successful company that bought the assets of another dying company (SUN) in order to safeguard a line of business and in order to buy the IP rights of that dying company, which included Java.
Note that I'm not defending what Oracle is doing here but the differences between SCO and Oracle are enormous, and are certainly not limited to scale.
In many ways the Oracle case is much more dangerous because it now openly attacks a well established principle (interoperability) and Oracle actually has the resources to do real damage. For now that damage is limited to Oracle shooting in its own foot (Damaging the Java brand in a very clear and concrete way) but that could easily change.
Google has a very long standing habit of doing or buying things that are illegal (youtube, books, caching the web, images) and getting away with them because they have deeper pockets than the copyright owners or because they strike a deal when cornered.
SCO's claims aginst linux ('10's of thousands of lines') were absolutely unfounded, Oracle's claims against Dalvik seem to have at the surface at least some merit.
And Oracle is not simply going to give up on what it perceives to be its right simply because the party they believe is infringing is Google.
Still, I'm rooting for Google to win this one and for Oracle to lose this one, the consequences of the fall-out of an Oracle win would be pretty disastrous.