Google Gets Mixed Reception in High Court Clash With Oracle (bloomberg.com) 74
Alphabet's Google got a mixed reception at the U.S. Supreme Court as it sought to overturn a ruling that could force the company to pay billions of dollars for improperly using Oracle's copyrighted code in the Android operating system. From a report: Holding a low-tech telephone session in one of the biggest software fights in American history, the justices on Wednesday questioned Google's contention that it had no way to replicate the code without forcing millions of software developers to learn a new programming language. Justice Neil Gorsuch told Google's lawyer that Apple and other companies have "come up with phones that work just fine without engaging in this kind of copying." But Gorsuch also raised the possibility of returning the case to a federal appeals court for another look at Google's contention that it engaged in legitimate "fair use" of Oracle's Java programming language. Oracle says it's entitled to at least $8.8 billion in damages. A jury found that Google's code copying was a legitimate fair use, but a federal appeals court reversed that finding.
The Evil Empires! (Score:3, Interesting)
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Well, let see if Larry Ellison will be able to buy a new yacht...
Re:The Evil Empires! (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course if Oracle goes out of business, there will be much less impact to the world then if Google at its current state does.
Oracle, hasn't been innovating, they have been just playing on their old cash cows, and buying technology to milk them until they are empty.
Java had the opportunity to be the major language of the first half of this century. Sun Micrososystems focus on Hardware, meant Java, was a fun little side project that they made to make sure there is some advertisement for the company. While Oracle, just enforced and made more expensive the licenses until it has become a legacy language, that you only code with because there was some old Java Code that you want to expand on.
While I am not a big OO Language Fan, There could had been some real growth if Java Did somethings that .NET did, such as having many languages compile into the same bytecode. As well spent more time making sure Java ran seamless on different OS's. Vs treating it like an interpreted language, where you needed to keep a security problem on your PC just to run a piece of software.
Re:The Evil Empires! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oracle buys competition and then extinguishes it, same with Cisco. .NET for all intents has replaced Java everywhere, as a direct result of Java licensing nonsense. The only places that still use Java are places that had people who learned on Java and don't know anything else.
Android's use of Java was directly so it could eat's RIM's lunch by developing an OS that RIM software can be ported to easily, but instead it turns out Apple ate their customers first because people DID NOT LIKE JAVA. Apple offered the ability to develop software using the same C/C++ programmers that every company that developed their own tools had. All the Java developers that still have jobs are likely still working on the codebase they wrote 20 years ago.
Java could have been the one-language-to-rule-them-all, but Oracle would rather seek wring money out of anyone using it. So now it's poison. Funny of all the programming cruft I had to learn 20+ years ago, both Java and Macromedia's software were bought by larger companies and discontinued as a web programming language.
The thing I strongly dislike about Java moreso than other languages (even though I can throw this at perl, php, python, and ruby equally) is how it only solved two problems (threading and portability) while simultaneously creating the OO programming creep that all other scripting languages thereafter modeled itself on, which itself was based on C++.
It's less "OO bad" and more "OO for OO's sake, one file per class, with each class containing get/set functions just for one variable" turns things quickly into an unreadable, unmaintainable mess.
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.NET is still effectively Windows only, except for a tiny number of programs creately solely to prove otherwise. Portability was never a goal of .NET but it was a goal of Java. Java even runs on smart cards, chips based upon an 8-bit 8051.
OO is great, but it gets perverted too much, made too complicated, re-invented in clumsy ways, and so forth. Look at the original Smalltalk, a strongly typed language where you don't declare types; then you go with C++ where you explicitly declare the types and over time
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.NET is still effectively Windows only
You clearly haven't been keeping up then. .NET Core is cross platform, and the version 5 release will see it become the only version of .NET. Version 5.0 release candidates are available now, though I expect there to be a few more iterations before it is production ready.
Sure, the ".NET Desktop Runtime", including the windows forms GUI assemblies, will remain Windows only. But .NET console applications, that avoid direct system calls, should just work on linux.
The windows desktop application is dying any
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Theoretical, until someone uses it seriously on Linux, or MacOS, or an embedded sys... oh wait. A relative worked for a company where one dev insisted they do the project on a small ARM device with .NET. The software team had no manager at the time, but as soon as one was hired this idea was stamped out and they got to go back to using the existing code base that everyone already knew. Sounds crazy, but it's how it was told to me.
