Profile of William H. Alsup, a Judge Who Codes and Decides Tech's Biggest Cases

Sarah Jeong at The Verge has an interesting profile of William H. Alsup, the judge in Oracle v. Google case, who to many's surprise was able to comment on the technical issues that Oracle and Google were fighting about. Alsup admits that he learned the Java programming language only so that he could better understand the substance of the case. Here's an excerpt from the interview: On May 18th, 2012, attorneys for Oracle and Google were battling over nine lines of code in a hearing before Judge William H. Alsup of the northern district of California. The first jury trial in Oracle v. Google, the fight over whether Google had hijacked code from Oracle for its Android system, was wrapping up. The argument centered on a function called rangeCheck. Of all the lines of code that Oracle had tested -- 15 million in total -- these were the only ones that were "literally" copied. Every keystroke, a perfect duplicate. It was in Oracle's interest to play up the significance of rangeCheck as much as possible, and David Boies, Oracle's lawyer, began to argue that Google had copied rangeCheck so that it could take Android to market more quickly. Judge Alsup was not buying it. "I couldn't have told you the first thing about Java before this trial," said the judge. "But, I have done and still do a lot of programming myself in other languages. I have written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times or more. I could do it. You could do it. It is so simple." It was an offhand comment that would snowball out of control, much to Alsup's chagrin. It was first repeated among lawyers and legal wonks, then by tech publications. With every repetition, Alsup's skill grew, until eventually he became "the judge who learned Java" -- Alsup the programmer, the black-robed nerd hero, the 10x judge, the "master of the court and of Java."

Interesting TFA...

[Anonymous Cashews]

For the first time in 20 years of Slashdot, I've actually read TFA.

Re:

[Anonymous Cashews]

And looked at the pictures (of his Dell running his ham radio application program, and so on) Is it April Fool's day yet?

Give the judge a break. He's been programming in Quick BASIC for 30 years. It's miracle he haven't gone insane from the goto statements.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Quickbasic didn't require goto statements (FOR,NEXT loops and DO,LOOP (while) loops):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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[kalieaire]

it took a while, but i read the entire thing too.

Not in America

[Anonymous Coward]

It is un-American for a judge or lawyer to descend to know anything of the subject matter of the cases they try. The American way is to argue technical points of obscure laws, to pander to baser instincts of juries. There is no justice here. This is not ignorant and supercilious enough to be Justice. This is a sad day for Justice.

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[sconeu]

I think that AC was using sarcasm...

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[Dorianny]

Congress is supposed to write clear and concise laws for the justice system to follow. Congress has purposely skirted its responsibility leaving it up to judges and lawyers to try and settle disputes using laws that never envisioned the type of scenarios they are being confronted with. They have no choice but to argue technical points of obscure law that might be the closest thing they can find in the books relevant to the dispute

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[nomadic]

That is not really how it works.

Waymo vs. Uber

[ytene]

And for those who didn't make the connection - and the OP doesn't mention explicitly - Judge Alsup is currently presiding over the Waymo vs. Uber case, which is due in court in December.

Re:Waymo vs. Uber

[xevioso]

The sad thing is that the judge realizes that each of these companies will try to get non-technical people to be jurors, throwing out anyone with a technical background. The judge even admonished the press to report on this.

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[ytene]

I wasn't aware of that, but it does strike me as something that a legal counsel might want to do if they were in doubt as to the strength of their case. The last thing the weaker side needs is someone on the jury with technical acumen when it comes to deliberation time - the less-technical jurors can easily be swayed by someone sounding as if they know what they are talking about.

Far better to push for an all technical jury and try and win on the merits of your case.

In fact, I think your comment is re

Where's the oral argument?

[bogaboga]

Anyone can point me to the [audio] oral argument for this Oracle v. Google Android case?

I will be most grateful.

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[sconeu]

I believe that Groklaw has the transcripts.

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[reg]

Check the Groklaw archives for all of the transcripts. Highly doubt there is actual audio available.

Re: Where's the oral argument?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they recognize that verbal speech carries more semantic bandwidth and wants to hear it the same way people in the court room did.

Take your generational hate and shove it up your crusty ass.

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[BoogieChile]

You must be one of those slow readers, given that watching a video or listening to audio takes the rest of us way longer than reading the transcript.

We need more judges like this

[Alain Williams]

judges who are willing to get to understand and appreciate what their case is all about. How would you feel if you were being tried for murder and the judge did not really understand the concepts of life & death ?

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[omnichad]

This is a copyright case. Blocking software patents is like blocking patents on items that involve a hammer. The problems with software patents are with obviousness, not with the ability to make patentable, novel things. If you can patent x, you can't patent x but on a computer. The fact that y uses a computer should not make it ineligible.

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[Anonymous Coward]

This is a copyright case. Blocking software patents is like blocking patents on items that involve a hammer. The problems with software patents are with obviousness, not with the ability to make patentable, novel things. If you can patent x, you can't patent x but on a computer. The fact that y uses a computer should not make it ineligible.

Sorry, but you're so wrong that I feel compelled to teach you something you obviously don't already know. The problem with software patents is that software is math, so software patents allow you to patent numbers [wikipedia.org] and numerical formulas.

Bonus: Here's a function [wikipedia.org] that violates not only every software patent in existence but also every software patent that will ever exist, because it tries a little bit of every program that can theoretically exist.

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[Talderas]

Let's consider that the basis of patent law is to allow an inventor to profit from what he created. In order to profit from your creation you need to secure funding to start producing the invention and well as bring it to market. An individual who creates an invention is going to have a harder time performing those tasks than a large corporation like GE. Without patents, GE could see the inventor's invention, copy it, bring it to market, and apply their current knowledge and efficiency to reduce the costs t

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[Joe_Dragon]

show me a case where some one being of life support got some off in a murder case.

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[hcs_$reboot]

And how Oracle was desperately hoping the judge wouldn't understand these 9 lines of trivial code and that would help the case in their favor... disgusting.

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[hene]

How would you feel if you were being tried for murder and the judge did not really understand the concepts of life & death ?

I believe that it would play to my advantage.

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[Big Hairy Ian]

I'd feel much more comfortable if I was being tried for murder by a judge who was himself an experienced murderer :)

Hearsay

[ByteSlicer]

I've been told the judge once created a GUI in Visual Basic to track down a killer's IP address.

QuickBASIC

[Anonymous Coward]

The judge sat me down on the sofa and walked me through his programs on a 2011 court-issued Dell laptop. He couldn’t run the same programs on his desktop computer, he said with some irritation, so the Dell was here to stay. “It’s the last one that will support QuickBASIC, which is kind of a shame, because it’s the only language I really know.”

I wonder if the judge has tried an open source clone of QuickBASIC, such as this one [qb64.net].

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[hcs_$reboot]

Maybe by saying "because it’s the only language I really know" the judge means he's not interested in programming anymore.