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Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

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Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#191

Post by ColanR »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #160
phkahler wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If APIs become copyrightable, what happens to any open source software the implements a proprietary API? That has implications for language implementations too. Who would own the standard library for any given language? What about programs that call API functions? Are they derivative works too? An API is necessarily functional first and foremost. It would cause chaos and some weird dystopian future if Oracle wins.

Another interesting take: Machine architectures expose an API, and it may become impossible for anyone but a chip manufacturer to distribute a compiler.

That sounds like a win for RISC.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#192

Post by [deleted] »

mathraki wrote: post #9

Where are the expert witnesses in this case?? Do we really expect judges in their 60s and 70s to understand basics of coding in order to come to the right conclusion?? I put myself in their shoes, if I had never looked at a line of code I couldn't even start to imagine what an API vs real code is. I'd probably think it's some made up concept that Google is using to save money and circumvent the law.

[deleted]

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#193

Post by returningfory2 »

nindalf wrote: post #183
doesnotexist wrote: post #128

Should Oracle win this case, I predict that Free Software licenses will emerge as the clear market choice. Licenses that enshrine interoperability along with the freedom to modify or reimplement in part or wholesale will suddenly provide significantly more value over non-Free software which will be a proprietary minefield and the value will not be for technical but purely from legal liability. Anyone setting out to d…

AWS licenses it's client library as under the Apache License. ( https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java/blob/master/LICENSE.txt ) Doesn't that mean anyone can build an interoperable service? I can then benefit from other cloud providers implementing the same API. I don't need access to AWS' source code, I wasn't going to deploy a private cloud anyway. All I want is robust competition.

Yeah, I think this is what Digital Ocean does? I believe the AWS S3 Python library works out of the box for DO.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#194

Post by neves »

cultus wrote: post #176
grasshopperpurp wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert on RBG, but I always pegged her as a Neo-Lib, rather than a Leftist.

This is really an important distinction. Social issues like gay marriage and things like this are completely orthogonal. The Democratic Party as a whole is very much neoliberal or liberal as opposed to left. Liberal judges are much the same.

The Democratic Party would be considered center-right in any other country of the world, but the USA.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#197

Post by cmiles74 »

eikenberry wrote: post #172
syspec wrote: post #139

> This is a widespread practice in the software industry. Oracle, for example, re-implemented Amazon's S3 API so that customers who built software for Amazon's cloud platform could easily switch to Oracle's rival cloud platform. Oracle themselves are doing it, could someone with a better legal mind explain to me how this doesn't make the case simpler to decide? Is it that they're saying, it should be illegal but sinc…

They are probably thinking that they could negotiate licenses with the other big companies easier than any startup could, thus locking out a lot of competition.

Yes, I am sure Amazon will be happy to license their S3 API to help their customers migrate over to Oracle's cloud product. I think not! :-P

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#198

Post by laurent92 »

doesnotexist wrote: post #128

Should Oracle win this case, I predict that Free Software licenses will emerge as the clear market choice. Licenses that enshrine interoperability along with the freedom to modify or reimplement in part or wholesale will suddenly provide significantly more value over non-Free software which will be a proprietary minefield and the value will not be for technical but purely from legal liability. Anyone setting out to d…

I don’t understand why software and other IP rights aren’t de facto open-source after 10 or 20 years, if nothing else for archive and legacy purpose, but also to encourage sustained innovation. I’m not even leftist; but even in the capitalist/libertarian theory, the state shouldn’t help guard private companies’ rights in software. If you publish it, the recipient has it, period. The state lending its judges to enforce exclusive rights for a few years is already a big extraction of collective resources for private interests.

Found the source of Windows XP? It’s alright, you shouldn’t be condemned for publishing it, it will only help with bugfixes and security, and as long as the owner refuses to sell it...

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#199

Post by [deleted] »

zepto wrote: post #95
SloopJon wrote: post #14

I saw one question from Gorsuch quoted in reports about the arguments that bothered me: "What do we do about the fact that the other competitors, Apple, Microsoft ... have, in fact, been able to come up with phones that work just fine without engaging in this kind of copying?" macOS and iOS (and indeed Apple itself) would not exist as we know them today, if at all, without very liberal cross pollination of APIs. In a…

You say GNU would not exist, which is true in it’s current form. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have had a Unix-like (although not strictly compatible) free system. It’s also true that Safari couldn’t have used XMLHttpRequest unless Microsoft had licensed it . But that might have sped up the incorporation of an open standard alternative. It would definitely have created a different history to the one we have now i…

[deleted]

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#200

Post by defen »

fdye wrote: post #147
interestica wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Supreme court judges just do not have the conceptual framework to properly adjudicate this. It's why silly (and inadequate) analogies emerge: "Justice Clarence Thomas compared Google's copying of the Java APIs to a football team taking a rival's playbook."

What really sucks is this was a perfect time for a lawyer to use Justice Thomas' analogy to better explain the difference. I would have tried something like: "Close your honor, but let me expand on this further. Imagine instead that your opponent publishes their calls and they are regularly available to all individuals of the general public. However, while they may describe a call for going long, they do not give any…

If I were Oracle's lawyer, I'd respond by saying that you can have the concept of "go long", but you can't literally name it "go long" because there was an act of creativity involved in mapping that name onto the concept of a receiver running far down the field. So you have to call it "go deep" or whatever.
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