Tim Anderson's ITWriting » Sun

Open season for patent litigation makes case for reform

tim — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:03:50 +0000

It seems to be open season for software patent litigation. Oracle is suing Google over its use of Java in Android. Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing is suing AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Yahoo and others – the Wall Street Journal has an illustrated discussion of the patents involved here. Let’s not forget that Apple is suing HTC and that Nokia is suing Apple (and being counter-sued).

What’s next? I was reminded of this post by former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. He confirms the supposition that large tech companies refrain from litigation – or at least, litigate less than they might, refrain is too strong a word right now – because they recognize that while they may have valid claims against others, they also most likely infringe on patents held by others.

The gist of Schwartz’s post is that Microsoft approached Sun with the claim that OpenOffice, owned by Sun, infringes on patents held by Microsoft thanks to its work on MIcrosoft Office:

Bill skipped the small talk, and went straight to the point, “Microsoft owns the office productivity market, and our patents read all over OpenOffice.”

Sun’s retort was in relation to Java and .NET:

“We’ve looked at .NET, and you’re trampling all over a huge number of Java patents. So what will you pay us for every copy of Windows?”

following which everything went quiet. The value of .NET to Microsoft is greater than the value of OpenOffice to Sun or Oracle.

Oracle, however, seems more willing to litigate than Sun; and I doubt it cares much about OpenOffice. Might we see this issue reappear?

That said, Microsoft also has a large bank of patents; and who knows, some of them might be brought to bear against Java in the event of legislative war.

The risk though is that if everyone litigates, the industry descends into a kind of nuclear winter which paralyses everyone. Companies like Interval Licensing, which seemingly exist solely to profit from patents, have no incentive to hold back.

Can any good come of this? Well, increasing software patent chaos might bring some benefit, if it forces countries like the USA to legislate in order to fix the broken patent system.

Protecting intellectual property is good; but against that you have to weigh the potential damage to competition and innovation from these energy-sapping lawsuits.

We need patent reform now.

Oracle still foisting Google Toolbar on Java users

tim — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 06:25:10 +0000

Oracle may be suing Google over its use of Java in Android; but the company is still happy to take the search giant’s cash in exchange for foisting the Google Toolbar on users who carelessly click Next when updating their Java installation on Windows. If they do, the Toolbar is installed by default.

This is poor practice for several reasons. It is annoying and disrespectful to the user, particularly when the same dialog has been passed many times before, bad for performance, bad for security.

Sun at least had the excuse that it needed whatever income it could get.

I know certain other companies do this as well with their free runtimes – Adobe is one – and I like it just as little. However, as far as I can recall Adobe only adds foistware on a new install, not with semi-automatic updates.

Apple not Android is killing client-side Java – so why is Oracle suing Google?

tim — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:59:24 +0000

Oracle is suing Google over Java in Android; the Register has a link to the complaint itself which lists seven patents which Oracle claims Google has infringed. There is also a further clause which says Google has infringed copyright in the:

code, specifications, documentation and other materials) that is copyrightable subject matter

and that it is not possible for a device manufacturer to create an Android device without infringing Oracle’s copyrights. Oracle is demanding stern penalties including destruction of all infringing copies – I presume this might mean destruction of all Android devices, though as we all know lawyers routinely demand more than they expect to win, as a negotiating position.

But isn’t Java open source? It is; but licensing is not simple, and “open source” does not mean “non-copyright”. You can read the Java open source licensing statements here. I am not a licensing expert; but one of the key issues with Google’s use of Java in Android is that it is not quite Java. Oracle’s complaint says:

Google’s Android competes with Oracle America’s Java as an operating system software platform for cellular telephones and other mobile devices. The Android operating system software “stack” consists of Java applications running on a Java-based object-oriented application framework, and core libraries running on a “Dalvik” virtual machine (VM) that features just-in-time (JIT) compilation.

Note that Oracle says “Java-based”. Binaries compiled for Android will not run on other JVM implementations. I am no expert on open source licensing; but if Google is using Java in ways that fall outside what is covered by the open source license, then that license does not apply.

Despite the above, I have no idea whether Oracle’s case has legal merit. It is interesting though that Oracle is choosing to pursue Google; and I have some sympathy given that Java’s unique feature has always been interoperability and cross-platform, which Android seems to break to some extent.

James Gosling’s post on the subject is relevant:

When Google came to us with their thoughts on cellphones, one of their core principles was making the platform free to handset providers. They had very weak notions of interoperability, which, given our history, we strongly objected to. Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers.

though he adds:

Don’t interpret any of my comments as support for Oracle’s suit. There are no guiltless parties with white hats in this little drama. This skirmish isn’t much about patents or principles or programming languages. The suit is far more about ego, money and power.

