Bonum Certa Men Certa

Apple Benefits From Oracle's Patent Attack on Android

Steve Jobs with patent
Original photo by Matt Buchanan; edited by Techrights



Summary: Among those who benefit from an attack on Android there's Apple, whose CEO is a good friend of Oracle's CEO; more coverage about this development which dominates the news

THIS will hopefully be one of our last posts about Oracle vs. Google. We have already covered it in the following three posts:



Since those previous posts it has occurred to me that the party most likely to benefit is actually Apple, not Microsoft. Oracle only sues Google over Android, just like Apple sued HTC over Android. One must remember that Oracle's CEO and Apple's CEO are very close friends. Wikipedia reminds us that Ellison's "friend Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple, Inc) was [Ellison's] official wedding photographer." Anyway, it gives room only to theories.

“That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones.”
      --Larry Ellison, Oracle
A number of months ago Larry Ellison also said: "While most hardware businesses are low-margin, companies like Apple and Cisco enjoy very high-margins because they do a good job of designing their hardware and software to work together. If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software. That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones."

Could the relationship with Apple play some role here? Maybe even a small role? "Actually, It's crApple attacking Google by proxy," one reader of ours opines. "But, a weak lawsuit this one," he argued, "I'm reading the points now..."

Google's Tim Bray from the Android team says "F**k Oracle" (he doesn't use asterisks though). This was brought up by Groklaw actually, having just addressed the spin-doctoring from Microsoft's MVP de Icaza:

Miguel De Icaza still wants everyone to hitch their wagons to Microsoft's star. He suggests that Google pay off Oracle and then switch to Microsoft .NET:
Google could settle current damages with Oracle, and switch to the better designed, more pleasant to use, and more open .NET platform.
Hahahahahahaha. That's the last life lesson to to be learned from this event, I'd suggest. How about instead what the community has been warning Miguel about for years: don't hitch your code to anybody's patented wagon. Watch out for patents. Watch out for Mono. Watch out for C#. Stallman is warning you:
It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.

The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org and http://progfree.org.) This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.
And was he not right about the Java Trap? How many times must he be right before developers listen? I'm talking to you, Gnome. I'm talking to you, Canonical. Care what version of OpenOffice you use. I'm talking to everyone trying to pooh pooh patents as a toxic danger. It is real. And remember, CodePlex was set up to push Mono. That's what they said. Forewarned is forearmed.


Brian Proffitt goes ahead with the "SCOracle" meme:

I'll say this for Oracle, at least they're consistently contradictory. They'll extol the virtues of their partners, then turn right around and kick them in the--well, you know--and deploy an "innovative" copy of their partner's free software.

Or they'll claim to love open source, then let a prominent open source project suffer death by ignoring.

Or they'll tout open standards, then turn around and use patents on a standard programming language, then sue one of the biggest users of that technology.

Yes, consistent indeed.

Last night, when Oracle announced it was suing Google for alleged infringement of Oracle's Java patents, my initial reaction was one of resigned realization: when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems last year, I always wondered if it was just to get control of MySQL, arguably Oracle's once-biggest potential threat. They weren't doing anything with OpenSolaris, after all, and just this week at LinuxCon, praised Linux to the heavens.


Oracle's action shocked many in the Free software world, but Dennis Howlett was not surprised (neither was James Gosling).

Oracle’s patent suit against Google seems to have taken many by surprise. I’m neither surprised nor stunned. If anything, I am surprised it has taken Oracle this long to saddle up its lawyers.


Florian Müller carries on pushing his point of view into some online journals, pretending to be a FOSS representative and mass-mailing many journalists, still. His spin is still actively being challenged by the FFII.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Peter Moon's (Computerworld) Interview With Richard Stallman
Stallman: If you want freedom don't follow Linus Torvalds
At What Point Does Outsourcing Constitute Malpractice?
Brett Wilson LLP's new staff page is misleading
From Do Your Own Research to Do Your Own Search
The Web is full of garbage; search engines amplify this garbage
 