It is all about *nix (Score:2)
If APIs can be copyright.
Java is very cross platform BTW, Far more than anything else. That is one of its strengths. And there are many languages that compile to Java Bytecode, which then the Java JIT compiles into very efficient code.
C# is generally better than Java, but really only Windows for now. Yes, there is Mono and may be more later, but for now if you want cross platform go Java.
The real demise of Java could be.. (Score:2)
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You can't think of it that way, we need to divorce our feelings for the companies and look at the long term effects of the decisions in progress.
Even that is not the decision before the court (Score:2)
Even *that* isn't the decision the court is called to make.
That question goes to what the law *should be*.
The role of the court is to decide what the law *was*, as applied to this case.
The fact that Google tried to negotiate a Java license, then broke off negotiations when they didn't like the price, indicates they knew full well that unlike C++, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, etc Java is a proprietary language for which they needed a license.
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Guilty but had a good excuse??? WtF???
Yes. It is a perfectly normal legal concept.
Re:Google's code copying was a legitimate fair use (Score:5, Informative)
It is called an affirmative defense. Basically 'I did what I am accused of (copying), but I am allowed to (fair use)'. No WTF about it.
Re:Google's code copying was a legitimate fair use (Score:5, Insightful)
Guilty but had a good excuse??? WtF???
In this case, the "code copying" was using the same function and namespace names, as well as parameter orderings, as Oracles (previously Suns) standard library and object set for the standard implementation of the language Java language.
They didnt copy code. What Google did was allowed their own language to be mostly source code compatible with Oracles language.
We rarely hear about source code compatibility much these days, but when I was a teen it was a big thing that the Intel 8086 and 8088 were source code (assembler!) compatible with the 8080.
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In this case, the "code copying" was using the same function and namespace names, as well as parameter orderings, as Oracles (previously Suns) standard library and object set for the standard implementation of the language Java language.
So, as a sysadmin, not a programmer, what I'm hearing is that this is similar to the old "can you copyright an API" debate? As in, recreating the same functions that accept the same parameters to do the same tasks and return the same response codes. I seem to recall that debate ended with "no, you don't own the API, only the implementation".
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An API is technically just a formal specification of an idea which may incidentally be usually expressed as code in some programming language.
You cannot copyright ideas.
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Maybe not, but you can buy a team of expensive lawyers to take your case all the way to the supreme court. The problem is that it is not spelled out clearly and distinctly in the law (US or anywhere else). In the past no one really bothered much to try and assert that their incidental API was super valuable apart from the ideas or implementation, and most famous APIs were deliberately turned into standards so that they would be used widely (standard C library, POSIX, etc).
*nix is toast (Score:2)
If APIs can be copyright.
Who owns those APIs now?
Re: Google's code copying was a legitimate fair us (Score:2)
This is exactly it; Google adopted Apache's Harmony project, a near-match for Java 5 & 6, that never cleared the Sun compatibility suite. Same API calls,, different implementation. The backend compiled to their bytecode. Sun never cared (tacitly approved), Oracle wanted licensing when it took off and JavaME didn't. Repeated cases said you couldn't copyright APIs, then fair use. The Federal Circuit, in charge of copyright and patent appeals, keeps siding in favor of maximum protections, though they've r
Re: Google's code copying was a legitimate fair us (Score:4, Insightful)
It kind of boils down to whether the judges are pro-corporation, or pro-competition. Given the completely screwed up state of US copyright and patent law, it's no suprise that those appeals judges are very much pro-corporation where fair-use and fair competition are discouraged.
This case isn't about whether Oracle or Google is going to win, and whihc of those two mega corporations you like best. It is about whether fair use and competition are going to win or lose. Even if Godzilla sized Google wins, it still means that the giant monsters get to compete against each other, even little monsters can join in. If Google wins it also means that Google will potentially lose in other battles if it tries to exert too much control over copyrighted material.
Re: Google's code copying was a legitimate fair us (Score:5, Insightful)
If it works, reverse engineering is over.
If it works, American reverse engineering is over. The rest of the world will continue to treat APIs as ineligible for copyright protection. The only thing this will do is seriously wreck the tech industry in the U.S.
Unfortunately, bits like this concern me greatly:
Justice Neil Gorsuch told Google's lawyer that Apple and other companies have "come up with phones that work just fine without engaging in this kind of copying."
