Stuff Michael Meeks is doing
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This is my (in)activity log. You might like to visit
Collabora
Productivity a subsidiary of Collabora focusing on LibreOffice support and
services for whom I work.
Also if you have the time to read this sort of stuff you could enlighten
yourself by going to Unraveling Wittgenstein's net or if
you are feeling objectionable perhaps here.
Failing that, there are all manner of interesting things to read on
the LibreOffice Planet news
feed.
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Read mail, reviewed patches, encouraging to catch up with
the hard work on LibreOffice being done over the weekend, and by
those in other timezones. Late lunch.
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Someone pointed out that Oracle's most recent (desperate)
position in their action against Google (judging from their
filing) is that: GOOGLE'S WHOLESALE COPYING AND IMPLEMENTATION OF
JAVA API SPECIFICATIONS IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.
As I pointed out in Why
Oracle's copyrights might matter (when the case came to light, IANAL
etc.) this is the most novel & interesting piece of the case.
Their amended complaint had more
API copyright nonsense to dislike - are they really claiming that
almost every Java program infringes their copyright - by implementing
their published interfaces ? Now we have even more detailed oddness.
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As others
start to pick this up it is interesting to consider: have Oracle, or an acquired
subsidiary ever reverse-engineered a file format, or implemented a compatible API ?
My knowledge of Oracle products is mercifully extremely weak, but at
least in the area of OpenOffice.org - Sun, (now Oracle) engineers
implemented VBA compatible APIs - to help build out interoperability
with Microsoft office. We even had some contributions from
IBM engineers working on the same task. I would
imagine that this effect is replicated everywhere that Oracle's products
have competed in an existing market. Lots of this has gone on over time, a
hundred years ago Oracle (né Sun né Praxsys) was touting Wabi (amazingly
yet-another product meaning 'Harmony'). Sadly in a world of aggressive
API copyright assertion - everyone is poorer: there is no
interoperability, there is pointless re-implementation and
duplication of APIs, and perhaps some exciting new anti-trust issues
too. Why would Oracle want to make everyone poorer, when it inevitably
will afflict itself at the same time ?
My content in this blog and associated images / data under
images/ and data/ directories are (usually)
created by me and (unless obviously labelled otherwise) are licensed under
the public domain, and/or if that doesn't float your boat a CC0
license. I encourage linking back (of course) to help people decide for
themselves, in context, in the battle for ideas, and I love fixes /
improvements / corrections by private mail.
In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my
own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Collabora, SUSE,
Novell, The Document Foundation, Spaghetti Hurlers (International),
or anyone else.
It's also important to realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy.
Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences
or fun.
Michael Meeks (michael.meeks@collabora.com)