The official approach to Java on devices is Java ME; and Java ME guys like Hinkmond Wong hate Android accordingly:

Heck, forget taking the top 10,000 apps, take the top Android 10 apps and try running all of them on every single Android device out there. Have you learned nothing at all from Java ME technology, Android? Even in our current state in Java ME, we are nowhere as fragmented as the last 5 Android releases in 12 months (1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1 and recently 2.2).

Fair enough; but it is also obvious that Android has revived interest in client-side Java in a way that Sun failed to do despite years of trying. The enemy of client-side Java is not Android, but rather Apple: there’s no sign of Java on iPhone or iPad. Apple’s efforts have killed the notion of Java everywhere, given the importance of Apple’s mobile platform. Java needs Android, which makes this lawsuit a surprising one.

But what does Oracle want? Just the money? Or to force Google into a more interoperable implementation, for the benefit of the wider Java platform? Or to disrupt Android as a favour to Apple?

Anyone’s guess at the moment. I wonder if Google wishes it had acquired Sun when it had the chance?

Note: along with the links above, I like the posts on this subject from Redmonk’s Stephen O’Grady and Mono guy Miguel de Icaza.

Oracle breaks, then mends Eclipse with new Java build

tim — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 06:34:11 +0000

Somewhere in the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) is a company field, identifying the source of the JVM. Following its acquisition of Sun, Oracle reasonably enough changed the field in version 1.6.0_21 to reference Oracle rather than Sun.

Unfortunately some applications use the field to vary some command-line arguments according to which JVM is in use. “If Sun JVM do this, if IBM JVM do that.” Eclipse was one of these, so Oracle’s update caused “crashing and freezing issues” for Windows users. There is more information here.

When the problem was discovered, Oracle issued an update that reverts the change. Hence Ian Skerrett at Eclipse has posted Oracle Demostrates Great Community Support and Fixes Eclipse.

The issue demonstrates that almost any software change can have unintended consequences, especially if the software is an application runtime.

Should Oracle have checked for this before release? Possibly; though it cannot check every build against every application on every platform. Still, everyone has done the right thing here.

Will the JVM now say Sun for ever? I would think for some time to come, bearing in mind that companies may standardise on specific Eclipse builds and stay on them for an extended period.

Novell’s Michael Meeks downbeat on OpenOffice.org project

tim — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:01:19 +0000

There is a fascinating interview over on The H with Michael Meeks, who works at Novell on OpenOffice.org development. It would be wrong to call OpenOffice.org unsuccessful: it is a solid product that forms a viable alternative to Microsoft Office in many scenarios. Nevertheless, it has not disrupted the Microsoft Office market as much as perhaps could have been expected; and Meeks explains what may be the reasons – tight control by Sun (now Oracle) and a bureaucratic approach to project management that has stifled the enthusiasm of the open source community.

Contributors to OpenOffice.org are required to sign over copyright, which is a big ask if you are giving it freely. While Meeks does not say that the trust of contributors has been abused, he does say that that there is a lack of transparency and reassurance, specifically concerning IBM’s Symphony which is based on OpenOffice.org:

In some places they do feed stuff back. We see their changes, but parts of Symphony are not open source, and we don’t have the code for them, and interestingly, there is no source code available so far as I am aware of the version of OO.o that IBM is shipping inside their product, so clearly they’re not shipping this under the LGPLv3. IBM have a fairly public antipathy towards the GPL unfortunately, and as a consequence you have to wonder what terms are they shipping OpenOffice under – and as there is a lot of my code in there, not only my code but Novell’s code and a lot of other people’s code, you have to wonder ‘What were the terms and what was the deal? That’s a shame, and would really help improve the transparency and confidence in Sun’s stewardship around these things. The code was assigned to Sun, and I have no doubt there is no legal problem at all, but a lot of people have assigned their code to Sun in good faith, believing them to be good stewards. Maybe they are but its impossible to tell without knowing the terms under which third parties are shipping the code.

Meeks says that the Oracle takeover is an opportunity for things to get better. Even if you like Microsoft Office you should hope that it does, since a strong OpenOffice puts pressure on the competition to keep prices down and product development up. Further, Microsoft has no plans for Office on Linux that I know of – unless you count Office Web Apps.

A year of blogging: another crazy year in tech

tim — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:55:41 +0000

At this time of year I allow myself a little introspection. Why do I write this blog? In part because I enjoy it; in part because it lets me write what I want to write, rather than what someone will commission; in part because I need to be visible on the Internet as an individual, not just as an author writing for various publications; in part because I highly value the feedback I get here.

