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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

#311

Post by dragonwriter »

TheDong wrote: post #272
tachyonbeam wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

> OpenJDK, including the java standard library, is GPL. It's open source.

The code at issue is pre-OpenJDK, and wasn't open source when used (though much of it may now also be available in OpenJDK, not that Google uses it under the GPL, or claims to, anyhow.)

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

#312

Post by [deleted] »

treis wrote: post #300
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They're clearly different. In this example Google independently developed a language and made it compatible with the JVM. In the real world Google wanted Java and didn't like the licensing terms. So they copied the Java API and from that starting point built out their own version of Java.

[deleted]

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

#313

Post by akersten »

joshuamorton wrote: post #279
lolc wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You cannot patent the completely generic idea of "a tool to lift people in buildings",

You should see some of the software patents that get approved nowadays to see just how often "idea on a computer" gets greenlit.

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

#314

Post by dragonwriter »

webmaven wrote: post #199
mantap wrote: post #86

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. This isn't how copyright works though. It's neither necessary or sufficient. If you copy an API but change the words using a thesaurus you are still copying it…

> This isn't how copyright works though. It's neither necessary or sufficient. If you copy an API but change the words using a thesaurus you are still copying it so it would still be infringement. If by happenstance you come up with the same wording in your API, then that would not be copyright infringement because you didn't copy anything. That also isn't how copyright works. You're essentially asserting copyright o…

> The semantics of an API may (although I would argue otherwise) be protected, but if they are it would have to be either as a design patent, or as trade dress, not as copyright.

Wouldn't semantics be functional and thus require a utility patent, rather than a design patent or trade dress?

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

#315

Post by AmericanChopper »

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…

> This suggests to me that they're more in favor of Google's position, and are querying how to arrive at that decision from a legal basis.

I wouldn't read that much into it. Google has made the argument that "this means doom-and-gloom" and Oracle that "this is technically illegal". It makes sense that they're interrogating the parties along the lines of the arguments that have been presented. I wouldn't say it's a signal that they favor one over the other.

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

#316

Post by dragonwriter »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #293
webmaven wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, you have to divorce the first one before you marry the second.

Not if they are marriages in separate jurisdictions.

Unless the first marriage is viewed as invalid in the second jurisdiction (which simply occurring in another jurisdiction usually won't do), or the second jurisdiction allows polygamy (in which case, it doesn't need to be a separate jurisdiction, anyway), that generally is insufficient.

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

#317

Post by espadrine »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #101
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…

> 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?

> What happens to WINE if it is illegal to use the same names Kernel32 does?

I was wondering where would the Oracle win hurt most, and I think there is worse than WINE.

The Unix syscalls would have been Bell Labs’ copyright. That copyright was sold to Novell, which was sold to… Micro Focus International plc?

So this British consulting company that is, according to its website, “powering digital transformation”, could transform the digital world by suing BSD, Linux, Apple and Microsoft for tremendous sums of money and forbid them from using the famous syscalls.

I guess a given set of CLI programs may also be seen as an application programming interface, which makes all of GNU liable too.

Is that correct?

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

#318

Post by wombatpm »

treis wrote: post #65
coldpie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand what this case is about. This is about copyrighting API descriptions. Not copying code, but reimplementing an API that someone else created. Think about how many people created each part of the various web APIs. Is XmlHTTPRequest now owned by Microsoft? Who invented the Blink tag? Who owns which parts of the SQL language? The entire software industry is built on the idea that APIs are not copyrig…

You've excluded a huge amount of middle ground. There's a comprise somewhere in the middle that allows compatability but stops blatant copying.

The compromise is pay Oracle money. Just open your wallet and pay, Oracle will tell you when to stop.

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

#319

Post by initplus »

jeremyjh wrote: post #301
TheDong wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wo…

> Oracle is claiming that even though source code defining the API is open source, they retain copyright to the API itself.. Are you sure they are claiming that? A weaker claim could be that Google's usage does not conform to the GPL. Indeed if you were correct and the ruling is in Oracle's favor then the GPL is broken as designed, I haven't heard anyone express that concern in connection with this case.

I very much doubt that anyone in big tech wants to open the can of worms that is GPL enforcement.

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

#320

Post by wtn »

espadrine wrote: post #317
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?

> What happens to WINE if it is illegal to use the same names Kernel32 does? I was wondering where would the Oracle win hurt most, and I think there is worse than WINE. The Unix syscalls would have been Bell Labs’ copyright. That copyright was sold to Novell, which was sold to… Micro Focus International plc? So this British consulting company that is, according to its website, “powering digital transformation”, could…

4.4BSD was cleared in 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc....
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