301–310 of 643 posts
Sun was fine with what Google was doing.
When Oracle purchased Sun, it gained the rights to Sun's intellectual property and decided that it had a case against Google.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-ceo-explicitly-endorsed-jav...
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If API are copyrightable how do clean room implementations work? It seems IBM could sue the clone makers for the BIOS API if that's the case.
I think because there are no identifiers. The BIOS API is: fill registers with these values, run this interrupt. That's different from openFileWithName(String fileName).
What if I named my function 015342342(String 123949)? How does that change anything?
It may be helpful for readers to look at the actual meat and potatoes of the decision itself. I recommend jumping in at Page 27 of the decision so that they can see how the fair use factors were evaluated in this case: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or... Fair use has four factors, lets see how it shook out: 1) Purpose and Character: Google tried to argue that because android is free that i…
If API are copyrightable how do clean room implementations work? It seems IBM could sue the clone makers for the BIOS API if that's the case.
And yeah, I guess that IBM could start suing everybody... this whole situation is so ridiculous.
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GNU/Linux is a partial (but incomplete, since no Linux distro is unix(tm) certified) a reimplementation of proprietary Unix, and with billion-dollar companies like Red Hat and IBM it's certainly a commercial endeavor at proprietary Unix's expense. It would seem to be an attractive target if a plaintiff like SCO could somehow move the case to the federal circuit (as none of the standard appeals courts have declared AP…
Reimplementation does not necessarily violate copyright. Copying does violate copyright (absent fair use). Like verbatim copying. Example, Google didn't have to use the “java.lang.Math.max(a,b)” header, but they did. They did copy because they wanted to leverage the existing Java developer base who would easily be able to develop for Android, without having to do the hard work of building their own ecosystem. Overall…
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...I don't really see what the difference is. In both cases Google would end up with exactly the same API specification. There's no room for them to come up with an "original" API, because if the API they end up with is not an _exact copy_ of Oracle's, then software written for Oracle's Java implementation would not be compatible with Google's Java implementation (and vice-versa).
It is effectively impossible to take something as complex as the Java API, do black box testing, and come up with an exact copy. Google's API being slightly different is ultimately the point. The process yields a new original work even if it ends up being 99% the same as Oracle's API.
To make that more concrete: if Oracle's string concatenation function is called `String.concat` and Google's is called `String.append`, then code which calls `String.concat` isn't going to work with Google's implementation, and code which calls `String.append` isn't going to work with Oracle's implementation. It doesn't matter if the APIs are "similar" or not, they have to be _identical_ in order for code written for one system to be interoperable with the other.
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In fact, IBM was so sure that the BIOS API could not be copyrighted they basically made their source public (in the manuals but NOT open source) so anyone reading the manuals to understand the BIOS was tainted and couldn't write a competitor. Compaq did a clean room setup to get around this.
>IBM was so sure that the BIOS API could not be copyrighted they basically made their source public That is not how copyright works. You almost got it right with your comment "anyone reading the manuals to understand the BIOS was tainted and couldn't write a competitor." Copyright protects against copying . It does not protect against independent development. Hence the clean room set up.
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I thought Google used the implementations!
I thought one of the main issues was that there was only one natural implementation of many API functions. Like when you assign students a coding question, you will see many answers come back identical even though no one cheated.
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I think because there are no identifiers. The BIOS API is: fill registers with these values, run this interrupt. That's different from openFileWithName(String fileName).
What? No those are the same thing. Why is an API suddenly not copyrightable if its 0x51234 offset 5 bits, vs human readable text? That is nonsense. Numbers and words should not be treated differently. What if I named my function 015342342(String 123949)? How does that change anything?
Without endorsement, there is definitely a line between text in which one can be "creative" and numbers in copyright law as written.
The problem here isn't the line between creative and non-creative, the problem here is the introduction of copyright, a concept created for expressive works, into a field that consists of functional works. It should not be a surprise to anyone, not even lawyers, that this isn't going to "just work". The surprise to me is that it has taken this long for this foundational clash to start emerging at a big scale.
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It's more analogous to -- very analogous to -- the "clean room" BIOS clones that enabled the PC Clone industry to take off (and made IBM-compatible PCs actually affordable; before the clones took off, IBM's prices made Apple seem like a bargain).
Except Google did not do a clean room clone. They simply copied, thus violating the whole point of copyright. If they had developed their own API that simply used different names but was functionally identical, they would not have violated copyright. Copyright protects against copying . They didn't do that because they wanted to take advantage of the huge existing JAVA developer base who would easily be able to use t…
That is why telephone books and others things are not copyrightable. They are lists of facts. API's are lists of facts, a functional specification for use.
There are consequences if this stands and it will not be to our benefit as programmers, developers, designers, etc. Nor will it be to the benefit of society as a whole.