371–380 of 433 posts
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Yes and no. Yes, Oracle was a database with a SQL API. Yes, SQL was invented by IBM. No, it wasn't copyrighted by IBM, because at the time, nobody thought you could do that.
I thought you couldn't 'copyright' something? I understood copyright to be something you had if you had created it.
>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…
Well, they aren't part of the implementation, since they just describe the interface. Google's theory is that interfaces, being needed for interoperability, are not protected by copyright. Google's alternate theory is that, even if they are protected by copyright, using them is fair use.
The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright, not to rely on a geriatric body of lawyers to interpret laws not designed around technology
> The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright But APIs were never included , explicitly, in copyright in the first place. Why do they need to be explicitly excluded?
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I wonder how a meaningful discussion about namespace trees and API spelling takes place at the Supreme Court considering the background of the justices.
They're smart people and these are not hard concepts.
I suggest you listen to the questions and responses of some of the justices because it's evident they have no idea of what code declarations are.
The solution here is to pass a law that exempts APIs from copyright, not to rely on a geriatric body of lawyers to interpret laws not designed around technology
The current law does exempt APIs from copyright via sensible general principles (you can't copyright functional things, which as applied in this case is known as the merger doctrine). If the court gets it wrong congress should fix it, but ideally we don't want a law that is a patchwork of tiny little exceptions because that fails to generalize to new things, so we would rather that the court just properly understands…
With a single legislative act, we need not worry about this or anything else, modulo constitutional issues which can also be fixed via amendments.
No, it is not obvious that API is a "functional thing" covered by existing law by the mere fact that SCOTUS has taken it on and it was a case to begin with.
I'm not sure why a trivial act of congress isn't the first thing we jump to rather than risk ruin. All the act needs to do is clarify what copyright means.
A copyright act for the digital millenium, if you will -- you can call it DMCA 2.0 :)
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SQL is an ISO standard, which Oracle like everyone else also pays for.
You can make an open-source database that uses the SQL language without paying a dime to anyone or signing any contracts. You don't have to pay for the ISO standard document to implement it - you can just infer behavior based on what you already know about sql.
I’ve made a life long habit of collecting and archiving these in my personal documents whenever I get my hands on one. Because these are valuable guidelines as to how things are supposed to work.
>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…
Oracle is trying to argue that just because you intentionally left a bunch of implementation detail out because it isn't relevant toward transforming something like the Java API's to a new context, it should still count as copyright infringement because they Still yoinked everything they did take... Which seems circular to me.
Google's point is "no shit, Sherlock, it wouldn't be Java otherwise." Oracle is couching this issue from the perspective that Google should have invented a completely New language and runtime, absorbing the same costs of them doing so. Google argues, on the other hand, that what they made, in order to confer to the syntactic structure of the programming language known as Java, dictates the duplication of the organization of the fundamental functions, packages, and namespaces, and that furthermore, Oracle has no standing to call them on it, because those APIs are a necessary prerequite to drive the operation of the JVM, and are by definition the only way to do it, so that API constitutes a method of operation.
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Let us assume for a moment Oracle wins this so what? Android will become illegal and then Oracle would ask Google to do what? Pay royalties? Pay Damages? Ask all the android programmers in the world to stop using Android ? Abandon android runtime? I think what is gonna happen realistically is capitalism will take over they will settle it among themselves and share user data as a bargain probably get some royalties. T…
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.
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Sun released Java under the GPL in 2006 and most of JDK in mid-2007, but the first release of Android was in 2008. Or is the issue that they were developing it behind closed doors while it was still proprietary, even though they never distributed it to anyone?
The first public release of Android was a beta in 2007 (also, layer in 2007, the first SDK preview was released), and it was released to OHA members before that. But the GPL is irrelevant, Google has never distributed under the GPL terms. That whatever it was doing was not under a Sun/Oracle license is not in dispute.
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4.4BSD was cleared in 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc....
That was only under the assumption that the APIs themselves weren't copyrightable.