Larry Ellison on Java Freedom: “I was for it before I was against it”

By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research

I hate to say “I told you so”, but this is one of those occasions when nothing else is appropriate. A little over a year ago I wrote a couple of blog posts about the danger Oracle posed for Java. The issue turned on the then obscure battle between Google and Sun over the Apache Harmony project, which was an effort (also supported by IBM) to produce a version of Java unencumbered by Sun’s IP and the arcane rules of the Java Community Process controlled by Sun. I pointed out that Oracle had supported IBM and Google’s efforts to get Harmony approved by Sun and had even called for a democratization of the JCP’s procedures. I raised the concern that maybe, just maybe, Oracle would change its tune if it ever got its hands on Java and the control levers of the JCP. At the time no one knew for sure if Oracle’s bid for Sun and its Java assets would be approved by the regulators. But of course the deal did eventually go through, and while I was still pretty sure I was right about Oracle’s threat to open source Java, I got busy on other projects and stopped blogging for a while. Now, a year later, Oracle’s suit against Google over Java’s use in Android brings the issue back to the front burner.

I won’t say much on who’s right and who’s wrong. A lot of people have already commented all over the web, and I haven’t had the time to read everything important that’s been published. My basic inclination is that it’s a mistake for people to get up on their high horses when everyone knows that both parties are only in it for themselves. On the one hand, Google’s conduct with Android has been self-serving from the very first day. In one of the most impressive combinations of political astuteness and technical boldness the IT industry has ever witnessed, it has succeeded with Android in creating a software stack that is almost completely closed in practice yet built entirely from open source components. On the other hand, Oracle has done a complete 180 on its earlier call for Java freedom and displayed shameless hypocrisy by doing exactly what it accused Sun of doing (or rather, of wanting to do, since Sun never actually got around to pulling the trigger on its long-threatened suit over Harmony). I hesitate to call these actions “evil”, though, because I think both Oracle and Google are only acting true to form. They are profit-seeking corporations that owe their loyalty to shareholders first and everyone else last (with the occasional honorable exception, as noted below). In this respect Oracle and Google are no different from Microsoft and IBM or VMware and Red Hat, or - for that matter - General Motors and Goldman Sachs. So when Oracle righteously declares in a public venue that the Java Community Process “should become an open independent vendor-neutral Standards Organization where all members participate on a level playing field”, as it did at the December 2007 meeting of the JCP’s Executive Committee, we would all be wise to take such statements with a few bushels of salt. Likewise, when Google solemnly declares that it wouldn’t dream of reserving private APIs in Android for its own use, we should not be surprised when it turns out that the truth is somewhat different.

This story reminds me of that hapless politician who said, in defense of a particularly egregious instance of flip-flopping, “I was for it before I was against it”. (As it happens, I’m pretty sure the Google kids forked over a truckload of money to that particular politician, whose hypocrisy later extended to calling for tax hikes on the rich while refusing to pay taxes on the multi-million dollar yacht he bought for himself with spare change left over from his wife’s billions. But no matter, since Google did the right thing on China they’re entitled in my view to hold their heads high for a while in matters of politics.) At the end of the day, the biggest difference between Larry Ellison and two-face senators is that Larry doesn’t work for us. This gives him the right to disappoint us when it suits him. And it should be a lesson to us not to take ringing endorsements of software freedom at face value when they come from software developers, large or small, who are only pursuing the same self-interest that powers Adam Smith’s invisible hand.