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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

#491

Post by Zigurd »

pjmlp wrote: post #448
Zigurd wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android does not have a Java VM, and it does not run Java bytecode. Dalvik bytecode is more compact, and more CPU efficient, and the more recent ART runtime is even more efficient and performant. But it isn't a JVM.

Just like all the vendors selling commercial JDKs for the embedded market. They also offer customized versions fine tuned for their deployment scenarios, doing Java bytecode to either native (AOT) or their own proprietary bytecode format when generating the firmware image. Or for example, IBM Java running on IBM i mainframe, where Java bytecodes used to be translated into the TIMI bytecodes, just like any other IBM i…

The Dalvik and ART runtimes differ in that the do not run Java bytecodes. Every commercial embedded jvm, open source jvm, and me jvm I have seen all run Java bytecodes and you can use any toolchain that makes .jar files with these vms. Unless the translation you mention can happen at runtime, it isn't a jvm.

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

#492

Post by kybernetikos »

ABCLAW wrote: post #391
jandrese wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You actually do a clean room implementation rather than copying chunks of your competitor's work and then pretending it's allowed under fair use? Seems pretty straightforward.

I'm trying to understand here - is the idea that if they had put a bunch of developers who had never seen the API that they were implementing (normal clean rooms allow documentation, but api documentation is pretty much the signatures and that pretty much is the material we're talking about being copyrighted), provided the clean room engineers only with example code that used the apis and that they had to make work then they would most likely not have a problem, even if the resulting code had blocks that were character-for-character identical (since interfaces likely would come out identical to those they needed to be interoperable with)?

Obviously that sounds pretty crazy, but if it's true, it would at least be an approach that I could understand.

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

#493

Post by ben509 »

shagie wrote: post #335
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ignorant. The rise of Javascript had little to nothing to do with the fall of Java applets, which failed due to their own issues. Java applets were already considered a dying tech when Google made their push to heavily-Javascript-dependent apps, and the performance requirements that led to. Note also that despite the similar name, Javascript and Java have technically nothing to do with each other. It is a qui…

The original use of JavaScript was to pass DOM information to the applet and back. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in... and https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in... are the docs for this largely forgotten functionality.

There was no DOM back in the early days of Javascript. The page was rendered in a single pass, you could inject text and markup via document.write() and anything "dynamic" was accomplished by reloading an IFRAME. Remember, these were the days when too many tables would crash your browser; I recall the early demos of Gecko showing deeply nested tables, and all styling was with font tags still.

Netscape was still trying to sell a browser, and they wanted a common language on the frontend and backend, so Javascript was also on Netscape Server.

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

#494

Post by ben509 »

r00fus wrote: post #143
admax88q wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java applets were huge, and still are quite big in enterprise.

Where? We're not talking servlets or EJBs here right? Adoption across combination of OS & browser was and continues to be an issue. Both Microsoft and Apple made it difficult in different ways, and the "year of linux on the desktop" has yet to really come (no ChromeOS don't count)

"Adoption across combination of OS & browser"

Not a problem when everyone is using Windows and Netscape. It's as horrible as you'd think.

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

#495

Post by protomyth »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #484
protomyth wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>My original post was about a situation where the creator of an API didn't believe it to be copyrightable Your original post was about IBM not being able to copyright the PC Bios. Which is simply not true in any way shape or form. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-comp... Relevant portion "But one problem remained with their IBM-compatible machine. How would they recreate the IBM BIOS without br…

Your original post was about IBM not being able to copyright the PC Bios. Which is simply not true in any way shape or form.

No, no, no, that is not what I said. I was talking about the API of the BIOS. The BIOS source code is, of course, copyrightable. That is why IBM was able to make it very hard for people to copy it until folks did a proper clean room. Why would I go into detail about the counter measure if it was not copyrightable? That makes no sense.

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

#496

Post by paulddraper »

na85 wrote: post #466
fuzzieozzie wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[cynical comment] Do you think the court is trying to guarantee jobs for lawyers?