The Modus Operandi of Wayland Pushers: Make It Political
do what I say or you're a nazi...
Links 23/06/2025: RFE/RL Contributor Vladyslav Yesypenko Released, Recording Industry Cutbacks
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Solicitors (M): Over 99.9% of Our E-mail is Self-Marketing, We Send You 3.5MB E-mails for Less Than 1KB of Text
Why would tech people entrust legal matters to such people?
United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sailing to GNU/Linux, According to statCounter
countries in that region will quickly learn the price of neglecting digital sovereignty
More People Moving to Geminispace?
at age 6+ Gemini Protocol seems to have gained some maturity and it seems like more people use it
Permutation in LLMs Does, Inevitably, Change Meanings and Therefore LLMs Cannot Properly Rephrase or Summarise Texts
LLMs lack actual grasp or comprehension of what they spew out
Links 23/06/2025: Many Security Breaches, Population Declines
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/06/2025: "America at the Crossroads" and OpenWRT Surgery
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 22, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 22, 2025
Pure Dove
Different means different, and sometimes those who "deviate" from "the norm" have a point
Censorship is a Sign of Weakness Which Invites More Censorship Attempts
revolutionaries don't succumb to pressure from bullies
Why It's Unlikely That LLM Slop Will Dominate the Web in the Long Run
Slopfarms will eventually perish (they have no actual value) and "survivors" on the Web will be sites that never depended on search engines and social control media
GNU/Linux in Argentina Now Measured Near 5%
Like in central Europe, they must be seeing an increasingly hostile US
BetaNews is Fake News, Composed by LLM Slop
nothing in BetaNews is written by humans anymore
Links 22/06/2025: Giving Up on Smartphones and 'Jaws' at 50
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/06/2025: Furniture Construction and Bubble for Comments
Links for the day
Links 22/06/2025: Windows TCO Tales and YouTube Getting More Hostile to Users
Links for the day
The FSF Board and FSF Beard
So the FSF's Board has grown
Law Firms Facing the Consequences for Patently Abusive Litigation on Behalf of Microsoft Employees Who Got Arrested for Strangulation and Had Done Even Worse Things
Having spent 1.5 years bullying me with patronising letters on behalf of Microsofters, last week they got served a massive bill and, in effect, lost the Hearing
New Report From the EPO's Staff Representatives in The Hague (LSCTH) Reveals Many Unsolved Issues
Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) wrote to staff just before the weekend
LLMs Breaking Everything
Computing and the Net became a playground for scammers and "bros", like people who "invented" fake currencies and also try to tell us that LLMs spewing out things will have some real value
Links 22/06/2025: More Slop Lawsuits (Copyrights) and "America’s Oligarch Problem"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/06/2025: Gigantic Toolchest and Annoying Bots
Links for the day
The Calling
Persist and persevere, justice will come your way
So Far Every BetaNews 'Article' is LLM Slop, So BetaNews is Officially Just a Slopfarm
They just don't seem to value what they have
IBM Rumour: Mass Layoffs (RAs) Lists Being Made for Consulting, With Effect in July 2025
Bogus companies with no viable products and no world-leading (in their field) staff are doomed to perish
Links 21/06/2025: Data Breach With 16 Billion Passwords, Dutch Government Recommends Children Under 15 Stay off TikTok and Instagram
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/06/2025: Notes about Typst (and LaTeX) and Opos
Links for the day
Microsoft's Competition Tactics: Sabotage GNU/Linux Installs, Block Chrome
Edge is dying
1989: Free Software as "Open" Software (OSI Didn't Coin "Open Source", It Also Predates Linux)
"One man's fight for Free software"
The Microsoft OOXML Modus Operandi: Throw 1,000 Pages of Other People's Work for a Judge to Read Ahead of a One-Hour Meeting
No time to discuss this - that's the point
Formalities Officers (FOs) at the EPO Are in Trouble, Reveals Internal Report
We already know, based on an HR pattern we saw at IBM and elsewhere, that reallocating roles can be prerequisite for dismissal and those who do so expect many to resign anyway
The Web is Slop and FUD, Let's Go to Gemini Protocol
Lupa sees self-signed capsules at 92.4%
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 20, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 20, 2025
Links 21/06/2025: Phone Bans for Concerts, Tensions in Taiwan Strait
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/06/2025: Spoilers, Public Yggdrasil Node, Changes to AuraGem Search
Links for the day