Running a blog has its frustrations. Adding content here has to take a back seat to paying work at times. I also realise that the site is desperately in need of redesign; I’ve played around with some tweaks in an offline version but I’m cautious about making changes because the current format just about works and I don’t want to make it worse. I am a writer and developer, but not a designer.

One company actually offered to redesign the blog for me, but I held back for fear that a sense of obligation would prevent me from writing objectively. That said, I have considered doing something like Adobe’s Serge Jespers and offering a prize for a redesign; if you would like to supply such a prize, in return for a little publicity, let me know. One of my goals is to make use of WordPress widgets to add more interactivity and a degree of future-proofing. I hope 2010 will be the year of a new-look ITWriitng.com.

So what are you reading? Looking at the stats for the year proves something I was already aware of: that the most-read posts are not news stories but how-to articles that solve common problems. The readers are not subscribers, but individuals searching for a solution to their problem. For the record, the top five in order:

Annoying Word 2007 problem- can’t select text – when Office breaks

Cannot open the Outlook window – what sort of error message is that? – when Office breaks again

Visual Studio 6 on Vista – VB 6 just won’t die

Why Outlook 2007 is slow- Microsoft’s official answer – when Office frustrates

Outlook 2007 is slow, RSS broken – when Office still frustrates

The most popular news posts on ITWriting.com:

London Stock Exchange migrating from .NET to Oracle/UNIX platform - case study becomes PR disaster

Parallel Programming: five reasons for caution. Reflections from Intel’s Parallel Studio briefing – a contrarian view

Apple Snow Leopard and Exchange- the real story – hyped new feature disappoints

Software development trends in emerging markets – are they what you expect?

QCon London 2009 – the best developer conference in the UK

and a few others that I’d like to highlight:

The end of Sun’s bold open source experiment – Sun is taken over by Oracle, though the deal has been subject to long delays thanks to EU scrutiny

Is Silverlight the problem with ITV Player- Microsoft, you have a problem – prophetic insofar as ITV later switched to Adobe Flash; it’s not as good as BBC iPlayer but it is better than before

Google Chrome OS – astonishing – a real first reaction written during the press briefing; my views have not changed much though many commentators don’t get its significance for some reason

Farewell to Personal Computer World- 30 years of personal computing – worth reading the comments if you have any affection for this gone-but-not-forgotten publication

Is high-resolution audio (like SACD) audibly better than than CD – still a question that fascinates me

When the unthinkable happens: Microsoft/Danger loses customer data – as a company Microsoft is not entirely dysfunctional but for some parts there is no better word

Adobe’s chameleon Flash shows its enterprise colours – some interesting comments on this Flash for the Enterprise story

Silverlight 4 ticks all the boxes, questions remain – in 2010 we should get some idea of Silverlight’s significance, now that Microsoft has fixed the most pressing technical issues

and finally HAPPY NEW YEAR

Technorati Tags: flash,silverlight,tim anderson,google,apple,.net,microsoft,sun,oracle,adobe

COM automation in Silverlight 4 is not an “edge case”

tim — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:17:53 +0000

I wrote a piece for The Register about the arrival of Windows-specific features in Silverlight, which attracted some comments both on the Reg and also on Slashdot. Plenty of people said it was just what they expected from Microsoft, some of them misunderstanding the point that this only applies to out-of-browser applications that are trusted: the user has to pass a dialog box granting the application permission to access the local system. A few defended Microsoft’s decision; and this Slashdot comment on COM automation in Silverlight 4 strikes me as a good encapsulation of the official line:

This is a fairly obscure feature, and I’m fairly surprised that it was included at all, but doubt it’ll be of use to the vast majority of current and future Silverlight developers out there. Like the html control, it’s a crutch, to allow developers that want to use Silverlight a way to leverage existing investments. The mantra I’ve heard out of the Silverlight team is to focus on unblocking customer scenarios (scenarios they cannot unblock themselves) without compromising the overall feature goals (like keeping the runtime download small) … it’s an edge case feature that doesn’t affect Silverlight’s over all "Cross-Platforminess".

The idea that COM automation is merely an “edge case” surprises me, even though I also recall it being described like that at PDC. Access to COM automation gives a Silverlight desktop application on Windows substantial extra capability. At PDC program manager Joe Stegman showed how Silverlight 4 can integrate with Office, sending data into an Excel spreadsheet: an example with obvious value for real applications. I also heard developers at PDC discussing how they might wrap up a Silverlight application with a COM DLL, creating an application which in effect has full access to the local operating system. Although Silverlight cannot access the Windows API directly, there are no such restrictions on the COM DLL, so the combination means that pretty much anything is possible.

