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Supreme Court hands Google a victory in a multibillion-dollar case against Oracle

G3nnaro
2 hours ago, Kisai said:

-snip-

That is an exact copy of the BB except they moved the call/hangup buttons.

 

The fact that BlackBerry was used as an inspiration (or even to try getting Apps over), doesn't negate anything I said.  My original argument was that Java was chosen before Oracle got it's hands on Sun Microsystems (and Sun had given Android praise as well).  You bringing up Blackberry doesn't lesson my argument in the slightest.

 

Actually as well, they didn't "literately said it themselves."  The article shows that their phone looked like a BlackBerry and utilized Java.  Again, it was 2000's, Java was a major player at the time (and again, without BlackBerry the decision would still have come down to likely using Java)

 

I mean seriously, name an alternative to Java at the time that could have realistically been used for smartphones.  Java was really the only player at the time (that wasn't a walled garden solution)

3735928559 - Beware of the dead beef

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1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I mean seriously, name an alternative to Java at the time that could have realistically been used for smartphones.  Java was really the only player at the time (that wasn't a walled garden solution)

What do you think Flash Lite was marketed as? That was also far easier to develop for. We also would be having the same argument about it, because Adobe published the specs for Flash, but Flash is as bad as Java is still. There is a third party implemented Flash player out there that is used by games. No flash runtime.

 

But I digress, decisions made for Android continue to haunt it today, and until something better comes out without Android's baggage, fragmentation, and worthless privacy/security protection. Where as all the decisions that went into iPhone OS/iOS/iPadOS were designed for a single device with a known hardware profile, so it feels much more cohesive than the Android experience.

 

 

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13 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Well I'd argue that it is Java, and that they just extended the API/forked it.  (And had their own implementation for the backend).  Actually, I think during development they didn't even use a clean room to develop it (could be wrong, I just seem to recall that some parts of the JVM code were used in the making of Android).  The syntactical rules remain the same, the base API's remain the same, and the semantics are the same (Okay, it's been a bit too long I don't know if that's true anymore)

 

The way I look at it is that it's more akin to American English vs Cockney English (Or to a more extreme, American English vs 100 year old British English).

Fair enough. I guess it depends on what you define as "Java" and there is no right answer.

Is it the syntax that makes something Java, or is it the backend with the VM, how code is executed etc. From the developer's side of things, it is Java. From the CPUs side of thing, it is not since it's not Java code that is being executed.

 

So I guess the UK suing the US for American English would be a more appropriate comparison. 

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1 hour ago, arnavvr said:

I've always found it strange that someone could hold a patent on a programming language.

 

 

What do you expect people to do with it? Not build applications on top of your language?

Imo, software patents shouldn't last for more than 5 years. Enough to have a headstart and capitalise on your invention, not that much to stifle innovation and kill your golden goose.

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2 hours ago, arnavvr said:

I've always found it strange that someone could hold a patent on a programming language.

 

 

What do you expect people to do with it? Not build applications on top of your language?

26 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Imo, software patents shouldn't last for more than 5 years. Enough to have a headstart and capitalise on your invention, not that much to stifle innovation and kill your golden goose.

I think in this particular case, Oracle was claiming copyright infringement, not patent violation.

Totally agree that software patents should be reworked though. If not abolished completely (which I think is the only logical thing) then at the very least dramatically shortened.

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8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I think in this particular case, Oracle was claiming copyright infringement, not patent violation.

Totally agree that software patents should be reworked though. If not abolished completely (which I think is the only logical thing) then at the very least dramatically shortened.

Yes, you are correct this was more to do with a copyright case.  I do agree, software patents just need to die out (they don't exist here in Canada and there isn't much of an issue).  Similar things can be said about copyright as well though, I think copyrights in general shouldn't last more than 25 years.

 

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

What do you think Flash Lite was marketed as? That was also far easier to develop for. We also would be having the same argument about it, because Adobe published the specs for Flash, but Flash is as bad as Java is still. There is a third party implemented Flash player out there that is used by games. No flash runtime.

 

But I digress, decisions made for Android continue to haunt it today, and until something better comes out without Android's baggage, fragmentation, and worthless privacy/security protection. Where as all the decisions that went into iPhone OS/iOS/iPadOS were designed for a single device with a known hardware profile, so it feels much more cohesive than the Android experience.

While I do agree that decisions made early do haunt Android, the choice of Java I don't think is one that really had any feasible solution.

 

Flash Lite btw is still a propitiatory language, so even if they made a third party implementation it would more likely be fraught with lawsuits (that even they won't be able to wiggle out of).  Again, it's the same argument for not using C#...at the time some people modded Android to accept C# and converted code...it ran a lot quicker than Java did; but there is the issue of Microsoft owning C#.  It really defeats the purpose when developers would have to buy proprietary software to develop games.

 

Java also performed better and was better suited for phone development ( https://www.cs.ru.ac.za/research/g04k1804/stuff/thesis.pdf ) [Written Nov 2007]

Quote

On mobile devices with limited processing power and memory capacity, it was critical to achieve minimal memory use and maximum utilisation of the processor. Java ME showed its maturity as a mobile game development platform by achieving significantly better memory utilisation, and a noticeably faster frame rate. During deployment, Java ME had the advantage of having a .jad file containing meta-data allowing the user to view details of the application before downloading it

So no, Flash Lite wouldn't be viable.

 

Like it or hate it, Java was one of the only available contenders aside from doing the Apple approach of low level languages (but that has issues, given that there would be multiple different devices).  I am glad that Oracle lost this lawsuit, because it would be bad for the community as a whole if it was allowed to stand

3735928559 - Beware of the dead beef

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