... not realizing that Apple only exists because of the Mac, which was copied lock, stock, and barrel from Xerox, or that the entire bottom half of Apple's operating system was copied from BSD, which was copied from AT&T UNIX. IMO, if Oracle prevails here, there's probably nothing stopping the company that inherited ÅT&T's IP (Micro Focus International?) from demanding licensing fees from Apple.
I hope someone pointed that out....
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They didnt copy code. What Google did was allowed their own language to be mostly source code compatible with Oracles language.
We rarely hear about source code compatibility much these days, but when I was a teen it was a big thing that the Intel 8086 and 8088 were source code (assembler!) compatible with the 8080.
I hope Oracle wins this case, it will be a nail in the coffin for proprietary and half-open libraries and APIs.
If you want to own your own code, you have to use properly licensed libraries. Exclusively.
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The history though is that Sun was fine with this for the most part, a clean room implementation of Java didn't cause them worry. Oracle though wanted total control. Sun did not want Java-like languages to be called "Java" because that broke the goal of having a portable and consistent language.
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Fair use means "this sort of copying is explicitly legal, for one reason or another".
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No, it does not mean that at all. There is nothing remotely explicit about it. Fair use is a defense. A court MAY accept that defense based on consideration of a number of criteria.
Torn on this one - with Google but not liking it (Score:2)
Will Google's flub spoil the whole pot? (Score:1)
It seems Google lied when they said there is "no other way to do it". They did have an option: reinvent the entire wheel. It just takes longer.
But that's a different issue than mirroring interfaces. I hope Google's fib doesn't ruin interface mirroring in general.
Re:Torn on this one - with Google but not liking i (Score:5, Insightful)
They could have gone with something based on Javascript or Python, and with some elbow grease gotten all the functionality they needed. But they were too cowardly to come out with a new, unknown, platform.
That's a ridiculous argument twice over. If this appeals court ruling is allowed to stand, Google's V8 Javascript interpreter may also be illegal, and for the same reasons. Second, what nonsense. So every platform should have its own unique programming language, solely owned by the vendor of that product? XBox should be programmed exclusively with C#, no C++ allowed? Playstation should be programmed solely with SonyWTF, no C# or C++ allowed? Switch should be programmed solely with NintedoWarioASM, no C++ allowed? iPhones should be programmed solely with Swift, no Javascript allowed to execute on it ever?
Allowing language APIs to be owned and licensed makes languages cease to exist as we understand them today. The whole WORLD becomes a byzantine nightmare of locked down, incompatible non-interoperable junk that will be abandoned by the manufacturer the moment something shinier (with better profit margins) comes along, and there's nothing you can do about it. The moment the vendor deprecates the product, they can unilaterally yank the license for the platform-specific language that every platform has, killing the old hardware instantly. Do you even listen to yourself?
Oracle is trying to set the world on fire for money and if Google fucks this up, we might as well all become hunter-gatherers, because technological civilization as we know it becomes untenable. Everything is touched by software today, and writing software would require the permission of literally hundreds of lawyers, because every single library you use has its own license and if you dare to so much as write a wrapper around a library function, you've created a derivative work and your current IDE license doesn't allow that, sorry, negotiate a new one. And pay. And pay and pay and pay and pay and....
Oracle can fuck right off. Words can not even express how much Oracle can fuck right off.
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What a pile of nonsense. How would the Javascript interpreter be illegal? The ECMAscript spec is explicity published for the purposes of making your own interpreter. It is a copyrighted work LICENSED under open source terms. Python is open source, LICENSED under open source terms. GLIBC is open source, LICENSED under open source terms.
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OP is wrong about the languages themselves, but not about their libraries/modules. You know all of that Javascript polyfilling? That might be illegal under Oracle's interpretation of copyright law, depending on who owned the API. How often has something become popular and then people have copied and reimplemented? jQuery used '$' from Prototype, and others have used it since. What if Prototype had been a closed source library like MFC that became popular and other people wanted to use the same clever tr
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How would Javascript polyfilling be illegal? I get the idea that the majority of the people who are making these claims about 'things that could be illegal' have no idea what the case is actually about.
