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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

#741

Post by abvdasker »

gwright wrote: post #551
abvdasker wrote: post #545

Further proof that the Supreme Court of the United States has been captured by right-wing ideologues who view every problem as having a solution in property rights. Why anyone in the US would think it's a good idea to change the foundations of the software industry — one of the few remaining bright spots in the US's sputtering economy — is beyond me. I guess in the end Americans will get what they deserve.

This seems like shooting the messenger to me. The problem is that the legislature hasn't done its job. It isn't the job of the judiciary to monkey-patch the law to get a desired outcome. They should be interpreting the law as written and any negative consequences should be addressed by legislation.

"They should be interpreting the law as written and any negative consequences should be addressed by legislation."

What good is the legislation when it get cuts to ribbons in the courts? Look at what happened to the ACA and the individual mandate. Even modest progressive legislation can barely survive the current court, so I'm not sure your proposed solution works.

"interpreting the law as written" is a farce. The court is a minoritarian conservative bulwark that can rule however it wants with no accountability. The law is what they want it to be. Always has been.

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

#742

Post by dylan-m »

pier25 wrote: post #245
c-smile wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should Oracle win this case, ... Free Software ... Hmmm... First Free Software project that will dye after this is WINE that implements Windows API ( https://www.winehq.org/ )

And what about Xamarin?

Microsoft owns Xamarin (as of February 2016), so that would be weird :b

This would be somewhat concerning if we were talking about Ballmer-era Microsoft where they were going around extorting companies that used Linux. Although nothing was really stopping them then. They had a good system of picking companies one by one, being threatening and making them sign "licensing deals" without ever needing to go to court or publicly say which patents were being infringed. (Probably all FAT stuff. Google eventually had the good sense to stop using FAT on Android, but it was slow going because if you haven't noticed Google manoeuvres about as well as a freight train). With the amount they've changed under Nadella, I'm not sure present day Microsoft even could do that.

But for present-day examples we're going to need to search elsewhere.

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

#743

Post by pier25 »

dylan-m wrote: post #742
pier25 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about Xamarin?

Microsoft owns Xamarin (as of February 2016), so that would be weird :b This would be somewhat concerning if we were talking about Ballmer-era Microsoft where they were going around extorting companies that used Linux. Although nothing was really stopping them then. They had a good system of picking companies one by one, being threatening and making them sign "licensing deals" without ever needing to go to court or p…

What I meant is that Xamarin reimplements the APIs from iOS and Android.

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

#744

Post by gwright »

abvdasker wrote: post #741
gwright wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like shooting the messenger to me. The problem is that the legislature hasn't done its job. It isn't the job of the judiciary to monkey-patch the law to get a desired outcome. They should be interpreting the law as written and any negative consequences should be addressed by legislation.

"They should be interpreting the law as written and any negative consequences should be addressed by legislation." What good is the legislation when it get cuts to ribbons in the courts? Look at what happened to the ACA and the individual mandate. Even modest progressive legislation can barely survive the current court, so I'm not sure your proposed solution works. "interpreting the law as written" is a farce. The co…

Not sure what to conclude from that.

The standard positions seem to be:

    * the right is more in favor of originalism
    * the left is more in favor of the living constitution view
You seem to be claiming that the right is actually acting in alignment with the living constitution view, which is an unusual take on this IMHO.

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

#745

Post by hajile »

mumblemumble wrote: post #719
thayne wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ts being placed into class named java.lang.Math, though, is not. That is a product of the way it is arranged, which is a matter of design, not of necessity. It's hard to imagine any particular reason why a function would need to have "java" in its name in order correctly calculate the maximum of two numbers. But if you want to be interoperable with programs that expect to be able to find the max of two numbers usin…

That 2014 opinion has a whole section explaining why the interoperability argument doesn't work here. I also summarized it a bit elsewhere in this thread. To add more to that, the opinion spends a while talking about why the precedent in the ruling in favor of Activition over making unlicensed games for Sega consoles doesn't apply here, and that's helpful for understanding why arguments about interoperability aren't…

What you should really worry about is who owns the C language API (Nokia Bell Labs probably???)

