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Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

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Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#291

Post by mikekchar »

tekacs wrote: post #280
mikekchar wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is right that the author of a creative work get protection for having conceived that work and reduced it to tangible form. This is incorrect (and I didn't grow up in the digital age, unless you call 4 function calculators the "digital age"). There is no such right. It is not a human right, nor is it something that you are intrinsically entitled to have. Copyright is something that is endowed upon you by the gove…

Your parent poster said 'it is right', not 'it is /a/ right'. You're attacking a statement that didn't exist in the parent post.

Interesting. I definitely missed the lack of the "a". I wonder if it was an intentional lack or unintentional.

So, now I am a bit confused. Do they believe that they are morally entitled to a monopoly, or do they believe that it is simply a good idea? Because in the first case, it doesn't really alter my post. From societal standards, they are not morally entitled to the monopoly. The parent is, of course, free to disagree but they stand against centuries of legal history where this just hasn't been the case. It would be incorrect to state that only those who grew up in the digital age disagree.

If it is the second, then I will agree in general, but I think we should be very careful to balance the benefits. I believe that copyright on APIs will cause significantly more harm than good. So in this specific case, my opinion is that it is not right (as in not a good idea) to do it. It is certainly a debatable issue, though, with many reasonable arguments on both sides.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#292

Post by kensign »

farcical_tinpot wrote: post #108
doughj3 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone is curious to see a summary of Oracle's claims to Google's copying not being fair use, the slides for their closing arguments are available at Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/how-oracle-made-i... Disclaimer: I work for Oracle, though not on Java.

Thanks. Quite apart from 'Java' having been open sourced, Schwartz also got up and told everyone this was all OK. Oracle really did face an uphill battle with that since it's nigh on impossible to take back.

And not to mention how difficult it would be to apply Oracle's logic to the innumerable applications that have modified a java version for their own use. I know this is argued in other posts on this thread, but just how in the world can Oracle justify FOSS and its implementation thereof a violation of copyright in these cases as well?

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#294

Post by glibgil »

wtallis wrote: post #229
glibgil wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

April 28th, 2016 according to vagrant on my Mac https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog At least I think it is pretty cool (and very gracious of Oracle)

You're not exactly setting the bar very high for Oracle. VirtualBox was mostly GPL'd before its developer was bought by Sun, which was later bought by Oracle. Saying that it's "very gracious" of Oracle to not kill a successful project or fire all its developers makes it sound like you've been brainwashed under an oppressive tyranny.

You're a special kind of ingrate. Oracle spends a great deal of its treasure on open source software. They maintain and innovate on those projects at great cost to themselves. You have no leg to stand on. Oracle is doing a nice thing for the engineering community. They don't have to, but they do. It is nice of them. You are being rude

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#295

Post by byuu »

rodgerd wrote: post #237
tostitos1979 wrote: post #125

Despite the win, I think it would have been far better for the computer industry if Google had bought Sun. Unlike other companies with crap (IMHO ... Nokia, Motorola), Sun actually had stuff of value. This is a lesson that geeks get but I'm not sure MBAs do or will ever get.

Sources at the time told me IBM were planning on buying Sun (for the hardware/Telco business) and avoiding anti-trust problems by spinning software off to Red Hat (Java, ZFS, Solaris, etc). They got cold feet over the spectre of bribery investigations against Sun. I weep for the parallel universe in which Red Hat had been in a position to open all of Sun's technologies properly.

RedHat? I don't. Had that happened, Java, ZFS, MySQL, VirtualBox, etc would now likely all be required components of systemd. (Yes, I'm being a little facetious, but I really believe RedHat has some sinister ulterier motives. They've been absolutely horrible with systemd, Gnome, GTK3, etc.)

What happened to Sun was an outright catastrophe, but we've mostly recovered with OpenZFS, MariaDB, Jenkins, LibreOffice, etc. The major piece we're missing is a clean fork of VirtualBox. Android's also not in a good state to replace desktop Java, but it could conceivably be one day at least.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#296

Post by mancerayder »

quadrangle wrote: post #254
appleflaxen wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain about the special interests, but some fail to realize that the major backers of Extreme Copyright (TM) are a special interest that we created. We, the US public, out of the goodness of our hearts and wanting to foster art, gave up our right to "repeat what we heard" (copying, when what you hear is digital) in return for incentives to create art. And then bam ; decades later the incentives are the de f…

"We, the US public, out of the goodness of our hearts and wanting to foster art" I was not part of that, and neither was I part of some minority complaining while the majority did this. I don't think this ever happened. Just because there's a pretense of democracy doesn't mean the general public is actually to blame for everything.

