[dba-Tech] Java

[Jim Lawrence]

It seems that many are pleased with Google's win over Oracle. 

At one level it is but no longer can it be said that Google is the little guy. Oracle is now the company fighting to survive... 

Yes, the company is still a huge force in the database world but no longer does it hold the attention it once got. Its main strengths are its loyal customers but no longer are new companies embracing Oracle as they once did. Now they have become one of many data management companies. Oracle has gained a reputation of being a stickler for patent rights and the battle with Google is just one such fight.

It all started with Sun. This company was one of the computers world's greatest innovators. Unfortunately it was not as equally good in management or in marketing itself. Sun created so many great products, OpenOffice (a Microsoft competitor), MySQL probably one of the most flexible databases (great on functionality but short on graphical interface), the ZFS filesystem (no Cloud applications would exist without it) and of course, Java (one of the best implementations of a true object-oriented and class driven languages). Sun was so far ahead of its time but it never had the financial muscle to fend of attackers. In its defence it created the Open GPL licensing model for all its software (this licensing has created so many Open Source applications. The theory behind it was that patenting its products in this way would allow "fair use" of it applications but when another company build on this business model, an agreement with Sun, had to be formalized and compensation had to be made. 

Microsoft at one point (late nineties) decided it would take advantage of new Open GPL and started building out its applications on the new and innovative programming language called Java and then started re-branding the product as their own. Even though SUN had little resources they fought back in court and received a judgement the demanded Microsoft first had to compensate SUN for its use of Java and second had to give-aways all the innovation it had added to the product. In the day when proprietary computer applications were king this was little more than heresy. Microsoft relented and bailed on further development.

SUN may have won the battle but they didn't win the war. Their fortunes were slipping as their hardware was not built on Intel chips and finally Oracle put them out of their misery by buying them out, mostly for their patent potential than for their product line. It ended up being an expensive purchase as the Open GPL licensing, that all SUN products were patented under, could not be broken. Oracle could not profit on the stable of SUN applications and either stopped all innovation or attempted to sell product enhancement. MySQL is just one such example...its original design is free for access but any of product enhancements are that of Oracles. This has not worked out well as the product just forked into a number of parallel developed application; MariaDB, being developed by the once designer team of MySQL from SUN and then there is Facebook's version of the product (that version of MySQL can do parallel processing across thousands of systems and now there is even an associated OS programming language available). Almost the entire team of OpenOffice defected to the forked version called LibreOffice. Oracle has hated the Open GPL licensing model ever since.

Open GPL licensing is an interesting piece of patenting license. A forked version of the code can be innovated on but, any innovations added must also be Open Sourced and the product can not be sold. Service and support towards that product maintenance can. True product enhancement (plugins, APIs binaries etc), to the application can be sold but only if these enhancements are not integrated into application's core functionality. To handle the various interpretations of this licensing there is this grey area called "fair-use". 

Move ahead to the battle between Oracle and Google. Google originally took its Java version from the now defunct company of SUN and used an enhanced version of Java along with some custom APIs. These APIs were once owned by Sun but as Oracle bought out Sun all its patents became their and the APIs fall squarely into the "fair-use" grey area. There is an agreement(?) that any APIs developed, as enhancements are the property of the application's patent holder...in this case Oracle. But the code must be OS and only limited use of this code can be made, by third parties....mostly for development.

If there was any subtly of use under the Open GPL licensing, Google has far exceeded that. Google has been effectively giving away its Java enhancements but it has also been giving away the API enhancements that Oracle has clearly built along with Google's SmartPhones. The original rush to market with this Java software was to crush any attempt of Microsoft entering the Smart Phone business and it did that but along the way Google cut a few corners and giving away Oracles API enhancements, without an agreement is definitely a violation....and one that is not covered by the extent of "fair-use" precedence.

Now we enter court battle two. In one corner, large and powerful Oracle, with a slight lead from a legal stand-point and in the other corner Google, a Goliath with unlimited resources. We have watched such battles before between Apple and Samsung which fought each other to exhaustion...I believe Apple did technically win receiving compensation for its innovation of adding curves to its buttons but the penalty was less than a slap on the wrist, to Samsung. Finally Apple and Samsung agreed to put the whole fight behind them and move on.

This battle is different. It is a no win scenario for either side and worse yet it is a no win scenario for the general public. Both Oracle and Google are all in on this fight and the battle could go on for years. In the meantime and regardless of the outcome, it put the whole Open GPL model of software development in question. The model has been fairly loose in its interpretation. All parties, businesses and the communities using this licensing have been fairly flexible on this form of patenting and there has been a self-regulated compromise that has worked well for all involved. Extended court action will now make tight regulations around the whole Open Source community. 

In summary, if Google wins then companies developing within the Open GPL, have no legal recourse, in which to garner fair compensation for their enhancements to an existing Open Source development application and if Oracle wins it will rigidly codify the term "fair-use". Both results have the potential to crush this era of enhanced application development. To a consumer or application developer, both scenarios are bad.

I blame both companies for this turn of events. Google feels they are so large and powerful that they are beyond having to compensate anyone for their invention and if the past is any indication, they may be right...and then there is Oracle who wants to be compensated for such a massive amount that no company would ever agree to it. Eventually both companies will have to compromise but the damage will have been done and the well of innovation may have been poisoned.   

Jim