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Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

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Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#271

Post by joshuamorton »

pjmlp wrote: post #266
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing much? This isn't just about the Java API. This is about EVERY API. You might not be able to write a web server anymore, depending on who owns the copyright for HTTP. You didn't invent GET, PUT, and POST, you thieving copyright abuser.

Back when I was working for Nokia, the APIs were patented, this is nothing new.

Patents and copyrights aren't the same thing.

Patenting an API makes sense, since APIs are essentially ideas. Copyrighting an API does not make sense.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#272

Post by TheDong »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #134
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Oracle ultimately wins, it seems like millions of programmers will have to reach for a thesaurus to find synonyms to name functions. We'll have to waste brain cycles coming up and alternative spellings of methods to stay away from copyright infringement. It's worse than that isn't it? Naming is how you link things. What happens to WINE if it is illegal to use the same names Kernel32 does?

It's bad for programmers everywhere. If Oracle wins, you couldn't reimplement a compatible version of anything that's not open source. You couldn't make a third-party implementation of a corporate-owned programming language without putting yourself at risk. Imagine you're a company using some Oracle database, and you want to reimplement some component of that system in order to migrate and escape their vendor lock-in…

> If Oracle wins, you couldn't reimplement a compatible version of anything that's not open source

It's worse than that. OpenJDK, including the java standard library, is GPL. It's open source.

Oracle is claiming that even though source code defining the API is open source, they retain copyright to the API itself.. regardless of the open source implementation of the API by themselves.

If this case goes through, you won't be able to mimic an open source project's API unless you also verify they provide the API under a similarly permissive license.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#273

Post by GoblinSlayer »

st1x7 wrote: post #74
jasode wrote: post #49

>This is a complete dramatization. Are you copying 10k lines of code from a licensed code base into your project without permission and using it in your commercial product? To point back to the substance of the thread and Oracle's claims... Google didn't copy any of Oracle/Sun's Java source code base into Android Java. Oracle lawyers acknowledge this. Instead, Google copied the API of function name spellings and also…

I wonder how a meaningful discussion about namespace trees and API spelling takes place at the Supreme Court considering the background of the justices.

The book analogy in the linked article is a good example of an interface and should be understandable without background.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#274

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Spivak wrote: post #259
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the distinction between "runs with zero changes" and "runs with minimal changes"—or even just "runs with fewer changes"—so critical? Where is the line? Is Android "compatible" with Java programs if those programs need to be recompiled first, but no source edits are necessary? What if source edits are necessary, but can be automated? What if recompiling isn't necessary, but you need to hex edit the binary? "Com…

Because the actual implementation isn't what the courts are looking for. This is a case about Google's intention for copying the Java API. Oracle is claiming that Google copied their API because it was easier than designing a new language; Google is claiming that they did it for interoperability reasons. There is no distinction between the two because these things are presented as evidence of Google's intent, it's no…

Thanks, that's interesting! It seems reasonable—if Google was explicitly trying to enable compatibility, that should be allowed, whereas if they were just trying to save a buck, that should be illegal.

Of course, in reality Google's decision was probably a little of both, right? They selected a technology based on a wide range of factors, including development costs and compatibility.

I'm still concerned that a decision in Oracle's favor would have a massive chilling effect on everyone else. All companies want to limit their potential liabilities. How can you prove in advance that you selected a language or API for the sake of compatibility, even when that is in fact the driving factor?

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#275

Post by foota »

jcranmer wrote: post #246

Oral arguments have already happened: https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-ameri... I wasn't able to listen to all of the arguments, but some general takeaways I had: * The justices seemed to be asking mostly technical legal questions of Google (e.g., discuss merger doctrine) and mostly doom-and-gloom questions of Oracle (e.g., how does your argument impact QWERTY keyboards?). This suggests to me th…

Huh, that last note is pretty interesting. You seem pretty tuned in, do you know when we might be able to expect a written decision?

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#276

Post by ghaff »

st1x7 wrote: post #269
simiones wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you wonder the same for an abortion hearing or a sanitation case? The court system can and must decide regulations on many things they are not personally experts in, and usually does so quite successfully.

No, I don't because I'm not an expert in those fields. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that they can't understand the subject matter or that they need to be experts in it, I'm just curious about how much technical detail is communicated and how.

I would assume a great deal in what I imagine are the many expert witness reports that both sides have submitted.

The one I helped write an expert witness report for a technology-related case, there was quite a bit of technical detail in it (although it was written so as to be intelligible to a non-specialist).

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#277

Post by lolc »

joshuamorton wrote: post #271
pjmlp wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I was working for Nokia, the APIs were patented, this is nothing new.

Patents and copyrights aren't the same thing. Patenting an API makes sense, since APIs are essentially ideas. Copyrighting an API does not make sense.

You can't patent an idea. You can patent the implementation of it if you're specific enough.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#278

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #110
swiley wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine's userspace being legal is probably what keeps the gamers from just running the available userspace source code from Microsoft. I doubt getting it banned would be something Microsoft actually wants.

But unless Microsoft actually embraces Wine, that would still leave the project in a weird legal gray area. Will e.g. Valve want to support the project, knowing that at any moment Microsoft could theoretically have a shift in strategy and become litigious?

Originally Microsoft was on the Oracle side in this case.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#279

Post by joshuamorton »

lolc wrote: post #277
joshuamorton wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents and copyrights aren't the same thing. Patenting an API makes sense, since APIs are essentially ideas. Copyrighting an API does not make sense.

You can't patent an idea. You can patent the implementation of it if you're specific enough.

Well sort of. You don't need to have built the actual thing to get a patent.

You cannot patent the completely generic idea of "a tool to lift people in buildings", but you can patent an elevator.

Similarly, you cannot patent "the ability to scan a database", but you can patent an api for doing so, even without a complete implementation of that api.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#280

Post by ClumsyPilot »

treis wrote: post #258
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm understanding your argument, if Google independently developed a programming language, and then they implemented a compatibility layer that accepted Java bytecode invoking Java APIs and translated it in realtime to their not-Java programming language, then this would be okay? How would such a programming language be detectably different from being an implementation of Java?

>If I'm understanding your argument, if Google independently developed a programming language, and then they implemented a compatibility layer that accepted Java bytecode invoking Java APIs and translated it in realtime to their not-Java programming language, then this would be okay? Yes >How would such a programming language be detectably different from being an implementation of Java? It would have it's own unique…

This doesnt make sence - you jyst replaced the textual API used at compiletime with a binary API used at runtime.

Its literally same difference.

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