There is no claim that implementing functions that do the same thing is somehow copyright infringement - it isn't. There isn't even a claim that using the same names and parameters for functions is infringement. There isn't even a claim that duplicating the API is infringement. The claim is that Google to
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You've clearly not been following the case closely enough. The only claim of actual code copying is a few lines of code in one function (which was actually written by the same author in both cases).
The current case now rests entirely on the claim that "using the same names and parameters for functions is infringement" and "that duplicating the API is infringement". This is the whole ballgame:
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What a pile of nonsense. How would the Javascript interpreter be illegal? The ECMAscript spec is explicity published for the purposes of making your own interpreter. It is a copyrighted work LICENSED under open source terms.
Today it is. Do you know who owns the copyright to the ECMAscript API? You can maybe find out. Name names. Now, do you know their price? Microsoft bought Minecraft for $2.5 billion. Fucking Minecraft. For $2.5 billion. Can you even conceive how much they would pay to buy the copyright for ECMAscript? Now take that astronomical number and try to conceive how much higher Apple might bid. Or Google. In defense against Microsoft. $10 billion? $50 billion? Easily. EASILY. Now... can the current o
JavaScript API is BSD license (Score:2)
> If this appeals court ruling is allowed to stand, Google's V8 Javascript interpreter may also be illegal, and for the same reasons. Second, what nonsense. So every platform should have its own unique programming language, solely owned by the vendor of that product? XBox should be programmed exclusively with C#, no C++ allowed?
JavaScript (ecmascript) and C++ are open license, anyone can implement them. Google started negotiating to buy a Java license because Java is proprietary. They then decided they
Profit! (Score:2)
I copyright the following: Using the "equals" sign ("=") to assign the variable on left of it with the value on the right of it (e.g LET X = 4). This also applies to trivially modified equals signs (like Pascal's ":="). Pay me or have fun programming in assembler.
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I actually had a task this year when we ported code from one platform to another one. We had a third party network stack on the old product, but the new product was Linux. So we put in some stubs - keeping the same third party library APIs in a few cases such as logging messages, using the same error codes, and so forth (yes, the original devs were a shortsighted here and never put in compatibility layers on top of third party layers and locked us into particular vendors). Then some higher ups became ver
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Felt like a waste of time.
Honestly it wasnt much time though, was it? Probably wasnt even a hint of missing any deadlines also, right?
What do you do with Spare Programmer Hours.
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I'm really torn about this.
On the one hand, developing a really good API can involve a serious R&D effort. Why shouldn't that investment be protected by copyright?
On the other hand, APIs being copyrighted would be absolutely devastating to the software development industry.
Especially in the U.S. where, these days, copyrights effectively last "eternity minus one day."
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On the one hand, developing a really good API can involve a serious R&D effort. Why shouldn't that investment be protected by copyright?
This is known as the Sweat of the Brow argument for copyright. It has been expressly rejected by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional in Feist Pubs., Inc. v. Rural Tel. Svc. Co., Inc., 499 US 340 (1991):
Without a doubt, the "sweat of the brow" doctrine flouted basic copyright principles. ... In summary, the 1976 revisions to the Copyright Act leave no doubt that originality, not "sweat of the brow," is the touchstone of copyright protection....
That is, whether it merits copyright protection has nothing to do with how much or how little effort it took to create.
More importantly, the subject matters of copyright and patents don't overlap (though a particular thing may include both copyrightable and patentable material). Patents protect func
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On the one hand, I don't buy at all the Oracle argument that the API signatures are copyrightable. Setting that as precendent would be the death knell for interoperability.
No, it would be the death knell for APIs that aren't licensed permissibly enough. It would set a minimum standard for licensing.
And create an opening for a new smart phone ecosystem.
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But that second approach is bad in many ways. It goes back to an earlier era where many computer manufacturers would have their own unique language that was not just an assembler. COBOL and Fortran kind of broke that a bit, but manufacturers in that era still might have their own systems language. Unix and C broke through that even more and portability became much more practical. When Sun created Java, a major design goal was indeed to be highly portable. By the time Android was being created, the conc
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Well thats a good one! Did you read the case? Do you know that the reason Google implemented their own Java was because, when they were in discussion with Sun about using Java, Sun demanded that any changes made be given back to Sun so they would be available to everyone? Google refused to do that, so they went and made their own.
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That's fine. Or is the legal decision supposed to be based upon deciding which company has committed no sin?