I also had to scratch my head at that, despite an otherwise nicely written comment.

It's not like copyright law is something Presidential candidates run on. I think the author is overstating his case with regards to public perceptions. The first problem with public perceptions is, when laws are forged in the court room (or codified in treaties), they're essentially happening removed from public scrutiny. Not everyone is reading EFF manifestos.

It's even worse because they're technical questions, requiring a certain expertise in IT as a specialized field, meaning a small percentage of people in the U.S. understand much less care about these laws.

Where I may agree about a shift in perceptions is for a different reason. As more people have entered the field, which now has television shows about it and some of the world's largest companies to boot, there are more people with an interest/curiosity or knowledge in IT. Better able to understand the ramifications of rulings about APIs.

But as someone said, we don't really leave in that much of a democracy as we think. Corporations have a louder voice. If they stand to benefit for a position they'll make more noise (in legal efforts or lobbying) in favor of it. And it's no surprise that we're seeing two behemoths battle it out.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#297

Post by geofft »

sounds wrote: post #213
throwawaykeno wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to call this law suit frivolous. From a developer perspective, the ideal and just end result has always seemed rather obvious. However, the multi-year history of this case demonstrates the correct legal answer not so obvious, at least from a legal perspective. For example, settling the issue on fair use was definitely not how most people thought/hoped this would shake out way back in the begin…

This law suit is frivolous based on the assumption that APIs are not copyrightable (a very reasonable assumption in 2009).

The appellate court ruled that the law is that APIs are copyrightable, and sent it back. The jury decision here was that Google made fair use of a copyrighted API, not that APIs aren't copyrightable.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#298

Post by pjmlp »

byuu wrote: post #295
rodgerd wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sources at the time told me IBM were planning on buying Sun (for the hardware/Telco business) and avoiding anti-trust problems by spinning software off to Red Hat (Java, ZFS, Solaris, etc). They got cold feet over the spectre of bribery investigations against Sun. I weep for the parallel universe in which Red Hat had been in a position to open all of Sun's technologies properly.

RedHat? I don't. Had that happened, Java, ZFS, MySQL, VirtualBox, etc would now likely all be required components of systemd. (Yes, I'm being a little facetious, but I really believe RedHat has some sinister ulterier motives. They've been absolutely horrible with systemd, Gnome, GTK3, etc.) What happened to Sun was an outright catastrophe, but we've mostly recovered with OpenZFS, MariaDB, Jenkins, LibreOffice, etc. T…

Except Google is not that good in language design.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#299

Post by jhanschoo »

While it is unpopular among most HN readers that APIs be found to fall under copyright, I don't see how it affects software interoperatability in the long term.

It seems to me that all that this necessitates is for software publishers to include an open license for their APIs, or to release it into the public domain.

In fact, it might even be beneficial, since companies can license different APIs to different customers, and have additional legal force prohibiting the use of APIs that are unofficial or unauthorized to them.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#300

Post by wtallis »

glibgil wrote: post #294
wtallis wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not exactly setting the bar very high for Oracle. VirtualBox was mostly GPL'd before its developer was bought by Sun, which was later bought by Oracle. Saying that it's "very gracious" of Oracle to not kill a successful project or fire all its developers makes it sound like you've been brainwashed under an oppressive tyranny.

You're a special kind of ingrate. Oracle spends a great deal of its treasure on open source software. They maintain and innovate on those projects at great cost to themselves. You have no leg to stand on. Oracle is doing a nice thing for the engineering community. They don't have to, but they do. It is nice of them. You are being rude

> "They maintain and innovate on those projects at great cost to themselves."

Net cost? Most certainly not. That's not how Oracle works at all.

Saying that they aren't entirely opposed to participating in mutually beneficial arrangements is still setting the bar pretty damn low and is not a distinction worthy of any praise.

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