FSF calls for campaign against Oracle over Android case

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is calling on the open source community to take action against Oracle over its patent legal case against Google.

Brett Smith, from the FSF Licensing Compliance Lab, called on open source users to start adding information relevant to the case in the FSF End Software Patents wiki, to form a repository of evidence that can be used in the forthcoming legal wranglings. A letter-writing campaign to Larry Ellison has also been proposed.

"An aggressive infringement suit over software patents is a clear attack against someone's freedom to use, share, modify and redistribute software, freedoms that everyone should always have," Smith said in a blog post.

"Oracle now seeks to take these rights away, not just from Google but from all Android users."

Google could have avoided the legal action by using the IcedTea General Public Licence (GPL) Java runtime environment for Android, which would have provided protection. However, this has been disputed by experts in the field.

"The FSF grossly overstates the extent to which Google could benefit from the GPL," Florian Mueller, founder of the No Software Patents campaign, told V3.co.uk.

"The relevant Java code is available under the GPLv2, a version of the GPL that does not contain an explicit patent grant. Google would certainly have had to alter the code and would therefore not be able to defend itself on that basis."

However, Mueller pointed out that Google is not above defending its own patents, and did not oppose patented software in its testimony at the Bilski patent hearings at the Supreme Court.

The EU had also highlighted this weakness in GPLv2 during its investigation into the Oracle/Sun merger.

"Google owes its success in no small part to patent protection for the PageRank algorithm and other key success factors," Mueller said.

"But as Google now makes forays into new markets, it increasingly learns about what patents are like when others own them and hold them against you."