Drummond's post is in reference to last week's sale of Nortel's patent portfolio to a consortium of Google's competitors. The purchase of these patents threatens Android's dominant share of the smartphone OS market by making the operating system more expensive for phone manufacturers to license.

Pending the outcome of antitrust investigations, it's clear that this deal puts Google and Android on the defensive. Google's position to license its mobile OS across a wide range of platforms is both a blessing and a curse. The range of options for consumers has helped Android net nearly 50% of the smartphone market, but if the cost of licensing becomes prohibitive to cash-strapped hardware manufacturers, that market will dry up quickly, and the profits for Android software developers will go right along with it. Apple doesn't have to worry about such margins, and other phone manufacturers might have to start building side businesses on WebOS or Windows Phone 7 to remain profitable, which is just what HP and Microsoft have been waiting for.

Meanwhile, Google and Apple are said to be squaring off to duel over another large patent portfolio owned by InterDigital. Patents were intended to protect innovation, but they're certainly proving costly and distracting to the software industry's leading innovators.

The announcement comes after a rocky year for OpenOffice, which was largely abandoned by Oracle and turned over to the community, many of whom in turn forked the project to LibreOffice and created The Document Foundation.

In announcing the contribution, Oracle's vice president Luke Kowalski says the action demonstrates Oracle's "commitment to the developer and open source communities." But open source technologies and the developer communities around them have had a rough time under Oracle, particularly in regards to the assets that were acquired by the company when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems. Those assets include MySQL and Java, the latter being part of a lawsuit Oracle filed against Google and fuel for many developers' fears that Oracle is actually far from committed to the open source community.

The Future of OpenOffice: The Code and the Community

IBM, which had lobbied for Oracle to spin out the OpenOffice project after it was clear that the company had no commercial interests in continuing its development, also issued a statement today, saying that "We look forward to engaging with other community members to advance the technology beginning with out strong support of the incubation process for OpenOffice at Apache."

But those community members may be elsewhere, as the creation of The Document Foundation included some of the leading developers on the OpenOffice project. While Oracle has handed over its OpenOffice code, the move does not reunite these two groups.

The Document Foundation stressed the importance of bringing these communities together in its statement in response to today's news: "The step Oracle has taken today was no doubt taken in good faith, but does not appear to directly achieve this goal. The Apache community, which we respect enormously, has very different expectations and norms - licensing, membership and more - to the existing OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects. We regret the missed opportunity but are committed to working with all active community members to devise the best possible future for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org.

Potential Licensing Problems

There may be further problems ahead for the project too, considering that the OpenOffice is currently licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) 3.0, something that isn't fully compatible with the Apache License 2.0.

However, Jim Jagielski, president of the Apache Software Foundation, issued a statement saying that "We welcome highly-focused, emerging projects from individual contributors, as well as those with robust developer communities, global user bases, and strong corporate backing." Jagielski is the proposed mentor for the project, which will be a "podling" and not fully accepted as an official Apache project.

James Gosling, the man who founded programming language Java at Sun Microsystems, announced this morning on his blog that, "through some odd twists in the road over the past year...I find myself starting employment at Google today."

If you haven't been following closely, the move is one that a non-fiction writer could only hope for to make reality sound as good as fiction. It comes in the midst of a lawsuit accusing Google of "knowingly, directly and repeatedly" infringing Oracle's Java-related intellectual property with its Android operating system. Read on for the untangling of the details.

Now, in a move that seems to thumb his nose at both Sun and Oracle, Gosling has joined the one company accused of infringing on the intellectual property he was initially responsible for. What will be his purpose with the Big G? He says that he isn't sure, but that "it'll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon."

Some are speculating that Gosling will come over to the Google-side to work on Android, the IP offender in question, while others wonder if "having on your payroll the father of the programming language at issue in the suit will come in handy when it goes to trial."

Gosling joins other big names like Vint Cerf and Tim Bray at the company that intends to harness the world's information. Cerf led the team in the 1970s that created the TCP/IP protocols, which act as the backbone to the Internet. Bray co-invented XML, a standard that has since been used in the development of hundreds of languages, including RSS, ATOM and XHTML. At a company like Google, which has its hands in everything from self-driving cars to virtually replicating every square inch of the earth's surface, one can only guess what purpose yet another leader like Gosling could serve.

No surprise, then, this chain of events has resulted in what seems to be a shaken confidence in Java. Indeed, that seems to be the consensus from a survey taken at JavaOne last fall. The survey was meant to gauge the Java community's thoughts on Oracle and open source.

56% said they were concerned about Oracle's lawsuit against Google, saying they felt that the lawsuit was bad for Java. 13% said they felt the lawsuit would be a good thing for Java.

The survey is not scientific to be sure. It was taken by EnterpriseDB, an open source competitor to Oracle, and taken from a group that has a clear stake in how these things shake out. Nonetheless, it certainly suggests there's plenty of concern about Oracle's leadership and the future of Java.

