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Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

arstechnica.com

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Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#61

Post by jayd16 »

Spivak wrote: post #29
technofiend wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is tricky because if you declare any API no matter how trivial copyrightable then the first guy to copyright a function to compute sqrt, tan, atan, etc wins. And if you can't copyright trivial interfaces then the question becomes where the line is drawn. There's far more at stake than Oracle trying to squeeze money out of Google.

I completely agree, but I don't really know what to do about it. Surely a document describing a useful software interface (GUI, CLI, API) is a creative work and takes effort to produce. Unless we just agree that it's a necessary exception for the purposes of interoperbility I'm not sure how I would argue that it shouldn't fall under copyright protection.

> Surely a document describing a useful software interface (GUI, CLI, API) is a creative work and takes effort to produce.

Sure, but they didn't copy said document. Comments, documentation etc. were not used. Implementation was not used.

The things that were the same were the method signatures and side effects. Is that copyright? I would argue its clearly not.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#62

Post by Spivak »

ak4g wrote: post #41
Spivak wrote: post #19

Okay, either I'm crazy or everyone else is. Assuming the court isn't trying to set a new precedent with regards to software it seems like Oracle should have easily won this case. There is an argument to be made that APIs shouldn't be copyrightable but surely it's not fair use -- Google's use of Java doesn't even come close to meeting the criteria.

Why wouldn't it be fair use? What exactly is your understanding of what the criteria are?

* Purpose of the use -- Gogole's use wasn't transformative, in fact it was explicitly the opposite.

* Nature of the use -- Google could try to argue that their use was for the public benefit, but since the Android platform exists for business interests it probably shouldn't qualify.

* Amount and Substantiality -- Google basically took it all. There's no case here. They took not just the signatures but their semantic meaning (i.e. the thing that makes an API useful) as well. There's really not much else to an API design document.

* Effect on the market -- This one should be obvious. This directly hurts Oracle. Their implementation diminishes the market for the original. At least that's what their lawyer claims.

> Google concedes it put that code to the same use in the competing Android platform, for what this Court already has deemed "entirely commercial" purposes. And Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#63

Post by binarycrusader »

derefr wrote: post #33
meddlepal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've been told by a contact in their database sales team is that there pipeline for on-premise licenses is drying up quickly but their SaaS business is doing well.

That explains a lot about their recent behavior, e.g. dropping Solaris. If everyone is consuming their software over a network, it doesn't matter precisely what it's running on any more (so even if Oracle DBs could scale better on Solaris than on Linux or a BSD, a 1.3x SaaS shared-cluster size costs less than an OS development team.)

They're not dropping Solaris. They're instead changing the release model:

https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_moving...

Personally, I'd say this is similar to Microsoft's decisions around Windows 10.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#64

Post by bradyd »

rbjorklin wrote: post #60

Curious to hear your reasons for calling Red Hat a dark horse. (Which I presume is some kind of slur/holds a derogatory meaning)

It's actually not derogatory: "A dark horse is a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort, or a contestant that seems unlikely to succeed."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_horse

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#65

Post by champlinRyan »

rbjorklin wrote: post #60

Curious to hear your reasons for calling Red Hat a dark horse. (Which I presume is some kind of slur/holds a derogatory meaning)

Dark horse in this context means other companies unlikely to actually buy it, or win the bidding war. Its not any sort of slur that I'm aware of.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#67

Post by halestock »

rbjorklin wrote: post #60

Curious to hear your reasons for calling Red Hat a dark horse. (Which I presume is some kind of slur/holds a derogatory meaning)

Per wikipedia: "A dark horse is a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort, or a contestant that seems unlikely to succeed."

In this case I would imagine it's because Red Hat is pretty tiny compared to IBM/Google/Oracle and could not put up a comparable amount of money for the purchase.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#68

Post by throwaway30121 »

Oracle is such a shit company. There are still some great hackers there but Larry Ellison is an asshole, and I don't envy anyone who has to work for him even indirectly. "Left Oracle's Java business in tatters" eh? Where was their mobile OS? Their Dalvik?

The wounds to Java have all been self-inflicted. If they succeed in copyrighting the API then where does this leave OpenJDK? Operating at the mercy of Larry fucking Ellison, which means not at all.

I've got 17 years of Java experience under my belt, but frankly with Docker + Kubernetes for deployment and new system languages like Rust and Go I'm thinking it's time to jump ship. Or even to C# since apparently MS got the memo on Open Source (not to mention the need for integrated platform modularization - no more Maven hell! Yay!).

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#69

Post by ben_jones »

rbjorklin wrote: post #60

Curious to hear your reasons for calling Red Hat a dark horse. (Which I presume is some kind of slur/holds a derogatory meaning)

Dark Horse is the horse in the race nobody thinks has a chance of winning, but comes out near the front in the final seconds (surprising everybody). You could've just Googled it.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#70

Post by sjwright »

meddlepal wrote: post #15
PunchTornado wrote: post #2

Oracle is at that stage where they didn't invent or do anything right in the last 5 years but try to get money from lawsuits.

From what I've been told by a contact in their database sales team is that there pipeline for on-premise licenses is drying up quickly but their SaaS business is doing well.

> pipeline for on-premise licenses

Sorry for being a grammar nazi, but this one is a serious pet peeve. The singular of "premises" isn't "premise", it's "premises".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premises

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