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by foamdino
5171 days ago
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Please do some research on the background of the whole sordid affair - Google did not steal 'Java' - they took ASL licensed libraries and used them as an API and they built their own VM. Guess who did the same thing? Sun and Oracle. Did Sun steal Java too? Look inside the current java source code and you'll find code originally written by open source developers under the ASL (xml libraries [crimson etc] spring to mind immediately, but I'm sure there is other stuff in there too)) As far as I know at no point did they claim that Android was Java (which is what the Microsoft case was about). |
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A general point: Sun (Oracle is another matter, but we can safely assume they won't prosecute themselves) could "steal" Java as much as they wanted, because you cannot infringe your own copyright. Copyright doesn't forbid actions per se (i.e. "any copying") but it does forbid specific individuals from performing those actions (i.e. unauthorized third-parties). So, assuming the JVM was subject to copyright or patents (which is more or less what they're debating in court at the moment), Sun employees could have reimplemented it a million times, either privately or publicly, but this would not have granted anyone else the right to do the same.
Besides, your statement that "at no point did [Google] claim that Android was Java" is debatable -- most developers approach Android with the belief that "it's basically Java with some peculiarities", and this was a large factor in its successful efforts to recruit independent developers. Whether this "implying" was lawful or not, it's for the tribunal to decide.