Morfik Defends IP Rights Against Google 99
ReadWriteWeb writes "Today Morfik came out fighting in defense of its product JST (Javascript Synthesis Technology). Morfik has implied that Google infringed its IP by releasing Google Web Toolkit (GWT) a couple of weeks ago. The reason? GWT bore more than a casual resemblance to Morfik's JST, which allows developers to use a high-level language of choice and have it compiled to JavaScript. GWT is similar, being a Java-to-Javascript translator. These Javascript compiler products are increasingly necessary for companies like Google, with the high use of Ajax on today's Web and the associated complexity of programming in Javascript."
Ownership? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they think that Google could have actually copied their idea in such a short time, then they are admitting that they had no competitive advantage outside the recourse of litigation. More likely, they developed it concurrently. Google has been making fat web pages as they call them for some time now and I imagine that GWT started as a tool for inhouse projects.
Language translators? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ownership? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can imagine how it went: google released the kit, Morfik read up on it, and realizsed he's screwed, so he went "legal" on the matter.
Risk is part of the business. It sure took a lot of time to develop his JS synthesis compilers, and it's terribly frustrating to see a competitor release a free alternative.
But here's the thing: if the most valuable thing in your product is an "idea" (the idea of roughly translating languages in JS spaghetti code) instead of the product itself, you'll be screwed sooner or later anyways.
Synthesis is a bridge for C++/Java/C# developers to get coding without learning the technology around "AJAX". It has no value to someone experienced in AJAX.
All of it: classes, typing, interfaces: it's all fake, and impossible to enforce in the runtime, since the runtime doesn't support it (save me the crap about Turing complete since I'm talking practical speed of execution here). So if the compiler doesn't catch it, you're basically screwed.
wait for the real story... (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt that any company would go to court to defend a claim that they own programming language-to-language translation. If they are, then they'll lose or have the case tossed out.
More likely is that someone at Morfik looked at the output from the google toolkit and noticed that it was suspiciously similar to the output from their own ("we never got the parens to line up properly for a nested if and google's compiler messes up in exactly the same way... hmmm" -- or something like that).
Of course, this is just speculation. Still waiting for something resembling facts...
Re:Sure.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's your tinfoil hat
If this was the case we'd know about it: the "compiled" code it pretty easy to open and read (even if it's still a JS spaghetti mess of a code). No info can be hidden inside.
They do it for two reasons:
1. PR: after few screw ups, like the google's China service, google's "omg ms doesn't put us default in ie7" rants and so on, they needed a bit of a good image in the community to restore they non-evil status
2. they get thousands of free betatesters world-wide to help them point out flaws in their code, which then they'll use in THEIR OWN applications.
Re:Ownership? (Score:5, Insightful)
In my case though, after reading through my business plan a few times in denial, I came to the realization that I had accomplished a lot and learned a lot but that was all. There's always next time or the time after that.
If I would have wasted any more energy on it I would be in a much worse situation today.
Struts did it first (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is, the solution that Morfik came up with is actually one of the two most obvious (to any software designer level IT professional that has done any significat amount of web-interface software design and programming) solutions for the "JavaScript libraries are not 100% standard and the language (the official name is ECMAScript) is bug-prone" problem. The solutions being:
Given the state of the USPTO i wouldn't be surprised in somebody already patented both "inovations"...
Re:How well does this cross-compilation work? (Score:3, Insightful)
OMG it's turing-complete! Let's use it to render 3D movies!
This is the most tired and misunderstood argument to use: any general purpose modern language is turing-complete.
Let's patch our way by abusing the fact it's turing-complete! Runtime features don't matter! Filesize don't matter and the fact you may need a super-computer don't matter too!
What is "IP"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems this case is either a patent or copyright-issue, but by not stating what "IP" has been violated, TFA is totally meaningless and open for speculation and confusion of the worst sort.
There is in reality nothing called "Intellectual Property".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Do Some Research (Score:3, Insightful)