The conflict follows the recent JCP vote on the roadmap for Java SE 7, in which the ASF, along with Google and EC member Tim Peieris voted against its ratification. The new Java Specification Requests were passed, however, by a vote of 12-3.

In today's statement, the ASF accuses Oracle of failing to "uphold their responsibilities" as it provided the Java Executive Committee with licenses "that are self-contradictory, severely restrict distribution of independent implementations of the spec, and most importantly, prohibit the distribution of independent open source implementations of the spec. Oracle has refused to answer any reasonable and responsible questions from the EC regarding these problems."

For its part, Oracle has said that its priority is to "move Java forward." Whether or not the Apache Software Foundation's decision today will have an impact on that remains to be seen.

According to the companies' joint statement, Apple will contribute the key pieces of technology necessary for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X "including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack and the foundation for a new graphical client." The move will make Apple's Java technology available to the open source community.

Apple also confirmed that Java SE 6 will contnue to be available from Apple for Mac OS X Snow Leopard as well as the upcoming OS X Lion. But future versions of Java will come from Oracle. As Apple's Bertrand Serlet notes, "The best way for our users to always have the most up to date and secure version of Java will be to get it directly from Oracle."

Commenting on today's announcement on his blog, James Gosling, the "father of Java," asks, "The two questions that only time can answer are: will both parties actually deliver? and how will this work with Apple's software update center?"

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has been unable to certify Java as Oracle, which acquired the language when the company purchased Sun Microsystems, will not provide the test kits available under the suitable license. As the ASF says in yesterday's announcement, "Oracle is violating their contractual obligation as set forth under the rules of the JCP by only offering a TCK license that imposes additional terms and conditions that are not compatible with open source or Free software licenses."

The history of this conflict actually predates Oracle, as Sun too had these restrictive licenses - something that Oracle protested, right up until they bought the company, apparently.

The ASF says it will "terminate its relationship with the JCP if our rights as implementers of Java specifications are not upheld by the JCP Executive Committee to the limits of the EC's ability. The lack of active, strong and clear enforcement of those rights implies that the JSPA agreements are worthless, confirming that JCP specifications are nothing more than proprietary documentation." And if the Apache Software Foundation walks away from Java, then it's a clear statement that Java is not an open language.

Between the patent infringement lawsuit Oracle has filed against Google over Java, the recent decision by OpenOffice.org contributors to fork the project, and now the Apache Software Foundation's vote of no-confidence, Oracle is rapidly losing the support of the open source community, something that may have a ripple effect on the other open source projects under the company's control.

Google's motion refutes Oracle's allegations, claiming it has not infringed on any Oracle IP. contains a "Factual Background" section, detailing the history of Java, its development, Sun's decision to open source part of it, and Oracle's voice among others encouraging the full open-sourcing of Java - right up to the point when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems.

The motion also details the procedures by which new Java implementations can be developed under a free-of-charge license. "The license," says the motion, "allows developers to create 'clean room' implementations of Sun's Java specifications. If those implementations demonstrate compatibility with the Java specification, then Sun would provide a license for any of its intellectual property needed to practice the specification, including patent rights and copyrights. One example of a 'clean room' implementation of Sun's Java is Apache Harmony, developed by the Apache Software Foundation. The only way to demonstrate compatibility with the Java specification is by meeting all of the requirements of Sun's Technology Compatibility Kit ('TCK') for a particular edition of Sun's Java. Importantly, however, TCKs were only available from Sun, initially not available as open source, were provided solely at Sun's discretion, and included several restrictions, such as additional licensing terms and fees. In essence, although developers were free to develop a competing Java virtual machine, they could not openly obtain an important component needed to freely benefit from Sun's purported open-sourcing of Java."

In other words, despite the gesture of open source, restrictions have been placed on Java's licensing, particularly in the mobile environment. As Google notes, many organizations, including Oracle, have long voiced concerns about these licensing restrictions, urging Sun to fully open-source Java.

The Rise of Mobile, The Rise of Mobile Lawsuits

Of course, Oracle v Google is far from being the only lawsuit in the mobile industry right now. As the graphic from the Guardian below demonstrates, the battle for control of the growing mobile market isn't just a matter of building the best product. In some cases, the strategy seems to include building a strong team of patent attorneys.

It seems we're in good company, as one of MySQL's founders, Monty Widenius, the man who spent the past 27 years creating and working on MySQL, is using his personal blog to incite a mass letter-writing campaign to the European Commission in order to ensure the open-source future of the popular database. We're not the only ones who questioned whether MySQL would "succumb to corporate lameness" after a takeover by a major closed-source competitor. In fact, Widenius speculates that Oracle could close or even kill all or parts of MySQL.

Widenius, who split from Sun earlier this year after -- and entirely because -- MySQL was acquired by Sun, wrote in October about how MySQL could be shuttered.

