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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

#391

Post by bitwize »

dragonwriter wrote: post #306
bitwize wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cannot build a case for protecting the significant creativity and unique expression in the design of an API, then there is little you can build a case for copyrighting. If techies want APIs to be uncopyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and seek a carve-out exception in statute. Asking the courts to affirm what they assume to be the case undermines all of copyright. I know some Hackernews are okay wi…

> If techies want APIs to be uncopyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and see a carve-out exception in statute. By the same token, if we are rejecting judge made law that isn't expressly in the statute, if technies want APIs (or, for that matter, computer programs!) to be copyrightable, the solution is to go to Congress and get an explicit carve-in put in the statute. As it is, the only things explicitly in…

The law specifically protects programs as a form of literary work. An API declaration is a fragment of a program, which is copyrightable under statute, just like chapter titles and headings are fragments of a literary work. API declarations constitute expression of an idea which has many ways to be expressed. And... even if a small part of a larger work is copied without authroization or license, then the copyright has been infringed.

Therefore, it should be uncontroversial that APIs are subject to copyright and that Google was infringing.

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

#392

Post by GoblinSlayer »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #208
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you want to reimplement some component of that system That's patching and is already disallowed by licenses in USA, but allowed by law, but that law was goofed up by a court.

Could you be more specific? What law allows it, and how was it goofed up by a court?

It's allowed by DMCA, but a court ruled that the license overrides law, and now all licenses have "don't patch" clause.

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

#393

Post by cyphar »

pjmlp wrote: post #388
cyphar wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to pay for ISO to implement an ISO standard. In addition, Oracle released their database software in 1979 but SQL only became an ANSI standard in 1986 (and an ISO standard in 1987) so they did originally reimplement an API which wasn't a public standard.

Sure you do, because the ISO documents aren't available for free nor the certification process.

I'm pretty sure that a fair number of commonly used QR libraries were not developed by people who shelled out for a copy of ISO 18004 (they probably just looked at descriptions of how it works outside of the standard document). Similarly, you can implement your own SQL dialect without needing to read the ISO standard for it.

Yes if you want to be certified and want to get a copy of the standards document you'll need to pay, but it's not necessary (and I doubt that Oracle did, given that they implemented SQL before the standard existed and probably were involved in drafting it).

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

#394

Post by pjmlp »

cyphar wrote: post #393
pjmlp wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you do, because the ISO documents aren't available for free nor the certification process.

I'm pretty sure that a fair number of commonly used QR libraries were not developed by people who shelled out for a copy of ISO 18004 (they probably just looked at descriptions of how it works outside of the standard document). Similarly, you can implement your own SQL dialect without needing to read the ISO standard for it. Yes if you want to be certified and want to get a copy of the standards document you'll need…

Sure that is how 1€ product shops work, which doesn't mean the final product actually does what it supposed to do.

Then that screwdriver turns itself instead of turning the screw.

> probably were involved in drafting it

Which also isn't done for free beer, ISO processes have associated costs.

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

#395

Post by monocasa »

nl wrote: post #353
treis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine makes programs written for Windows work on Linux. The key difference is that Linux is an independently developed system. The extent that wine copies Windows code is limited to a compatability layer. It doesn't transform Linux into just a copy of Windows. In contrast, Google didn't have their own independently developed programming language. They needed one so they copied the Java api and created one from there.…

> In contrast, Google didn't have their own independently developed programming language. They needed one so they copied the Java api and created one from there. They did not use the Api to create a compatability layer. It was used as a starting point to make their own copy of Java. This isn't an argument that has been made in court in anyway, and Google's use of the Java language hasn't been questioned. Google could…

> Google could have used the Java language with completely different APIs

Well, no, because many Java language constructs are defined in context to the standard library, for instance all classes being children of java.lang.Object. They'd need quite a bit of java.lang at the very least.

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

#396

Post by pjmlp »

cyphar wrote: post #379
dragonwriter wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I agree the GPL is not relevant to the case at hand, though it does raise the question whether (assuming Oracle wins) the logical conclusion is that the Java APIs are under the GPL/Proprietary dual-license Oracle offers today or that the copyright license itself doesn't apply to the API and a separate license is needed -- in which case I guess it's high time for GPLv4.

Except anti-GPL folks have made GPL almost irrelevant outside Java, Linux kernel, GCC and a couple of GNU tools.

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

#397

Post by pjmlp »

dlubarov wrote: post #321
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decis…

> Of course, in reality Google's decision was probably a little of both, right? I wouldn't think that Google's development costs were part of the decision. There aren't that many Java APIs -- as the article says, it's ~11k lines of definitions -- so Oracle is seeking ~$818k per line. Assuming Google's lawyers predicted that there was some risk of a lawsuit like this, any engineering costs associated with redesigning…

"Android chief Andy Rubin said java.lang APIs are copyrighted in 2006 email"

https://www.cnet.com/news/android-chief-andy-rubin-said-java...

"Copyright and consequences: Google’s Andy Rubin defends Android to jury"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/copyright-and-co...

> "We've been over a bunch of these, and we think they all suck," Lindholm wrote. "We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for java under the terms we need."

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

#398

Post by pjmlp »

gknoy wrote: post #363
treis wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only if the clean-room re-implementation was properly done with separate teams, proven in court that both teams never had any contact with each other beyond written specification architecture documents.

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

#399

Post by pjmlp »

monocasa wrote: post #395
nl wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In contrast, Google didn't have their own independently developed programming language. They needed one so they copied the Java api and created one from there. They did not use the Api to create a compatability layer. It was used as a starting point to make their own copy of Java. This isn't an argument that has been made in court in anyway, and Google's use of the Java language hasn't been questioned. Google could…

> Google could have used the Java language with completely different APIs Well, no, because many Java language constructs are defined in context to the standard library, for instance all classes being children of java.lang.Object. They'd need quite a bit of java.lang at the very least.

Which even after their adoption of OpenJDK still isn't compatible out of the box with the standard library available at https://adoptopenjdk.net/

In 2020 it is still pretty much hint and miss getting a Java library working without changes on Android, given that the Android team cherry picks whatever they feel like from OpenJDK for their own Android API implementation purposes.

Easily to find that out from Gerrit commits and AOSP source code.

Meanwhile, effort has been spent ensuring that 100% of ISO C and ISO C++ are available on Android NDK.

Thus out of the window goes the interoperability argument.

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

#400

Post by pjmlp »

strbean wrote: post #207
snarf21 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Sun licensed Java under an open license that would have allowed Google to use these interfaces without issue, if they had met certain criteria for supporting the full Java platform. Google essential thought "Well, we have too much bloat, and these parts are totally unneeded in our platform, so we're going to strip them out." Oracle's lawsuit is so bad-faith it is laughable.

Nope, Sun's license did not allow for Java SE on mobile devices without a proper license, hence the J2ME partners licenses.
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