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Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

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Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#31

Post by sitkack »

rtpg wrote: post #19
tajen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and API copyright would give an excellent commercial advantage to US companies over Europe, since they have more startups than we have. On the other hand, my government (France) doesn't do much to help startups [1][2], so it's only fair that we get invaded by talented foreign companies. [1] For €1000 sold to a customer, the employee gets a purchasing power of less than €300, even in the absence of expenses and st…

Where is your 46% coming from? Also, you might grossly underestimate how much of an absolute mess American taxes are to deal with. If you're complaining about paying your accountant 2000 euros a year...

Taxes are in the same ballpark for all western countries. The real burden isn't the financial load, it is the complexity. I had a dream that my US state could take over all forms of taxation and have a single payer system (ha!) Business, personal, income, property, federal, all of it, one form, filed electronically and done by the state. Done.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#32

Post by Oletros »

ChairmanZach wrote: post #9

""[Google]'s Section 102(b) argument also suffers from a broader flaw." (this sentence transitions from the Administration's rejection of Google's suggestion that declaring code is inherently more functional and less expressive than implementing code to the DoJ's agreement with Oracle's lawyers on the purpose of Section 102(b))" That Google would be in the right by copying the declaring code of 27(!) different namesp…

So, reimplementing API's is crazy?

Should Microsoft sue wine developers?

Should Amazon sue anyone making a compatible EC2 API?

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#33

Post by lmm »

maze-le wrote: post #28
estefan wrote: post #27

Maybe we should change the standard licences - GPL, MIT, etc. - to include a caveat "free to use without restriction... except by companies known as, or ever known as, Oracle Corporation"...

There are a few more exceptions, that come to my mind: Military, Intelligence Agencies and their subcontractors, TBTF-Banks, Disney, Sony ... ahrr and the list goes on

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.en.html

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#34

Post by tzs »

(Reposting a question I asked in an earlier discussion, where I may have arrived too late for anyone to see it).

That cases raises an interesting precedent issue that I have not been able to find the answer to. Let's assume that the Supreme Court decides not to take the appeal, so the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that APIs are copyrightable stands.

What courts is this precedent for?

Generally, the way precedent works is that if appeals from court X go to court Y, then the decisions of court Y are precedent for court X. If court Z is not on the appeals path from X, then the decisions of court Z are not binding precedent for X.

For copyright cases, appeals normally do NOT go to the CAFC. They go the Courts of Appeal for the circuit in which the court appealed from resides. E.g., copyright cases from district courts in the 2nd Circuit go to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

In general, that is the appeals path from the Federal district court. Copyright cases aren't specifically singled out.

Oracle vs. Google was tried in the 9th Circuit. If it had just been a copyright case, the appeal would have went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, it was also a patent case, and patent cases are singled out. They are explicitly diverted from the normal appeals path and go to the CAFC. If the case is also some other kind of case, such as a copyright case or an antitrust case, the CAFC is allowed to hear those aspects too.

So does this mean that if P sues D in the 9th circuit over copyright, with no patent issues or any other issues that would bring the appeal to the CAFC, then the district court would only use the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for precedent (which I believe disagrees with CAFC), and ignore CAFC's Google vs. Oracle copyright ruling?

Even more confusing, suppose P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th Circuit. The district court figures that the case, if appealed, will go to the CAFC, and so follows CAFC precedent for the copyright aspects. Now suppose after the court rules, neither party appeals the court's decisions on any of the patent issues. The only appeal copyright issues. Does the case still go to CAFC? Or does it go the 9th Circuit? If it goes to the 9th Circuit, do they apply their own copyright precedent or CAFC precedent?

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#35

Post by e12e »

caf wrote: post #21

Is the logical extension of this that anyone who's written a standard C library was in violation of Kernighan & Ritchie's copyright?

That's not quite as interesting a comparison as you might think [ed: or maybe it is, now that I've thought it through... ;-) ]. Eg, from the Introduction to the second edition of "The C Programming Language": "Appendix A contains a language reference manual. The official statement of the syntax and semantics of C is the ANSI Standard itself.".