You see, in the US, derivative works are a thing. All languages that derive their APIs and perhaps even syntax from C would be derivatives. There's interesting legal arguments to be had there if APIs are ruled to be copyrightable....

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

#746

Post by eikenberry »

cmiles74 wrote: post #197
eikenberry wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not saying they are right. But Oracle has a tradition of thinking they are _very_ important and others would be daft not to cater to them.

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

#747

Post by TheFlyingFish »

carapace wrote: post #517
tylersmith wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's right. The entire premise of open source licensing is that the work is copyrightable, so it uses the copyright system to enforce the authors distribution requirements.

I don't have to believe in Santa Claus to appreciate Christmas presents. I don't believe that software should be subject to copyright so I put the GPL on my code to protect it from those that do. Fight fire with fire, eh?

The GPL, in particular, goes further than just refusing to exercise your copyright over a piece of software. The GPL restricts the usage of your software, most notably by forbidding its use as part of any proprietary software. Without copyright no one would have to respect that restriction.

The situation you are describing is closer to a project with an "unlicense," e.g. SQLite, which explicitly makes the project public-domain and places no restrictions whatsoever on its use.

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

#748

Post by cafed00d »

nodamage wrote: post #240

I'm not sure why so many people here seem to be surprised by this, I got the exact same impression from the hearing. The problem for Google on the copyrightability front is that "compilations" of non-copyrightable items can be copyrightable even if the underlying items themselves are not, if the "selection, coordination, or arrangement" of those items involves sufficient creativity to be considered an "original work…

> As is common when HN discusses legal matters I see a lot of people blaming the judges for not understanding tech, but the problem here isn't really the judges so much as the law itself.

Yep I second this. I think there’s a parallel “legal news” community somewhere pointing at us here going “those nerds don’t understand how law works” :)

What we should _all_ be doing more actively, imo, is nudging our representatives to update the law to create legislation that answers definitively “whether APIs are copyrightable or not”. Albeit, that is a much more difficult and slower process.

Well, you know what they say about democracy as a form of government though: “something something yeah, it kinda sucks but it’s the best we’ve got something”

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

#749

Post by abvdasker »

gwright wrote: post #744
abvdasker wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They should be interpreting the law as written and any negative consequences should be addressed by legislation." What good is the legislation when it get cuts to ribbons in the courts? Look at what happened to the ACA and the individual mandate. Even modest progressive legislation can barely survive the current court, so I'm not sure your proposed solution works. "interpreting the law as written" is a farce. The co…

Not sure what to conclude from that. The standard positions seem to be: * the right is more in favor of originalism * the left is more in favor of the living constitution view You seem to be claiming that the right is actually acting in alignment with the living constitution view, which is an unusual take on this IMHO.

I'm saying that the legal doctrines merely provide a veneer of rationalization for decisions obviously motivated by political ideology (on both sides). I'm saying the legal doctrine is totally irrelevant.

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

#750

Post by phendrenad2 »

hugi wrote: post #228
xoxoy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google lawyer should be fired. I can’t believe you’d put the best of the best in front of the SC and the guy didn’t even sound like he could describe what an API actually is in non-technical terms. I don’t see how he represented the best legal representation Google could buy.

Indeed. This was bad representation to the point that I'm wondering if it was intentional. Google might have recently realized that, as a monopoly, fighting for API freedom perhaps isn't in their best interest.

4D chess time: Google wants to steal market share from Oracle, and Oracle offered a perfect opportunity by trying to shoot itself in the foot by making Java forks risky (thus ending innovation from the open-source world). I expect Google to invent a new bytecode language that looks and feels like Java, but isn't Java. Oh and it'll come with a promise not to sue if you copy the API, not like that big bad Oracle.
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