Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 116 posts

Re: Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

#101

Post by macspoofing »

pjmlp wrote: post #70
snarf21 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say it even more strongly. Oracle bought SUN with the sole intention of using it as the basis to sue Google. Full stop. This is a shakedown and Oracle needs to go away.

Ah, and Google thought that Sun would sink and they could get away with screwing Sun. If Google was so interested in Java, they could have made a bid to own Java. Guess what, they would not have been sued and control its destiny. With Google at the steering wheel I bet Java developers would still be enjoying Java 6.

>With Google at the steering wheel I bet Java developers would still be enjoying Java 6.

Maybe. Maybe not. But just to be clear, if all this case was about was Oracle trying to extract some money from Google, it would be nothing but a curious sideshow.

What Oracle is doing goes way beyond Java. They are trying to set an insane precedent and that has never existed in our industry, and had it existed it would have drastically reshaped it to the extent that it would be unrecognizable today. The implications of Oracle winning would be far reaching and unknown.

Re: Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

#102

Post by gpm »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #95
gpm wrote: post #4

Docket: https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do... Direct link to brief: http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/127663/20200... Schedule: Petitioner’s (Google) brief: January 6, 2020 Respondent’s (Oracle) brief: February 12, 2020 Reply (Google) brief: March 13, 2020 Oral Argument: Likely late March, possibly in April, otherwise delayed to October. Ruling: If Oral argument is heard late m…

Sometime before summer, right? Doesn't the court adjourn at the end of June or so?

The last day on the schedule is June 29th, you can view it here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/2019TermCourtCal...

Depends on how you define summer I guess.

Re: Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

#103

Post by belorn »

There is a lot comments focusing on which side will win, but I would like to hear peoples thought about how the judges can reach the desired conclusion and what the potential risk or prospects to areas outside of programming API. As long there is not explicit paragraph in copyright about programming API I would think that there will be an effect outside the scope of this lawsuit.

One area of copyrighted works I have seen people also question the legibility of being copyrightable is standard documents and law texts. They seems to me as very similar to an program API, if somewhat less strict when implemented. It would definitive lower the cost of interoperability if such works would be lifted outside of copyright.

On the risk side however, I am wondering if the Idea–expression distinction get pushed towards the idea side, then will companies just use that finding as an argument in favor of patenting API? 20 years is better than the practically infinity that is copyright, but I am not sure it will make the situation much better in the general case.

Re: Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

#104

Post by gigatexal »

utopian3 wrote: post #59
gigatexal wrote: post #57

if Oracle loses does anyone think they'll be more or less open to relicensing ZFS so it's more GPL / Linux friendly?

Why would ZFS' license be related to the outcome of this court case?

They could open source it as a part of goodwill to the Linux community

Re: Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

#105

Post by pgsbathhouse »

danShumway wrote: post #93
pgsbathhouse wrote: post #71

Google's arguments were already refuted in the earliest hearings. There's a reason this is going to the supreme court, the rulings didn't really match up with accepted evidence and testimony of experts in the court. Google will lose this. You don't explicitly copy code, take other people's engineers after exiting licensing talks with the company you took from, and have it not be about stealing someone else's intellec…

This is objectively, very definitively false. > You don't explicitly copy code Google didn't copy code. Even if you believe that APIs are copyrightable, Google's clean-room implementation hasn't been part of the case for years. It's just about the API now. If you want to make an argument that APIs are copyrightable, fine, make that argument. Make the argument that Google is infringing on Oracles API. But if you're tr…

>Google didn't copy code.

Yes they did.

Re: Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

#106

Post by ksec »

danShumway wrote: post #77
pjmlp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sun was okay with Google having something like Java in Android and had said so. (perhaps reluctantly) That isn't how things went according to Gosling. "Triangulation 245: James Gosling on Oracle vs Sun" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be... If Google actually cared, they could have bought Sun and own Java.

Even Gosling isn't advocating that the APIs were copyrighted. What he advocates is that he doesn't think it was actually a clean-room implementation, and that Google should have been 'nicer' about the whole process in general -- that regardless of the legal points, Google was kind of a jerk. When it gets to the subject of APIs, Gosling is suddenly a lot less accusatory. Here's the actual conversation: > Host: "I woul…

>Even Gosling isn't advocating that the APIs were copyrighted....

And neither did the parent implied he was. He is merely stating Gosling wasn't OK with Google using Java without paying a dime, but didn't have much of a choice.

Re: Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

#108

Post by pjmlp »

jcranmer wrote: post #91
pjmlp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I am, if Google was honest regarding Java they should have acquired the language stewardship. I work mostly with commercial software, so IP and patents are business as usual. Maybe even this would finally provide a way for many freetards to actually pay for the tooling they use.

So, in your opinion, WINE is an illegal software product, and Microsoft should sue them into oblivion. And IBM should sue everybody else for copying the BIOS interface. And Amazon should sue Oracle for implementing the AWS APIs. If you believe that Oracle deserves to win this case, those are requisite outcomes of the case, because Oracle's legal contention is that merely providing an independent implementation of the…

I never cared for WINE, and Microsoft doesn't take that path just because they don't care about WINE.

After all, when it is the year of Desktop Linux actually?

IBM tried to sue everybody, they just lost the case because Compaq was clever doing a clean room reverse engineering.

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-comp...

> Their first attack came in the form of lawyers using 9,000 IBM copyrights in the hope that Compaq had broken just one. Luckily for IBM, Compaq did break one copyright, which forced them into a corner. Compaq negotiated with IBM and ended up purchasing the copyright for $130 million. This, however, did not stop Compaq overall.

Google lacked the cleverness from Compaq.

Re: Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

#109

Post by pjmlp »

danShumway wrote: post #92
pjmlp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I am, if Google was honest regarding Java they should have acquired the language stewardship. I work mostly with commercial software, so IP and patents are business as usual. Maybe even this would finally provide a way for many freetards to actually pay for the tooling they use.

This is also an argument that I'm not very sympathetic to -- the idea that we need to lock down an entire ecosystem and consolidate it into 3-4 giant 'stewards' to protect us from those giant stewards. Arguments about bullying aside, Google was honest regarding Java. They built a clean-room implementation. That was their only obligation. Sun saw it that way too. It would have a major chilling effect on the industry i…

No need to buy, cross IP agreements between companies are quite common.

> Nothing to say here except please don't use slurs like this.

Point taken.

Re: Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit

#110

Post by pjmlp »

crmrc114 wrote: post #81
DannyB2 wrote: post #62

Just to point something out. IBM sponsored and was the primary contributor of resources to an independently developed Java work-alike called Apache Harmony. (about JDK 1.5 level, IIRC) Apache Harmony was, naturally, under the Apache license. Google wanted something like Java for Android, so Google used Apache Harmony. Sun was okay with Google having something like Java in Android and had said so. (perhaps reluctantly…

So thank you for giving an awesome tl;dr on this- honestly that sounds much like SCO in the 90's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes God I miss SUN and SGI- all those pretty computer chassis....Oracle basically is a lawyer who murdered SUN and wears their rotting flesh around pointing at people and yelling THEIF!

Apparently no one else bothered to make a bid to buy Sun, so.

Yes, IBM did one bid but they withdrawn it shortly thereafter.

Post reply on HN