Larry Ellison is having a big bold day. He called out Apple, saying that without his best friend for 25 years, Steve Jobs, the company is doomed. And he also called out Apple’s biggest competitor, Google, saying that CEO Larry Page is a thief who stole his code.
“When you write a program for Android, you use the Oracle Java tools for everything,” Ellison told CBS News’ Charlie Rose. “And at the very end you push a button and say, ‘Convert this to Android format.’”
In other words, the company whose unofficial motto is “Don’t be evil” is, in fact, evil:
“The only people I have trouble with are the Google guys,” Ellison said. “Larry specifically — because he makes the decisions over there, he runs that company.”
Ellison’s company sued Google in 2010 over Google’s use of Java application programming interfaces and the fact that Google used Java in its open-source Android operating system. The legal issues are complex and murky, however, since Android is based on Linux (also open source) and Java was released by its original creators, Sun, as a free and open source programming language as well. A jury found Google to be non-infringing in 2012, but Oracle has appealed.
“I think what they did was absolutely evil,” Ellison said, putting the blame squarely on Page’s shoulders. “I don’t see how he thinks you can just copy someone else’s stuff. It really bothers me.”
Page, of course, would have a very different point of view about open source code. And a different characterization of his actions.
Comments