"The easiest way to kill MySQL would be to not sell licenses any more or make their prices "really high". Another scenario is that the development resources are drastically reduced in some important areas. Then people would stop believing in the future of MySQL, which slowly will kill the product... It's safe to assume that both Sun and Oracle understand this."

Now, Widenius says MySQL -- hardly an underdog in the space -- has grown and stabilized to the point that it "hurts Oracle every day... Oracle [has] to lower prices all the time to compete with MySQL when companies start new projects. Some companies even migrate existing projects from Oracle to MySQL to save money."

Although Oracle has made several statements about the future of MySQL, here's what Widenius says the company has not guaranteed:

• that all of MySQL and its parts, modules and tools will remain under an open source license
• that MySQL license and support prices will remain the same
• that new versions and submitted patches will be released consistently and in a timely manner
• that dual licensing will continue and that affordable commercial licenses will be available
• that MySQL will be developed as an open source project
• that Oracle will work with the existing MySQL user community
• that discrimination will not occur when MySQL patches compete with Oracle products
• that MySQL will continue to be developed in ways that make it even more competitive with Oracle's main offering

In other words, by omitting certain language, Oracle has left itself more than enough ammunition to kill MySQL, if not execution-style then certainly over a long, slow, painful process of throttling innovation and freedom (as in beer and as in speech). Widenius points to Oracle's handling of the InnoDB acquisition in 2005 as a possible sign of things to come. "In the end," he writes, "Sun had to fork InnoDB, just to be able to improve performance."

So, without a list of users, Widenius is issuing a call to the entire open source community to help save MySQL from Oracle by emailing the EC and stating that either Oracle is not a fit steward for MySQL or that Oracle must make certain guarantees to ensure its open-source competitor's success. EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes is a known supporter of open-source technology; if user emails reach her before January 19 and make a significant impression, her office could shut the deal down.

As we've reported in the past, MySQL usage is expected to drop if the acquisition is complete. It seems that Oracle is putting a bad taste in the mouth of more than a few open-source geeks.

What's your opinion? Do you think Oracle should be allowed to take MySQL and do with it as they please? Do you think Oracle should have to make certain guarantees to ensure the longevity and success of MySQL? Or do you think MySQL should simply go to a good home, a.k.a. a nonprofit foundation, and remain a standalone competitor to Oracle's offering?

Vote below, and let us know your full thoughts in the comments.

The most extraordinary venting against SaaS came from the CEO of Lawson who, in an interview with ZDNet, predicted that "SaaS would collapse within 2 years". Larry Ellison of Oracle also weighed in during a recent investor conference call, as reported in Information Week, saying that Oracle did not see any money to be made in SaaS.

Just this week, we saw the news that SAP, a company that is investing in SaaS, telling investors that they saw an extraordinary order slowdown in the last 2 weeks due the global credit crisis.

This Is Not Just The "Pooh Corner Debates"

There are people who really believe that SaaS is a passing fad, just Service Bureau 3.0. These people are like Eeyore, the old grey donkey from Winnie The Poo. They think the Tigger types who are constantly running around excited about new technology are just, well ridiculous. There are others, like Piglet, who are just scared of anything new and big. The Wisdom Of Pooh, is just humbly asking asking questions.

But the guys running large enterprise IT vendors are smart. They are just putting on the Eeyore act to appeal to Eeyore clients to keep buying the old stuff as long as possible.

Debunking The SaaS = ASP and Service Bureau Myth

There are similarities between SaaS, ASP and Service Bureau. All are centralized architectures where the hardware is managed by somebody else. But that is where the similarity ends.

The notion that SaaS is taking us back to the days of dumb terminals is simply ridiculous. Have they not heard about AJAX and all the other rich client stuff that actually uses PC cycles to enhance the user experience?

The SaaS detractors are right that the ASP model was really just a financing vehicle. It was the same software, leased and run by somebody else. Yes, the economics of that are lousy.

SaaS is not ASP. SaaS is Net Native software, built to run on the Net. What worries the heck out of the big vendors is that this new code costs a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost that their mammoth old code bases cost. Seeing the traction that 37 Signals have with Basecamp and then seeing that they have only 12 employees is worrying for any old style competitor. You cannot even buy them, they have no VC forcing an exit and they are profitable.

The New New Thing Is Social SaaS

If SaaS was simply doing traditional enterprise IT but with a Net Native design at a fraction of the cost it would be big. But that is only the start. What really differentiates the SaaS winners is that they have a social media/networking twist at the core of their value proposition.

This Downturn Favors The Innovators

Some old style vendors are hoping that this is like the Dot Com crash, when big, solid and reliable beat small and innovative. They are wrong. This cycle is different. The client's risk goes away with SaaS. Try it for free for a while and then start small. The size of your company is not an issue.

This is The Innovation Economy and some people don't like that.