That lawyers exist is a good thing. It means we have a human, nuanced perspective on the finer points and interpretation of the law, which in Western civilization reigns supreme over all other things. Lawyers will never become obsolete until we no longer live in a society that obeys the rule of law.

> That lawyers exist is a good thing.

The more common term is "necessary evil".

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

#497

Post by kodablah »

carussell wrote: post #488
kodablah wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (except if Google wanted to factor the suit into their decisionmaking for their own reasons) > 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.

You don't get to define "for their own reasons" to mean something else just so that you have a something to argue about. Doing something for one's "own reasons" means that the decision is theirs to make, in contrast to being legally compelled to act in a certain way. It doesn't mean acting in a way that nobody else would, nor acting in a way that nobody else would agree with.

Ah, I took "doesn't really have any impact" as "doesn't really have any practical impact" instead of "doesn't have any legal impact". I thought you were making a point about it being Google's personal reasons they might justify moving on as opposed to reasonable ones based on precedence of the decision.

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

#498

Post by BonesJustice »

Zigurd wrote: post #373
ABCLAW wrote: post #175

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…

Strictly speaking, Java isn't used in Android. There is no JVM in Android, and there never was. It doesn't run Java bytecode. Java ends where dex translates Java bytecode. In recent version of Android, there's another layer where Dalvik bytecode is compiled to the target architecture. So don't think of Java being in Android. The Android toolchain uses Java, but the Android runtime is not a Java runtime. For one thing…

It also erodes Google’s claims of fair use. Leveraging the Java language and APIs benefited Google much more than it benefited the Java ecosystem at large. Almost anything that targets Java can now be used on Android, but the reverse is not true. The sharing largely flows one way.

Google had little interest in expanding the reach of the Java platform—they wanted to attract Java developers to their “looks like Java, but isn’t” platform while benefiting from the years of work that went into the JDK.

I don’t necessarily think APIs should be copyrightable, but since they now are as a matter of law, I’m leaning towards Google’s actions constituting infringement.

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

#499

Post by danShumway »

ben509 wrote: post #489
danShumway wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is, they did this to themselves Whether or not they knew that someone would come along and sue them doesn't matter if the lawsuit is unjust. Even if Oracle is correct, and even if APIs can be copyrighted, Google's intent still doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is whether or not they infringed. I consider this to be a form of victim blaming. You should argue the case on its own merits, not posit t…

It wouldn't be victim blaming to criticize a company that is breached because they didn't take compsec seriously. They weren't a small company at the time and they knew this was a hazard. Google had a responsibility to their shareholders and customers to do the right thing regardless of how stupid they thought the law was, and their attitude here was pretty arrogant. (To avoid beating up on Google, I should point out…

> It wouldn't be victim blaming to criticize a company that is breached because they didn't take compsec seriously.

If you then turned around and argued that the hacker somehow wasn't in the wrong because of the victim's attitude, yes it would be.

Victim blaming has nothing to do with someone's responsibility to others, and everything to do with taking a conversation about whether an attack is justified, and shifting that conversation to instead suggest "well, dumb people like that deserve to be taken advantage of."

Oracle contested that Google infringed their IP. "They should have known we were gonna sue them as soon as we smelled the money" is not compelling evidence for that claim.

Much in the same way, saying "Johny should have turned off his attitude and just given us the money" is not compelling justification for a mob hit.

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

#500

Post by mattnewton »

jadedhacker wrote: post #461
fuzzieozzie wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[cynical comment] Do you think the court is trying to guarantee jobs for lawyers?

It's worse than that, they're trying to guarantee profits for companies. Even though this is two titans fighting it out, the only people who benefit from an ultra strict copyright regime will be the people that can afford to fight it out in court. Everyone except people that hold shares in large companies will lose out.

As a shareholder in large companies I’m not sure I even benefit. The legal departments are going to have to have a bigger budget to deal with this, and new IP is going to be costlier to develop / buy / defend.
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