Monthly Archive:August, 2010

The Best Part of Summer

Fresh Tomatoes Galore.

After an uncommonly cool summer, we’re finally getting some heat (it’s over 100F outside right now), and the plants are finally starting to produce like mad.

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In clockwise order in all of their gorgeous glory above, there’s green zebra, thessoloniki, white oxheart, ananas noir, and sweet horizon.

But wait, there’s more…

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…orange russian 117, thessoloniki, top sirloin, green zebra, ananas noir, and green giant.

In fact, now that they have the sun they’ve been waiting for, the plants will wait for no one.  Over the weekend, several of the wooden stakes I’d been using to support the tomato plants broke under the weight of the fruit that seems to grow while you watch it.  Yesterday, in an effort to limit my chores, after picking all of the cracked tomatoes for gazpacho, I picked only cucumbers and white oxhearts:

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With the addition of time, heat, spices and acid these became a lovely golden rosemary tomato sauce and pickles.

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And now, I just have to come up with a plan for the remaining hundred or so pounds of ripe tomatoes that need attention.

It’s a good problem to have!

Oracle is *not* going to play nice

I spend quite a bit of time talking through *theoretical* risks associated with using third party software in products, particularly with respect to software that’s been developed in connection with some type of promise of openness.

I try to explain to my clients that just because things have gone smoothly thus far with respect to a particular piece of code does not mean that it will continue to go smoothly.

Oracle has just made this explanation *much* easier for me by suing Google for its use of Java in Android.

The complaint is pretty straightforward (I guess he likes it here, because after spending so much time here with respect to the Prop 8 litigation, David Boies is named as pro hac vice on behalf of Oracle).

The complaint alleges infringement by Google in its use of Java technology in the Android Platform. 7 patents held by Oracle America (the new name of the former “Sun” subsidiary) are asserted. It also alleges copyright infringement.

In many ways, this move is shocking. The entire Java mobile development community is going to be reeling. But, in other ways, I think there will be some closure. Many of my clients have been waiting to see how Oracle would treat Java. And now we know…

In particular, I’m curious how the release of Java (including the Hotspot JVM upon which the Google JVM may very well be based) under the GPL v 2.0 by Sun prior to the Sun-Oracle acquisition will play into this. Does the GPL v 2.0 license contain an implicit patent license and/or create an argument for patent exhaustion?

**UPDATE: I have been informed that the Google JVM Dalvik is a completely new implementation, written from scratch by Google, which, assuming it’s true means that any arguments based on the GPL release of the Hotspot JVM are going to need to be much more complicated (e.g. it may play into the damages calculation, or perhaps they will still try to make the patent exhaustion argument).

Stay tuned.

This should be VERY interesting.

Summer Harvests and Storage

Finally, we’re getting into the time of year when the tomato plants are so productive that we can’t eat everything they give us. The rest of the garden is no slouch either.

Tonight’s gorgeous harvest was limited to slicing tomatoes and paste tomatoes (no cherry tomatoes, no squash, no cucumbers), and even so, I’ve got my work cut out for me over the next couple of days.

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Last weekend, the harvest was reasonably bountiful:

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So, I spent much of the weekend doing the very meditative acts of canning, pickling, and slow roasting.

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I yielded 5 pints of Tomato Sauce from chopped up tomatoes:

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Plus, a tupperware full of slow-roasted tomatoes, 2 quarts of pickled green tomatoes (so delicious!), a quart of pickled squash, and two colorful quarts of tomatoes in their own juice.

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At the end of the canning, the kitchen was a disaster. Imagine an entire kitchen covered with splashes of juice and seeds. Even my shoes were caught in the crossfire.

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I’ve learned, though. This weekend, I’ve recruited help.