Let’s also bear in mind that Microsoft’s Brad Becker is on record saying that one day WPF and Silverlight might simply become different .NET profiles. He told me this at Mix earlier this year; and said a similar thing to Mary Jo Foley at PDC:

Some day — Microsoft won’t say exactly when — Silverlight and WPF are going to merge into one Web programming and app delivery model that, most likely, will be known as Silverlight, Brad Becker, Director of Product Management for Microsoft’s Rich Client Platforms, told me this week

If Microsoft is contemplating such a thing, then clearly full access to the native features of Windows will have to be possible.

I am not entirely negative about this prospect. Even if you are only targeting Windows, Silverlight has a lot to commend it: a small runtime, easy setup, and options for browser-hosted or desktop deployment. If you have ever wrestled with the Windows installer or tackled a failed .NET runtime installation you will like the simplicity of running a Silverlight application.

Nevertheless, with version 4.0 Microsoft is changing its Silverlight story. It is no longer a pure cross-platform play; rather, it is a runtime where some features are cross-platform, and others Windows only. Microsoft calls this developer choice; I see it as evolving into the inverse of Sun’s aim with Java. Sun tried strenuously to guide developers towards cross-platform, but provided a way out – via Java Native Interface – if absolutely necessary. Microsoft will provide cross-platform where we really need it, but make it easy to slip into Windows-only development in order to get some nice feature like a location API, or Office integration.

I see this as an advantage for Flash, because developers know that Adobe has no incentive to prefer one operating system over another – except to the extent that minority platforms (like desktop Linux) tend to receive less investment.

Personally I think Microsoft should at least provide a way for Mac users to get similar benefits – perhaps by implementing something like the native process API in Adobe AIR 2.

I also think Microsoft will have to get real about Linux support. It is wrong that Microsoft will cheerfully state:

Silverlight 4 runs across all platforms and major browsers

as it does in the “Fact sheet” handed out at PDC; while leaving Linux implementation to a third-party process uncertain in both features and timing. Here is the reality of cross-platform Silverlight, in a screenshot taken seconds ago from Linux:

Right now it is a two-platform play – admittedly, the two platforms that matter most, especially in a Western world business context, but never forget that Google Chrome OS is coming.

Technorati Tags: silverlight,microsoft,adobe,adobe air,cross-platform,.net,java

UK lagging rest of Europe in open source adoption

tim — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:28:26 +0000

Sun conducted a survey of small and medium-sized businesses (up to 500 employees) to discover their usage and intentions towards open source software and MySQL in particular. I was interested to see the report, particularly after attending an open source round table last week about open source software in government.

The researchers interviewed around 100 people in each of 7 European countries, targetting the “CIO or IT-Manager”. The results were surprising to me. Only 34% of UK (or England; the report uses both terms and does not seem to understand the difference) businesses claim to use open source software, versus 72% in France and 69% in Germany. The only country with lower usage is Sweden on 33%.

I’m sceptical. It seems to me that you have to make some effort to use no open source software anywhere in your business. A web site with PHP and MySQL. Someone editing audio with Audacity, or using Firefox to browse the web, or Filezilla to upload files. Still, let’s take the report at face value for the moment.

Another question is more interesting, asking what percentage of a business’s IT infrastructure is open source.

Even in Germany, the biggest user, only 2% claimed to be completely open source. 72% were less than half open source, and 31% did not use it at all.

In the UK, none were completely open source, 84% less than half, and 66% have no perceived usage.

Here’s a good result though: among UK companies that do use open source, 65% use it for critical projects. This figure is actually above the European average.

Another striking figure: the biggest driver for open source adoption is to save money (61% in the UK, 66% in Germany). Next comes freedom from lock-in (34% in the UK, 53% in Germany), and after that flexibility (20% in the UK, 34% in Germany). Multi-selection must have been possible as figures add to more than 100%.

This last one gives me pause for thought. Most IT companies claim to save you money; it’s part of the standard sales pitch. Open source software generally does though, partly because the whole concept is a form of commoditization, or pooling of resources for mutual benefit. Is it inevitable that if if open source continues to increase its usage share (as most indicators suggest), that overall revenue in the IT industry will diminish?

You can pose the same question substituting “cloud computing” for “open source”; both together could have a substantial impact.

