Most of the innovation the software world is derivative works. The whole software innovation ecosystem is empiric, and new offsprings sees the daylight with knowledge originating from other successes and failures. Further, a lot of innovative products is based on commodity software, that saves innovators from the tedious and costly work of doing everything themselves. If these mechanisms breaks apart, the whole innovation ecosystem in the software world would crumble. I think this article explains how innovation happens today, and it lists som famous everyday innovations that where never patented. Things everyone of us uses almost everyday. Had they been patented, some things would be quite differently today.
So, Oracle sues Google over some patent infringments and IP rights. Because they own Java they can do just that. Google has been clever omitting these patents and IP rights and Sun did not see any interest in pursuing any possible infringements in court. I guess they saw Googles works as strengtening Javas overall position, even if the code was not portable, but knowledge is. And knowledge is very easily transferrable. Further, it can result in new offsprings and innovations.
The Java Virtual Machine is a commodity that a lot of business and open source projects relies upon. The desktop and server editions are open source under GPLv2. The mobile edition is not fully open source, and it is here that the Oracle lawyers (hyeanas are more appropriate me thinks) are seeing legal meat to dig into. How they axactly will argue is not yet revealed, but it could be they will argue lost business. I would say it is downright unethical to sue a another party on such basis. Just as Apples iPhone would not have had Androids market share, if it did not exist? There are no other real competitors to Apple just now, and is Oracle producing phones? Can they show a prototype? Can Oracle provide any proof that Java ME has lost any market share (as far as I know Java ME has not played any significant role in a market sense)? They are just hurting the JVM and Java language as a commodity by inserting insecurity and fright into the ecosystem. Maybe this will be the event that triggers completely new programming languages or strengthenes some new ones in the pipeline? Languages with absolutely no patent strings attached and potential misuse by the "owner".
The consequences could be devastating for innovation on the Java platform. Those who want to use Java the platform must from now on be extremely careful to not irritate Oracles lawyers. What does the Scala people think now? Will Oracle try to sue them for lost revenues on Java IDE's or do some ridicoulous changes to stop Scala?
In addition to damage innovation on the Java platform, this lawsuit will drain energy and time from managamenet at Google and Oracle. Who gains on that? Yes Apple and Microsoft. While Oracle bashes Google with stone age business models, competitors can exploit their distraction from the scene where innovation happen.
What feels so completly wrong with this lawsuit, apart from totally missing the point of the software industry works, is that Google has probably been one of the biggest contributors to the diffusion of Java language on the mobile platform, namele Android. Android provides no or little revenue for Google, but sees at as mere innovation and business platform that suits them. I think Oracle will have a hard time arguing for any economic losses as Google does not make money on Android directly and Oracle is certainly not in the ad-business.
Friday 13th , August, 2010 is a sad day in software history, and James Gosling did foresee it in the aquiring negotiations with Oracle. He must have felt like Albert in We, the drowned by Carsten Jensen. Albert can see war victims beeing killed in his dreams before it actually happen.
Update 18.08.2010
Charles Nutter has written a thorough blogpost on the issue.
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