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Will Oracle kill Android?

P

pflau

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 17, 2007
410
46
Obviously Oracle, the most powerful company next to Microsoft, is hell bent on making money from Java. They are suing Google in an effort to get money from every copy of Android out in the wild and every copy of Android used by developers. I think there is a lot of risk when the cellphone makers do not own the operating system - because cellphone makers want to make money, the os maker wants to make money, and Google wants to make money. Somebody's going to get the short end of the stick and say I'm not playing, and Android will die.

With the iOS, Apple owns and controls everything. There is no risk in building a business developing for the iOS.
 
I see two possible scenarios

1) Nothing happens and Android continues as it is now. This is most likely the path that Motorola will take since they have a bad history of making crappy phone OSs.

2) OEMs realize that Google will not protect them from Android liability (which is true) will hedge by adopting Win Phone 7 in parallel or move to a majority of WP7 handsets. Given HTCs history with MS and being a larger Android OEM, this is a very real possibility. Samsung, who knows, but I think early WP7 beta hardware is Samsung, so it would not surprise me to see Samsung jump ship to WP7. HTC could see the writing on the wall for RIM and choose to hook part of its buggy up to WP7 to make serious inroads into the corporate market.

Android itself will not die, but is going to face some serious competition and some major questions as to wether Google will support Android properly.
 
pflau said:
Obviously Oracle, the most powerful company next to Microsoft, is hell bent on making money from Java. They are suing Google in an effort to get money from every copy of Android out in the wild and every copy of Android used by developers. I think there is a lot of risk when the cellphone makers do not own the operating system - because cellphone makers want to make money, the os maker wants to make money, and Google wants to make money. Somebody's going to get the short end of the stick and say I'm not playing, and Android will die.

With the iOS, Apple owns and controls everything. There is no risk in building a business developing for the iOS.
Click to expand...
Oracle "hopes" they will win, but they will lose the suit in the end.
Google has a lot on their side with the way the original agreement with Sun was written. Google's lawyers are going to educate Oracle on the many loopholes Sun left out there.

And Apple doesn't own everything in iOS either.
A lot of the components are open source as well.
 
Apple has been sued numerous times, and some are still in the courts. Both platforms are safe to develop for, as in neither are going anywhere anytime soon.
 
Nothing will happen due to this law sue. everyone just want a piece of the smartphone business and oracle is trying to take a shortcut. They will reach an agreement and all will be as normal.
 
I'm sure Oracle/Google will reach some kind of out of court settlement. Google has too much to lose and Oracle is trying to monetize their Sun investment.
 
Apple owns the iOS SDK, which is built on MAC OS, which they owned for a long time. There is no problem there.

The thing about Android is the SDK is built on Java. If Oracle ends up licensing Java to Google, would Google be OK to play second fiddle and get the left over crumbs from Oracle? Unlike Apple, Oracle has no hardware to sell, so licensing the software is their only revenue stream.

And you can bet Oracle will get money form Java. Their amry of lawyers made sure of that before they put down the money for Sun.
 
pflau said:
Apple owns the iOS SDK, which is built on MAC OS, which they owned for a long time. There is no problem there.

The thing about Android is the SDK is built on Java. If Oracle ends up licensing Java to Google, would Google be OK to play second fiddle and get the left over crumbs from Oracle? Unlike Apple, Oracle has no hardware to sell, so licensing the software is their only revenue stream.

And you can bet Oracle will get money form Java. Their amry of lawyers made sure of that before they put down the money for Sun.
Click to expand...
The iOS SDK is built on OS X, not MAC OS and OS X at it's very core is open source (BSD). Apple does not "own" it.

Your assumptions about JAVA are also grossly simplified.
Oracle is hoping to strong arm money out of Google... I personally don't see that happening.
 
google will send oracle a boat load of money and the problem will disappear
 
PBG4 Dude said:
I'm sure Oracle/Google will reach some kind of out of court settlement. Google has too much to lose and Oracle is trying to monetize their Sun investment.
Click to expand...

Except "settling" doesn't really work as it pertains to the Apache 2 license and downstreams like handset OEMs.
 
rjohnstone said:
The iOS SDK is built on OS X, not MAC OS and OS X at it's very core is open source (BSD). Apple does not "own" it.

Your assumptions about JAVA are also grossly simplified.
Oracle is hoping to strong arm money out of Google... I personally don't see that happening.
Click to expand...

Apple owns the SDK that is used to build the iPhone, iPad, and iPod applications. What it means is that you cannot take their SDK and port it to Android. That is what I call ownership, in business term.

Yes, they do not own the open source foundation of the OS, but that is irrelevant because it has never been an issue and will never be an issue.
 
This oracle? :D
the-oracle_l.jpg
 
pflau said:
Apple owns the SDK that is used to build the iPhone, iPad, and iPod applications. What it means is that you cannot take their SDK and port it to Android. That is what I call ownership, in business term.
Click to expand...

Well...to be fair that is a wrong assumption again, the reason that you cannot port iOS DSK to android is because they use different frameworks, not because Apple owns it on business term. Most cross platform game are written on C/C++ and they share the same code for both with a different front end.
 
maturola said:
Well...to be fair that is a wrong assumption again, the reason that you cannot port iOS DSK to android is because they use different frameworks, not because Apple owns it on business term. Most cross platform game are written on C/C++ and they share the same code for both with a different front end.
Click to expand...

That is not an assumption. Apple owns the iOS SDK, and what that means is that they can stop any company which tries to create a cross compiler that would take the Object-C code and the function calls and compile them into binaries that can install in an Android system.

Don't forget, Apple owns Objective-C out right.
 
rjohnstone said:
Oracle "hopes" they will win, but they will lose the suit in the end.
Google has a lot on their side with the way the original agreement with Sun was written. Google's lawyers are going to educate Oracle on the many loopholes Sun left out there.

And Apple doesn't own everything in iOS either.
A lot of the components are open source as well.
Click to expand...

Speaking of getting educated in law, look up the term "hearsay".
 
No matter who wins the lawsuit, Android will still be around.

If Google wins, Oracle goes away and looks for another big, successful company to sue.

If Oracle wins, they get a settlement and licensing deal for whatever technology the court thinks they own.
 
rjohnstone said:
Oracle "hopes" they will win, but they will lose the suit in the end.
Google has a lot on their side with the way the original agreement with Sun was written. Google's lawyers are going to educate Oracle on the many loopholes Sun left out there.

And Apple doesn't own everything in iOS either.
A lot of the components are open source as well.
Click to expand...


I don't think so, I think there will either be a remove it or go to court and since Oracle owns Java, if Google doesn't pay for it, they will be fined.

There is no way Android OS can carry on without paying royalties to Oracle, anyone who owns a patent will agree, you worked hard to obtain a patent, do you just want to see everyone use it for free and not pay you, not you do not.

In any case this will go on for sometime, unless the courts find Google violated all the Java rights owned by Oracle and let's face it this is all a Money game anyway.
 
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