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I didn't say anything about a legal decision. I just said your argument that using Java was a 'natural choice' because it was designed to be portable, when Googles whole aim was to break that portability, is stupid.
paywalled (Score:2)
I could not read the article, but presenting APIs to a group of ancient men who barely understand how to work a microwave will probably make for a decision that throws the tech Industry into a tailspin
A bit if a rant: I get the concept paywalls, but if I were the pay for all the content that is walled off, that will probably equal my whole monthly salary. I wish another method could be used.
Any why do people not pay, probably due to the potential of seeing of being spammed with obnoxious ads
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But how much to see just one article of theirs online? That's the issue. Do we pay for every single article we see online from the Economist, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the LA Times, the London Times, and so forth. How do we pay? Do we have to subscribe to all of those for a full month to see one article, do we pull out a credit card to deposit 2 cents per view, do we do some massively insecure paypal sort of system, or...? No, I just won't visit those sites, end of story, I don't need to read
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I could not read the article, but presenting APIs to a group of ancient men who barely understand how to work a microwave will probably make for a decision that throws the tech Industry into a tailspin
About the furthest I'd imagine it can be dumbed-down to, is "it's how code talks to other code". A ruling that APIs are copyrightable would break the friggen internet.
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It would be akin to saying that only one microwave vendor is allowed to organize the number entry button in a 3x4 grid going from 1-9 with 0 in the middle of the bottom row, because others would violate their copyright over that organization of buttons.
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The argument Oracle brought up was Harry Potter. Seriously. As in, let's say they wrote Harry Potter, and then Google went and copied the title and the heading for each chapter, and then wrote a new story based upon those chapter headings ("The Boy Who Lived").
Google responded that it was more like the API for a book. They copied the use of page numbers, having a front and back cover, having a spine on the book, and so forth.
(for me as an programmer/engineer, I'd say it's like copying the reading from le
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...I get the concept paywalls, but if I were the pay for all the content that is walled off, that will probably equal my whole monthly salary. I wish another method could be used.
What is needed is some kind of universal micro-payment system for news sites. You buy micro-currency with real money, then buy per-article access with that currency. News sites submit all the collected micro-currency monthly for real currency. Anyone???
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I've found that most paywalls and ad-blocker-blockers can be worked around by either deleting the cookies for that site and reloading, or doing an "inspect element", removing the veil and other offending elements of the page, and removing the ever-present "overflow-y: hidden" properties where needed. Usually takes less than 10 seconds overall.
If I have to do more work than that, then it's more effort than I'm willing to expend and I find the information elsewhere.
This is about API's (Score:3)
I hope the court does not get this wrong. Google wanted to use the Java programming language. There is more to a language than just the language. It's all about the API's. It's all in the name... interface. It's a functional specification for an interface.
Re:This is about API's (Score:4, Interesting)
If Oracle wins, everyone loses -- including Oracle. At that point, IBM can step in and sue Oracle for copying SQL -- which IBM created. Oracle's win could easily result in Oracle ceasing to exist. The damages IBM could claim would be in the many hundreds of billions. It would be about 95% of everything Oracle the company has ever earned. I made that number up, but the point is still valid.
Something.something.darkside() (Score:3)
So Compaq settled this decades ago when cloning DOS by writing down the APIs, then having DOS-virgin* programmers create their actual code.
To work around that, isn't this Oracle claiming the format of something.something.something.some_function() is the copyrighted thing others cannot use?
That seems like BS because it's just a function name regardless of munging or hierarchic dotting inheritance, which is munging under a different name.
* Insert self-writing joke here
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Compaq didn't reverse engineer DOS, they famously clean room reverse engineered the BIOS. Principle is still the same though.
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That would confused judges though. They could say that they didn't copy any words, and they're just using some numbers. Ie, interrupt 3 is documented in the assembler manual from Intel, it's not an IBM concept. So push 3 arguments, force the software interrupt; the BIOS then responds with an interrupt handler. There's no "BIOSReadDev()" style of API there. If you tried to convince the old judges who dind't know software that you have a copyright on the numbers such that 12 means read from the disk, a
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So Compaq settled this decades ago when cloning DOS by writing down the APIs, then having DOS-virgin* programmers create their actual code.