Note that there's an ANSI standard for C -- and while I don't know what kind of license it is connected with off the top of my head -- it's very idea is to serve as a reference for implementers.

Note also, that if I remember correctly, the whole thing (Google vs Oracle) was tied to what Microsoft did with their "Java that wasn't quite java" -- and that what Google did was something similar: they took the API, but didn't make "a java" -- they made Dalvik/Dex etc -- which only sort-a-kinda was java.

As for "The C Programming Language", I can't find anything about license in my copy, and the copyright page doesn't exactly encourage re-use of the code-examples:

"Copyright 1988, 1978 by Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced ... yada yada yada"

So using some startling code such as "hello, world" -- as foundation for writing out something -- would probably not be legal. Even if the text does allude to the fact that a programmer is expected to draw upon the examples for inspiration.

I'm not sure that alone is enough to grant fair use.

It certainly seems that the examples in the book is similar to that in the java documentation -- and that neither gives an explicit license for use. Perhaps now AT&T owns everything, including Oracle?

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#37

Post by mikecmpbll »

simplifier wrote: post #26
mikecmpbll wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That FOSS Patents piece is the best commentary I've seen on the subject, thanks for bringing to my attention.

Ah, Florian Mueller, a paid Oracle shill.

I don't care how involved he is in the case, I read his writing and I found it to be illuminating -- far more so than anything else I'd read on the subject.

You can happily take the opposing view simply because he is involved and is probably biased, but that will make your viewpoint almost entirely baseless.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#38

Post by tajen »

rtpg wrote: post #19
tajen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and API copyright would give an excellent commercial advantage to US companies over Europe, since they have more startups than we have. On the other hand, my government (France) doesn't do much to help startups [1][2], so it's only fair that we get invaded by talented foreign companies. [1] For €1000 sold to a customer, the employee gets a purchasing power of less than €300, even in the absence of expenses and st…

Where is your 46% coming from? Also, you might grossly underestimate how much of an absolute mess American taxes are to deal with. If you're complaining about paying your accountant 2000 euros a year...

Are you asking what the 46% contributes to, or a source? It contributes to health/unemployment/poverty/old-age insurances and pensions. The source is most websites about LLCs ("SAS/SARL") in France, e.g. https://www.apce.com/pid811/cotisations-sociales.html?pid=81... - the first cell of the second table is worth a read, for the laugh.

Re: Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

#40

Post by Joeri »

markvdb wrote: post #18
tajen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and API copyright would give an excellent commercial advantage to US companies over Europe, since they have more startups than we have. On the other hand, my government (France) doesn't do much to help startups [1][2], so it's only fair that we get invaded by talented foreign companies. [1] For €1000 sold to a customer, the employee gets a purchasing power of less than €300, even in the absence of expenses and st…

Well, you could always emigrate to Belgium: 33.99% corporate income tax, 37.84% social security contributions, 53.5% personal income tax most labour income above a cleaner's wage, 21% VAT, 10% real estate sales tax, 25% dividend tax, spectacular inheritance tax, combined with far too complex rules and regulations. That's for your regular, main job. Side job income is burdened with taxes and rules more heavily...

All of those carry caveats though. The effective corporate tax rate is 23.4% due to the various deductions, and the bigger you are the lower the percentage (which I find really unfair to small business, but it is the way it is). That personal income tax also includes county taxes, and you can choose to live somewhere that those taxes are near zero, so it can go down a lot depending on where you live. 21% VAT is pretty much standard across the EU anyway. And the inheritance tax in flanders is 9% for everything below 250.000 euro if you're in direct line of succession, high but not spectacular. Also, very low property taxes. Typically capital isn't taxed, only income is (from labor or capital). That's why despite such high rates of taxation there is a lot of capital in Belgium, because what you get (after taxes) you mostly can keep.

But I would agree labor and small business are taxed too much. They need to do something about that (and not just raise VAT like they're talking about, which is again basically taxing labor).

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