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

Post by ethbro » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 8:32 PM UTC

prokes wrote: post #54

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.

Just to add a little nuance - the difference is in flow vs stock of customers. Very few existing EBS customers are reimplementing in Cloud because of the time, cost, and loss of customizations. It doesn't make sense. New customers are being forced into Cloud by the Oracle sales team. The sales reps literally receive no compensation for on-prem (EBS) deals, and they must go through a lengthy approval process just to o…

Post by ghuntley » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 8:36 PM UTC

throwaway30121 wrote: post #68

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…

Post by Spivak » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 8:38 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #77

Spivak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could, by a similar method, generate all possible images but that doesn't mean you would be able to copyright them all. The creative element would become the act of identifying specific images within your set with artistic merit -- those would be copyrightable.

Nope, there is no "merit test" for copyright. Copyright attaches when the creation is fixed in tangible form.

Post by AsyncAwait » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 8:39 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #80

AsyncAwait wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was found in violation of copying some source code if I am not mistaken, but this is about whether the concept of an API itself should be copyrightable, (how many ways can you write an API for a function that adds two integers together?) and that's the big problem here. If handled badly, it can literally kill the software industry. What I don't get is Oracle not realizing that this could kill their SQL busines…

I mean the courts aren't exactly robotic in this sense. It has to be a creative work, for the same reason you couldn't try to copyright a trivial sentence you wouldn't get copyright protection on a method description that adds two numbers. Also, it's the whole work that's copyrighted, not its individual parts. It's not that Google just borrowed a few method signatures, it's that they took all of them along with their…

Post by AsyncAwait » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 8:41 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #86

AsyncAwait wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was found in violation of copying some source code if I am not mistaken, but this is about whether the concept of an API itself should be copyrightable, (how many ways can you write an API for a function that adds two integers together?) and that's the big problem here. If handled badly, it can literally kill the software industry. What I don't get is Oracle not realizing that this could kill their SQL busines…

That source code was a 7 line range check method that was developed by the same developer that coded it for Sun (Joshua Bloch)