It was actually the PC BIOS, not DOS. Compaq may have been able to do this due to historical accident as much as anything else: IBM was probably still trying to avoid looking like a "monopolist" due to the big antitrust woes they had recently been through. Unleashing a bunch of Oracle-style lawyers on smaller competitors might not have been the best move for them at the time (especially since early on, IBM didn't seem to think that PCs were going to be that much of a big deal).
Another factor might be that t
Oracle Is a Hypocrite (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple already had their own set of extensive APIs since they already had to support their own desktop operating system and iOS descends from macOS. Of course Google could have come up with their own APIs completely from scratch but then it would likely not be able to interface with the many thousands of third-party Java libraries that are available. It would have likely taken Google years to implement all of that functionality from scratch and would have put them significantly further behind iOS. It also would have significantly raised the barrier of entry for software developers that used those APIs since they would have to learn all of their features and quirks from scratch.
For many decades, and especially after the dawn of the internet, software interoperability has been one most important aspects of software development. It's the reason why Oracle themselves have used Amazon's S3 APIs instead of coming up with their own. I really hope that Google's lawyers drive that point home to show that Oracle themselves are doing the same exact thing they're suing Google for doing. That would reinforce the fact that creating your own implementation of an API isn't too uncommon and it would force Oracle's lawyers to attempt to justify Oracle's own "copyright infringement".
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Yes, this is a simple case of software interoperability. Don't bother reading TFA. I mean, don't you want cool tech toys for cheap? Why shouldn't one of the largest "tech" companies in the world get to use an entire ecosystem for free?
I mean after all, their cloud API is compatible with AWS! Also, the only thing I know about computers is they're a lot like cars, so please take my opinion with a grain of salt.
I think I should keep writing here so my comment is a bit longer, that seems to give it more c
They copied an idea, not code (Score:2)
And ideas are not copyrightable, full stop.
Oracle is full of shit, and it amazes me that this has gone on for this long
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Seems they also copied a code from a licensed VM and infringed some patents on their way there.
Isn't this statement actually wrong? (Score:2)
Justice Neil Gorsuch told Google's lawyer that Apple and other companies have "come up with phones that work just fine without engaging in this kind of copying."
It seems to me that Apple has not chosen to use Java, and thus has not been sued by Oracle. Instead of implementing their own version of Java, they've implemented their own version of C called Objective C, and created the Swift Interpreter on top of that. The original authors of the C programming language have not chosen to sue Apple. Yet.
Mixed receptions (Score:2)
It's not unusual for judges to be skeptical when asking about your case. They do that to both sides, to force both lawyers to really make their arguments. I haven't had a chance to listen to it all yet, but I doubt we can glean much insight from the questioning.
What was unusual was that J. Thomas was asking questions.
This is why law is stupid (Score:3)
What makes the Google/Oracle lawsuit so idiotic is that it requires years of litigation, creates business uncertainty and potentially costs Google $8.8 billion to discover what is the law. The legal system is designed by layers to enrich themselves. In a sane world, there would be some way to obtain definitive legal clarification cheaply and in advance of corporate decisions.
Pragmatically, the Supreme Court decision is inconsequential, because regardless of the ruling, we end up in a world where, for practical purposes, re-implementing programming languages is legal. If the court rules that copying the Java header files was kosher, then everyone goes about their business as before. If the court rules that copying the Java header files was a copyright violation and Google owes Oracle a fine, then the business world reacts to that decision and no corporation ever again uses any programming language without permissively-licensed headers. Because no sane business would sign up for vendor lock-in. And no sane language vendor would market a language without customers. Restricted headers could be a possible thing, but not be an actual thing that really inconvenienced anyone.
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Do you even know what the case is about? It is to prevent exactly the kind of nonsense you are proposing. From the actual court documents, discussing why Google made its own JVM: The point of contention between the parties was Google’s refusal to make the implementation of its programs compatible with the Java virtual machine or interoperable with other Java programs. Because Sun/Oracle found that position to be anathema to the “write once, run anywhere” philosophy, it did not grant Goo
Oh God, Beat that Dead Horse (Score:2)
Over and over again. Reminds me of SCO.
Larry, do yourself a favor and just move on because you ain't getting a dime.
Dying businesses start lawsuits (Score:1)
Businesses that are in their death throes start lawsuits. Businesses that are actively innovating don't have time nor the inclination for lawsuits.