Oracle's Java lawsuit undermines its open source credibility
Thursday, Oracle filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of infringing on patented Java technologies in its Linux-based Android mobile operating system. Even though Oracle appears to have a solid basis for legal action, the lawsuit could permanently burn bridges between Oracle and the broader Java ecosystem. Such blatantly antagonistic litigation sends a clear message to the open source software community that Oracle is a hostile and abusive interloper rather than a contributor.
It raises very serious questions about the company's stewardship of other open source technology that it obtained during the acquisition of Sun. The resulting uncertainty will likely not be conducive to retaining the customers and mindshare that Sun had built around certain open source products. It will also likely have a serious chilling affect on community involvement and third-party contributions. It's important to recognize that the impact of this lawsuit will be felt far beyond the scope of Java and will also influence perceptions of other key open source projects obtained by Oracle, such as the MySQL database system.
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VirnetX files VPN patent suit against Apple, Cisco, NEC
After successfully suing Microsoft for similar infringements, patent holding company VirnetX is taking Apple to court over the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, suggesting that Apple's VPN implementation violates two of the company's VPN-related patents. Also named in the lawsuit, filed in Eastern Texas US District Court, are Aastra, Cisco, and NEC.VirnetX originally sued Microsoft in 2007 after VirnetX acquired a number of patents from defense contractor Science Applications International in 2006. The company alleged that Microsoft Office Communicator and Windows Meeting Space each infringed one of two of its patents, including US patents 6,502,135 "Agile Network Protocol for Secure Communications with Assured System Availability" and "Method for Establishing Secure Communication Link Between Computers of Virtual Private Network."
VirnetX won the trial in March this year, with the jury awarding the company $106 million. Microsoft appealed, asserting that the patents were invalid, but later in May settled with VirnetX for $200 million, avoiding additional legal fees and potential treble damages. In June, the US Patent and Trademark Office confirmed both patents as valid after a lengthy review initiated by the lawsuit.
With the confidence of a legal victory and affirmation from the USPTO behind it, VirnetX is now alleging that Apple's mobile devices infringe at least some claims of the '135 patent as well as several claims of US patent 7,490,151 "Establishment of a Secure Communication Link Based on a Domain Name Service (DNS) Request."
The claims against Aastra, Cisco, and NEC mainly target their VoIP products, including servers, software, and VoIP phones. A number of Cisco's IP routing products with VPN capabilities are also accused of infringing VirnetX's IP. In addition to the '135, '180, and 151 patents, the company claims one or more of the products named in the suit infringe on US patents 6,839,759 "Method for Establishing Secure Communication Link Between Computers of Virtual Private Network Without User Entering Any Cryptographic Information" and 7,418,504 "Agile Network Protocol for Secure Communications Using Secure Domain Names."
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Wikileaks to release more Afghan war docs, despite concerns
Wikileaks says it plans to release the remaining 15,000 classified documents it has collected on the US war in Afghanistan, despite the Pentagon's strong disapproval. Wikileaks spokesperson Julian Assange made the announcement Thursday in a video to the Frontline Club and said the organization had gone through about 7,000 of the documents so far, though he did not specify when Wikileaks planned to release them.The release will follow last month's dump of some 90,000 war documents, many of which detailed how deeply Pakistan, a US ally, is tied to the Afghan insurgency. Although much of what was revealed is not news to those who closely follow the war in Afghanistan, the documents offered excruciating detail about just how much info the US military had about those ties.
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Next decade of astronomy research to focus on exoplanets, early Universe
Today, the National Academies of Science have released the results of its Decadal Survey, entitled "New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics." As the name implies, the survey happens every 10 years, and is intended to obtain input from the astronomy community regarding what science projects should be made funding priorities by the US government. The report places priorities on three main objectives—exoplanets, the formation of the first structures in the Universe, and the physics that have governed its evolution—and produced a list of missions that places a high priority on observatories that can help solve problems in more than one of these areas. Generally, NASA and the National Science Foundation are the main participants in this survey, but Stanford's Roger Blandford, who chaired the committee that prepared the report, mentioned that the Department of Energy took part for the first time. The committee was divided into five panels (planetary systems and star formation, stars and stellar evolution, galactic neighborhood, galaxies across cosmic time, and cosmology and fundamental physics), which were asked to formulate a single key question, and four areas of science that address it.
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