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Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

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Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#51
> There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform

Someone should appeal and bust their case that claims that APIs are copyrightable. And don't forget those who supported this crookedness - Microsoft.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#52

Will this push Google to move towards dart lang even more now?

Wouldn’t Kotlin be the more logical route?

Doubt it if they still want the JVM. Sure Java the language is gone, but Kotlin on the JVM relies on the very non-Oracle-approved Java stdlib implementations that are at the root of this suit. If you want to argue Kotlin Native + NDK, sure, but it is very young (though I like it and have used it myself).

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

V8 has little to do with Oracle, fundamentally. V8 came about because they wanted a higher performance JS VM for their browser; the JVM was never in contention there.

Sure it does. Why did they want a higher performance JS VM for the browser? The language of choice to build interactive applications on the web before JS was really viable was Java. A high performance JS VM means we don't need to use applets anymore.

By the early years of Google applets were already pretty much dead:

https://www.javaworld.com/article/2076251/core-java/applets-...

(Note that the article is from 2000.)

Remember that Google was already doing AJAX in Gmail in 2004, years before V8.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#54
post #28

I think the part that gets lost in all of this is that Sun offered to license Java to Google previously for $100M. [1] Google turned that down and bypassed Sun because they didn't want to pay (or license). At the time, Sun was happy to see Java being used by Google, even without the license. Still, Google knew exactly what they were doing. [2] My point is, they did this to themselves and they knew what they were poss…

Call me naive, but is a company being happy with what you're doing to the tune of them even saying so (or representatives thereof) tantamount to an implicit contract? I know it's been argued in this case, but it strikes me as disingenuous at the least and fraudulent at the most to change your mind. Sure we don't mind Google bearing the brunt of this because they can, but how would we feel were a smaller company subje…

It's not a contract, but there are other mechanism in the law to give effect to this intuition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#55
post #40

I think the case was basically lost as soon as the court ruled that APIs are copyrightable. I still disagree with that decision, but once you've already arrived at that point then I think it's pretty hard to argue that Google's use of those APIs was fair use.

Why can't they appeal that ruling? It's completely wrong. EU got it right, and copyright lobby didn't manage to spoil it there.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#57

> The case was remanded to a federal court in California to determine how much the Alphabet Inc. unit should pay. No Google is not going to pay billion dollars, not yet. Very clickbaity title.

Well it's 25% clickbaity IMO - it was the billion dollar case, but perhaps "Java Copyright Case" would have been better.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#58
post #8

I'm worried if this is again going to pose serious problems in using open source stack and building profitable solutions. So, If I'm going to build something profitable using R and Tensorflow/Keras then someday I could be sued by the consortium or Microsoft that owns Revolution Analytics (that controls R) ?

Just checked Wikipedia and Microsoft indeed owns RA which "own" R. Interesting.

On the other it's not about open source. If you're willing to license stuff in good faith you should be fine.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does. Why did they want a higher performance JS VM for the browser? The language of choice to build interactive applications on the web before JS was really viable was Java. A high performance JS VM means we don't need to use applets anymore.

By the early years of Google applets were already pretty much dead: https://www.javaworld.com/article/2076251/core-java/applets-... (Note that the article is from 2000.) Remember that Google was already doing AJAX in Gmail in 2004, years before V8.

And V8 was first released in 2008. Java applets were pretty much completely gone from the web by this point. The only competition on the web, from plugins, at that point was Flash (okay, Silverlight deserves a footnote, but little more).

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#60
post #19

Google shoulda thought twice before stealing Sun/Oracle's IP.

Yeah, “stealing” an API and open source, building a successful mobile UI platform (unlike personal/embedded java and Sun’s own failed attempts at fragmentation) and contributing it free back to open source where it has been used as a base OS for thousands of new products from TVs to drones.

Please don't use the expression "contributing back" on a platform that Google rules with an iron fist. Not only is their draconian licensing contract kept secret, for fear that consumers might realize the sort of behavior Google is up to, but now Google is explicitly implementing block screens for installing the app store on an Android device that isn't adequately under Google's thumb. This isn't the behavior of a company who is "contributing back", it is the behavior of a company doubling down on controlling the industry.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/google-starts-blocki...

The court didn't buy that Android was a gift to society worthy of fair use protection, and at this point, neither will anyone else.

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