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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

#431

Post by icebraining »

djsumdog wrote: post #201
danjoc wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>are we no violating their copyright just by implementing their API? OpenJDK is GPL. If you comply with GPL, no. This is the problem, Google copied and did not comply with the GPL. Their other option was to pay Oracle/Sun a licensing fee for a commercial license. This is exactly the business model many GPL users follow. Ruling otherwise makes this business model invalid, but it also creates a double standard. Conside…

Huh .. so why doesn't Google just release their Android Java runtime under the GPL? Seems like an easy win all the way around? I thought the OpenJDK people needed certain concessions to release their VM under the GPL?

Supposedly, they are switching to OpenJDK. But that doesn't erase their past infringement.

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

#432

Post by shmerl »

carussell wrote: post #399
shmerl wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird part was in their view on copyrightability of APIs.

That's not weird, either. What would have been weird is a finding that they're not copyrightable, given that it would have been completely at odds with the statutes and case law we have concerning copyright. The point is, nuance matters. If you're physically attacked and defend yourself in a way where you end up killing the guy, you claim that your actions were justified. You don't go to court claiming that killing p…

> What would have been weird is a finding that they're not copyrightable

Nothing weird with that. APIs are meta tools, not actual tools. That's what "I" in the name is for. They are interfaces for a reason. It makes perfect sense for interfaces to be non copyrightable. EU courts got it right:

    Computer code itself can be copyrighted, but functional
    characteristics—such as data formats and function names—
    cannot be. "To accept that the functionality of a
    computer program can be protected by copyright would
    amount to making it possible to monopolise ideas, to the 
    detriment of technological progress and industrial 
    development
> And by every indication, we're right on track.

We are not, until Supreme Court will overturn the current ruling and will clear APIs from copyrightability for good.

> I'm done commenting further here.

Sure, you brought no arguments to defend the illogical position of APIs copyrightability anyway.

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

#433

Post by kodablah »

carussell wrote: post #426
kodablah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Today, Google is using the Oracle-approved form. They already switched Android from Harmony to OpenJDK in a previous release. Since then, this suit has been about (a) deciding whether Google is guilty of wrongdoing in the past, and (b) what the extent of the damages should be for that historical wrongdoing should be, if any. The outcome here doesn't really have any impact on the future of Android (except if Google wa…

> The outcome here doesn't really have any impact on the future of Android

While most of your point is true, I disagree with this part. Using lawyers to tackle companies that succeed with only parts of your technology may send a chilling effect towards future uses. Also, knowing that you are not allowed to partake certain independent directions in the stack you choose for your devices is a legitimate reason to fear the continued use of that stack. Some are OK to them (e.g. conforming to the GPL on Linux) and some may not be (e.g. not being able to write portions of the stdlib without dealing w/ OpenJDK stewardship). I don't think these are their own reasons as much as they would be the reasons used by anyone who fears technologies stewarded by litigious outfits.

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

#434

Post by carussell »

danjoc wrote: post #93

Good. Initially, I thought the API decision was a bad one, but now I think the courts got it right. If you've ever wrestled long with getting a program to compile, you realize it's non-trivial to wrap your brain around complex types. The API is a language and the compiler is a runtime producing output. I can design my API in something like Java and return null from all the methods while I do it. The compiler will sti…

> They still can under GPL, but that means complying with GPL, which they evidently did not want to do.

Not true. Android has been exactly that since 2016. Harmony is dead (killed at the ASF, even), and Android is now using OpenJDK.

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

#435

Post by protomyth »

treis wrote: post #416
protomyth wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I arrive independently at the same thing, then I didn't copy your work and therefore didn't violate your copyright. That's not how it works for copyright. Beyond that, how do you independently arrive at an API that you are trying to have an exact copy of? Photography is not programming. I cannot run a bunch of words through a program until it prints out some book I want and then say I arrived at it independently…

I suppose you could argue that black box reproduction is simply an elaborate form of copying. That's not relevant to this case because Google did simply just copy it.

Then why did you bring it up? My original post was about a situation where the creator of an API didn't believe it to be copyrightable and then made an attempt at protecting it a different way. Oracle believes they can copyright an API and almost everything in the industry was built with the belief that you cannot copyright an API.

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

#436

Post by pavon »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #268
curt15 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is exactly what reimplementation means in this context, creating a new implementation of an existing interface. And that is exactly what GNU Linux did. They copied a large number of system header files and created new libraries that implemented them. The copied a large number of command-line interfaces, and created executables that implement them. They extended them in the process, but the goal was to mostly preserve API compatibility.

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

#437

Post by bitmapbrother »

meddlepal wrote: post #267
vijaybritto wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isnt that based on Java again?

No? It runs on the JVM and Kotlin/JVM links the Java standard library as part of its class path and compiler emits JVM bytecode, but that's not the issue here. I feel like people do not understand what this lawsuit is about. There's also a lot of technical people here reading the decision and making tech-minded assumptions about the business strategy. A far simpler solution than reconstructing the entire ecosystem wo…

>The problem has nothing to do with using the Java API. It has everything to do with copying the OracleJDK API and implementation then building a secondary non-compliant JVM to run it. The OracleJDK (which is different from the OpenJDK) is not licensed in a way that allows copying.

Um, no. The case has solely to do with the copyright of the SSO of 37 Java API's that Google used. This has nothing to do with their VM.

>In short Google fucked up big time.

On the contrary, the CAFC fucked up big time for allowing API interfaces to be copyrighted.

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

#438

Post by carussell »

kodablah wrote: post #433
carussell wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, Google is using the Oracle-approved form. They already switched Android from Harmony to OpenJDK in a previous release. Since then, this suit has been about (a) deciding whether Google is guilty of wrongdoing in the past, and (b) what the extent of the damages should be for that historical wrongdoing should be, if any. The outcome here doesn't really have any impact on the future of Android (except if Google wa…

> The outcome here doesn't really have any impact on the future of Android While most of your point is true, I disagree with this part. Using lawyers to tackle companies that succeed with only parts of your technology may send a chilling effect towards future uses. Also, knowing that you are not allowed to partake certain independent directions in the stack you choose for your devices is a legitimate reason to fear t…

So you cut my comment off right at the part where I've pre-emptively addressed your entire criticism, and then you write out a paragraph detailing this criticism anyway because your position is contained squarely within the very part of my comment that you chose to leave out?
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