Before I drive in to the details I wish to discus, let me first warn the reader that I am not a lawyer, and I have not done a lot of research into the issues that are presented here. What is here is more of a philosophical musing and logical reasoning on my standpoint considering the necessity of privatized programming languages, and the ethics in how discrepancies involving these languages are handled. Also, I'm an informal writer, and thus that style is reflected here. Go figure.

I'm going to start off making a bold statement. Oracle, from the viewpoint of their recent lawsuit filed against Google, seems to be turning more and more into Apple. This being said, we can argue that Oracle hasn't done anything with it's new purchases that are overall wonderful compared to how these purchases already were (Solaris, VirtualBox, MySQL(?), and Java), but they seem to have it in their mind that they can use these purchased patents to get key players like Google to pay up for the use of it's products.

Now, before you get all angry at me, trying to tell me that Oracle is acting within the law, I've first got to say that I agree with you. Oracle does own the Java patents, and does control the use of the language, as we have seen. There's even a hotline number you can call now (1-800-Oracle) (Hey, 6 numbers... don't think I'm about to talk to anyone...) in order to obtain a complimentary patent licensing kit. I just do not think that it is ethical for them to enforce such a patent issue now just because they own it. Google and Java have for a long time had a silent agreement not to worry about the issue of Java's use in the development of Android.

Does Oracle deserve payment from Google? Yes. They are the new land lords, the new owners of the patents, and they can charge whatever they want for their licensed usage. However, a lawsuit may be out of line. Google has not done reparable damage to Oracle through the use of the programming language, and have not been costing them any kind of potential income before they acquired Sun Microsystems. Therefore, I believe that Google, in good faith, should be responsible for only the period of time between then and now, and not beforehand. Thus is similar in any other case in which Oracle tries to blindly sue companies over the use of products allowed to them by the previous company, just because they can.

There's WAY too much "Because I can" in business today, and not enough "Because it's the right thing to do." Do I think things get done as often in the second one? NO! For all we knew Oracle wanted to use that money to do something like invest in OpenSolaris.... Hah. See what I did there?

What can we draw from this?

To me the idea of a programming language is allow someone, anyone, to build something out of nothing, and to be innovative. Innovations aren't always good things, what with malware, viruses, and the like, but there are a lot of good things that come out of non corporate organizations and out of individual people. Take GNU/Linux for example! or the GCC compiler suite! Or Eclipse!

My question is that if Oracle is planning to start suing people over licensing issues (starting with the big guys, and working their way down...) What's going to happen to projects like OpenOffice, Eclipse, or any other program that is open source but is run using proprietary software?

Now, if you know me from dream.in.code or have read my blog before you'll notice I'm not the biggest Java Guru. What I like about Java is it's cross platform compatibility, seeing as how programs are run on Java VM, tailored for each operating system. I never really got into it until recently, and, though I find it simple and elegant to use, I don't know whether I'll continue playing with it, because of this software issue. I put about 10 to 15 hours into a vim-like GUI text editing program written using Java Swing over this week. What happens if that becomes bigger, and goes open source, and then I'm asked to take it down because it isn't licensed?

I'm not saying that this is about to happen. I'm not saying that Oracle is going to hammer down harder than the Record Companies. My annoyingly long winded point is this.

Suing people over using your programming language is counter productive for your language, your fan base, and your company. If you want to destroy you're reputation, go for it. Proprietary languages are fine. C# is a wonderful language. I'd never write an application in it that wasn't windows specific for a damn good reason, but hey. Whatever. My point is is that privatizing programming languages is good in the sense that it keeps a solid hold on the standardization of that language. (There are quite a few bastardizations of C++ on the internets... Look, they're there.) Profiting from these languages is alright too. You put in the work, you deserve some paper. However, practicing poor business ethics in the sense of actively looking for ways to hinder others for your own enjoyment or gain is just stupid.

Hopefully I didn't make myself look stupid, but that's what I think.

~Bodom

UPDATE: (Well deserved) It appears I made a false claim when I said that Sun and Google had any sort of under the table agreement. I'd like to rectify this statement by saying that Sun did not like Google's 'exploitation' of Java. Furthermore, on an opinionated side, I'd just like to say that while I do think Google had it coming, after taking advantage of a company who couldn't afford to sue them, BUT I don't think that Oracle should reap the benefits, the payout should go to the men and women responsible for the Java programming language.