Supreme Court opted not to hear the case despite a huge swath of IT folks sending in amicus briefs encouring the SC to hear the case. 🙁
Well, I guess it’s far past time to stop using Java.
Oracle may have “won” but it’ll be a Pyrrhic victory when everyone and their dog stops using Java.
We’ve already started at my company. We’re phasing out products that rely on Java (notably Cisco ASA firewalls) and are going to either non-java-web-based products, or products whose admin tools don’t use Java in any form.
Not sure what’ll happen with Android’s ART/Dalvik, but I have to assume Google has something in the wings to throw in to place if they don’t win the fair-use trial. Or even if they do win, for that matter.
Though there may a loophole – since ART/Dalvik are already open sourced, perhaps they can use the GPL’d Java headers, and relicense ART/Dalvik under the GPL.
It’ll also be interesting to see how this affects the compatibility layers for Android that have started showing up in the newer Windows and OSX builds… Presumably, and sadly, they’ll be dropped in fear of being attacked by Oracle.
This may end up being a huge win for OSS, actually. If programmers stop trusting that they won’t get sued for being API compatible with a closed-source API then they may choose to use OpenSource APIs instead.
Still, fuck Oracle, and fuck copywrite maximalists. These companies that were built on innovation are now spending millions to stifle it. Fucking hypocrites.
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