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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

#361

Post by nerdkid93 »

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…

I think in the case of Amazon selling hosted MongoDB calling it DocumentDB, they are actually using a fork of mongo's previously open source codebase. Prior to their license change in 2018 from AGPL to SSPL [0], Amazon would have been free to use mongo's codebase directly if they didn't need to make any changes to it.

[0] https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-37651

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

#362

Post by ffhhj »

akersten wrote: post #313
joshuamorton wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like that Sony patent from 2005 to control the brain without conducting any experiments to confirm if that even works:

https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2005/04/4785-2/

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

#363

Post by gknoy »

treis wrote: post #322
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "making it compatible with the JVM" would involve implementing the Java standard library, right? Recognizing terms like "java.lang.String" or "java.lang.Math.max" and doing the right thing? To do that, aren't you creating a copy of the Java API?

Nobody is arguing that you can't copy the API if it's fair use. Copying the API in order to make a copy of the software isn't fair use.

Strange, in hardware land I thought that a clean-room reimplementation of something (where you make something with the same interface -- the API of the hardware) was legal.

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

#364

Post by dejavuagain »

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…

That's exactly why copyright exists. To protect the investment of brain cycles.

If we can't protect our intellectual property, what is the incentive to create it?

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

#365

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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.

Developing a programming language does not give you brownie points with a judge, and has no bearing on the matter.

What you are suggestying is copying the binary API instead of the texual one. It is equally the subject of copyright.

In the real world Google deleoped their own equivalent of the JVM, which uses different bytecode. This is technically more difficult than putting together a language. But that has no relevance to the subject of copyright.

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

#366

Post by throwaway373438 »

mehrdadn wrote: post #347
throwaway373438 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the original analogy is apt, and your followup analogy isn't.

I wasn't the one who compared this with the width of a car and then got confused what a shorter width would even mean. But sure, if you say so.

Program identifiers use exact matches. The analogy works fine understanding this context.

It's possible to extend any analogy in a way that doesn't make sense, which is what you've done.

It seems like your complaint may be that you simply don't like, or perhaps don't understand, analogies in general.

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

#367

Post by nodamage »

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…

The problem for Google is that "compilations" in copyright law may be considered copyrightable even if the underlying data being compiled is not. The legal requirement is that the data needs to be "selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship". (https://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html)

As an example, individual recipes are generally not copyrightable, but if you compile a set of recipes and publish them in a cookbook, the cookbook itself would be copyrightable.

As applied to Java, even if individual method signatures like max/min/split/replace/delete/etc might not be copyrightable, the fact that you've organized those specific methods into specific classes named Math/String/File and then organized those classes into specific packages named java.lang and java.io might meet the threshold for copyrightability as a "compilation".

While it would likely not be good for the software industry for reasons discussed in this thread, I would not be particularly surprised if the court ruled in favor of Oracle on this particular subject.

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

#368

Post by segfaultbuserr »

swiley wrote: post #25
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this timeline, the Wine repo mirror will be instantaneously banned on GitHub.

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.

It's an interesting perspective. Microsoft already promised not to harm Mono, so if the lawsuit is won by Oracle, it's certainly possible for Microsoft to promise not to harm Wine as a PR move without addressing the actual issue, and this strategy can actually work better for Microsoft to keep its control on APIs! It can be similar to how Apple had broadened the scope of its repair program to weaken the Right to Repair movement.

Really scary.

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

#369

Post by warmfuzzykitten »

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…

> Google didn't copy any of Oracle/Sun's Java source code base into Android Java. Oracle lawyers acknowledge this.

You're saying the textual contents of the interfaces that define the APIs are not part of the source code base? Of course Google copied them, or a nearly identical paraphrase of them.

I'm not quite sure what Google's legal theory is. Listening to the oral arguments this morning certainly didn't make that more clear to me. But I don't think it includes redefining what we mean by copying text.

And interfaces, in common parlance, are certainly lines of code.

Nor do I think Oracle's argument is that no one else can define interfaces that use the same words as in the Java standard library interfaces. read, write, get, put, etc. did not become Oracle's property by virtue of them being used as method names.

I have a bit of trouble with the concept "the threshhold of too much", too, as it applies to this case. Google copied or paraphrased essentially _all_ of the text of interfaces they used from Java libraries.

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

#370

Post by _alex_ »

snarf21 wrote: post #100
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…

In addition to the specific claims and their validity, one fact remains. Oracle bought Sun for the sole purpose of suing Google . Full stop. I used to date someone involved in the case when it was just getting started. Oracle can go pound sand.

there was no other reason to buy sun?
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