[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by leebase

I see no foul. I'm not saying that Oracle owns the notions of loops/if then decision/variables and the like. I'm saying Oracle owns the Java language....not just their implementation of the java language. You want to build your own computer language...go right ahead. But if your language just implements the one Oracle owns...then no, that's not ok.

Has the fundamental purpose of programming languages completely eluded you?

And yes, it can be a bad think with Open Office depending on how far they take their copying of Word. Think back to Lotus vs Quarterdeck or dBase vs Foxpro. You can't build a clone of someone else product.

You actually can.

As to the OpenOffice supporting the Word file format. I wonder if Msft has simply not pursued litigation. I know that support for certain video and formats are indeed covered by patents/copyright. I'm not sure of the specific details that allow or disallow.

There is of course the famous GIF patent (on the LZW compression algorithm really) -- which resulted in the move to PNG.
Generally regarded as one of those tragic cases when the US Patent Office granted a patent for something fundamentally incapable of being patented.

In other words, exactly the kind of public disservice on top of illegal patent trolling attempt to extort money that Oracle just tried pulling on Google. Needless to say, the existence of one public outrage does not justify another -- although hopefully Java will die the same death that GIF did. I would like to see that happen to Oracle.

And needless to say, no one has ever attempted to say the schema validation for DOCX is copyrighted to MS (that I am aware).

And yes....all of these issues end up needed to be judged in a court of law and, of course, IANAL.

But I do think the common sense comparison of a computer language to a book and it's characters is valid. Google creating a platform based on Oracle's Java without licensing from Oracle is the same as me writing Harry Potter books using the same names and universe details of the Harry Potter books.

Wrong, it is comparable to me writing a book about "a boy who discovers he has magical powers and goes to school to learn how to use them".

That is the difference between an idea and an implementation.

Programming language APIs are the underlying concepts that are used to create implementations.

It's not like Google had to use java...they could have used any language. They could have bought a license. But they wanted to be able to leverage the knowledge and support that Sun/Google had built up with java. Just as any author might desire to sell books to the millions of Harry Potter fans

Yeah, maybe they could've used used C++. Then get sued by Bjarne Stroustrup. Or C, and get sued by Dennis Ritchie. (He's dead now, but that never stopped a patent troll...)

Oh, wait -- no. Those can't be copyrighted, any more than Java can.

The GNU Compiler Collection can be and is copyrighted (under the GPL, with a special exemption from the GPL for permitting object code compiled with but not linked to GCC.) GCC allows you to compile C/C++ source code into object code. So does Clang, Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime (MSVCRT), etc. As a general rule of thumb, all of these projects need to specifically grant you the right to resell compiled object code under whatever license you choose, even if incompatible with e.g. the GPL.
OpenJDK, an open-source implementation of a Java Virtual Machine (JVM = runtime that executes java binaries), can be and is licensed, under the GPL as well, with the ClassPath exception
Oracle Java can be, and is licensed, under the BCL, which means that Oracle reserves the right to charge you money.




Let's get something clear. Is OpenJDK a felonious software project that illegally infringes upon Oracle's IP?
Are GCC, Clang, MSVCRT software projects that infringe upon the IP of Bjarne Stroustrup, who himself infringed upon the IP of Dennis Ritchie. (I suppose I should point out that neither of those individuals claims or claimed to own the language(s), nor brought people to court for developing in those languages.)
And, for a thought... is Java a software project that infringes upon the IP of Bjarne Soustrup and Dennis Ritchie, as it is based upon C/C++?