Technorati Tags: open source,sun,mysql

Why the EU should not worry about Oracle and MySQL

tim — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:55:11 +0000

The European Commission is examining Oracle’s acquisition of Sun and has concerns about the implications for MySQL:

Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said: “The Commission has to examine very carefully the effects on competition in Europe when the world’s leading proprietary database company proposes to take over the world’s leading open source database company. In particular, the Commission has an obligation to ensure that customers would not face reduced choice or higher prices as a result of this takeover. Databases are a key element of company IT systems. In the current economic context, all companies are looking for cost-effective IT solutions, and systems based on open-source software are increasingly emerging as viable alternatives to proprietary solutions. The Commission has to ensure that such alternatives would continue to be available”.

The most remarkable thing about this investigation is that it exists. One of the supposed benefits of open source is that, come what may, your product cannot be abandoned at the whim of some commercial giant; you have the code, and as long as a viable community of users and developers exists, its future is in your hands. So why is the EU worried?

The issue I suppose is that while Oracle cannot remove code from the community, it would have it in its power to disrupt MySQL – in fact, that is happening already. It could refuse to invest in further development, and encourage customers with support agreements to move to the latest Oracle solution instead. I am not saying that is likely; I have no idea what Oracle plans, and it already owns Innobase, which supplies the most widely-used transactional engine for MySQL, without obvious adverse affects.

Still, it is important to think clearly about the case. I’ve just been talking to Simon Cattlin at Ingres, who is using the opportunity to mention that worried MySQL customers are making enquiries at his company. He also argues that the EU’s intervention proves the increasing importance of open source technology.

That latter point is true; but there is some doublethink going on here. There are two sides to MySQL. On one side it’s powering a zillion mostly non-critical web applications for free, while on the other it is a serious business contender covered by support contracts. It is all the free users that make it “the world’s leading open source database company”, not the relatively small number of commercial licensees; and it was Sun’s failure to shift users from one to the other that accounted (among other things) for its decline.

So which of these groups is the EU concerned about? If it’s the free users, I don’t think it should worry too much. The existing product works, the community will maintain it, and forks are already appearing, not least MariaDB from a company started by MySQL creator Monty Widenius.

On the other hand, if it is the Enterprise users, I don’t think the EU should worry either, because it is not a big enough deal to warrant anti-competitive concerns. Cattlin told me that Ingres actually had higher revenue that MySQL at the time of the Sun takeover.

It makes no sense to conflate the free and commercial users into one, and use the number of free users to justify action which mainly concerns the commercial users.

That said, it’s true that having an open source product owned and mainly developed by a commercial company is always somewhat uncomfortable. One of the reasons the Apache web server succeeds is because it belongs to an independent foundation. There is rarely a clean separation between what is commercial and what is open source though: the money has to come from somewhere, and entities like Apache and Eclipse survive on staff and funds contributed by profit-making companies.

Technorati Tags: ingres,mysql,oracle,sun,apache,eclipse

The end of Sun’s bold open source experiment

tim — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:01:15 +0000

This is a sad day for Sun. It sought to re-invent its business through open source; and the experiment has failed, culminating not in a re-invigorated company, but instead acquisition by an old-school proprietary software company, Oracle.

It is possible to build a successful business around open source software. Zend is doing it with PHP; Red Hat has done it with Linux. These are smaller companies though, and they have not tried to migrate an older business built on a proprietary model. A further complication is that Sun is a hardware business, and although open source is an important part of its hardware strategy as well as its software strategy, it is a different kind of business.

Maybe the strategy was good, but it was the recession, or the server market, that killed Sun. In the end it does not make any difference, the outcome is what counts.

Reading the official overview of the deal, I see lots of references to “open” and “standard-based”, which means nothing, but no mention of open source.

The point of interest now is what happens to Sun’s most prominent open source projects: OpenOffice.org, MySQL, Java and OpenSolaris. Developers will be interested to see what happens to NetBeans, the open source Java IDE, following the Oracle acquisition, and how it will relate to Oracle’s JDeveloper IDE. These open source projects have a momentum of their own and are protected by their licenses, but a significant factor is what proportion of the committers – those who actually write the software and commit their changes to the repository – are Sun employees. Although it is not possible to take back open source code, it is possible to reduce investment, or to start creating premium editions available only to commercial subscribers, which already appeared to be part of MySQL’s strategy.

I presume that both OpenOffice and Java will feature in Oracle’s stated intention to build an end-to-end integrated solution:

Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.

says CEO Larry Ellison, who also says nothing about open source. This will involve invading Microsoft’s turf – something Sun was always willing to do, but not particularly successful at executing.

The best outcome for the open source community will be if Oracle continues to support Sun’s open source projects along the same lines as before. Even if that happens, the industry has lost a giant of the open source world.

Some good comments from Redmonk’s Michael Coté here.

Technorati Tags: oracle,sun,microsoft,open source,java,mysql,solaris,netbeans