Bloch: I 'likely' copied Sun's Java code for Android
updated 10:15 pm EDT, Thu April 19, 2012
Nine lines duplicated in single Android file
The Google versus Oracle fight continued in court today, with self-titled "Chief Java Architect" Joshua Bloch's recorded testimony stating that it was "likely" some code he wrote for Android was the same as Sun's Java code. Nine lines of the code in question are duplicated in Google's Timsort.java file from 2007 that are also found verbatim from Sun's Arrays.java code, written in 1997.
Bloch started working at Sun in 1996, and during his tenure contributed to the Java code base under Sun's aegis. Eight years later, he was hired at Google. When he was directly asked on the stand today if he used the copyrighted Sun Java code that he had previously written for Timsort.java, Bloch denied having done so -- despite the presence of verbatim code.
The pre-recorded testimony from 2011 refuted his answer at least in part, but Bloch noted that it was a good engineering practice to use the same method, that he contributed the code to both Android and the Java Development Kit and added an apology as well. Android's source code in question contains 1.2 million lines of code, so the nine lines of code are well less than .000001 percent of the total code base.
The nine lines of code in question do not exist in Android 4.0. Google contends that it doesn't need a license to integrate Java in the Android source code, as the codebase used didn't require a paid license.
Testimony prior to Bloch's from Google engineer Tim Lindholm, also originally from Sun, denied that an email exchange between Page, Brin and himself was a verification that Google knew that Oracle's Java copyrights were violated. The emails that Lindholm was referring to remain a cornerstone of Sun's complaint. [via The Verge]
