Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 344 posts

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#131

Post by Maarten88 »

meddlepal wrote: post #15
PunchTornado wrote: post #2

Oracle is at that stage where they didn't invent or do anything right in the last 5 years but try to get money from lawsuits.

From what I've been told by a contact in their database sales team is that there pipeline for on-premise licenses is drying up quickly but their SaaS business is doing well.

> ...pipeline for on-premise licenses is drying up quickly but their SaaS business is doing well...

I hear they are desperately pushing new cloud offerings, but they are having lots of problems with customer retention, as their cloud technology is really not ready so they are actually just selling hosted versions of the existing products that lack any cost advantage.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#132

Post by gribbly »

throwaway30121 wrote: post #68

Oracle is such a shit company. There are still some great hackers there but Larry Ellison is an asshole, and I don't envy anyone who has to work for him even indirectly. "Left Oracle's Java business in tatters" eh? Where was their mobile OS? Their Dalvik? The wounds to Java have all been self-inflicted. If they succeed in copyrighting the API then where does this leave OpenJDK? Operating at the mercy of Larry fucking…

>Or even to C# since apparently MS got the memo on Open Source

Actually Microsoft was with Oracle on the whole 'API's should be copyrightable' and lobbied on their behalf during the case.

Microsoft claimed that: "If Google's position that APIs can't be copyrighted stands, it will "destabilize" the entire software industry"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/microsoft-forese...

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#134

Post by twblalock »

CydeWeys wrote: post #45
faragon wrote: post #40

Oracle should stop that, in my opinion. That attitude could kill Java in the long term.

One wonders how much the taint of Java factored into the decision to invent Go.

My impression is that the Go team had two targets, both based on languages in common use at Google: C++ programmers, and programmers using languages like Python who wanted more type safety but didn't want to use a language with a massive ecosystem.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#135

Post by jolux »

Oletros wrote: post #127
jolux wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you could point me to an unbiased source trying to argue the other side of this question, then sure. I really want to know both sides of this issue and it's nearly impossible to find someone separating the quintessential geek love for Google and geek hatred for Oracle from the facts of the case other than Mueller. Honestly I'm all for liberalizing copyrights and fair use but it makes me mad to see Google goin…

> it's nearly impossible to find someone separating the quintessential geek love for Google and geek hatred for Oracle from the facts of the case other than Mueller. But you can't separate the facts from the quintessential paid love for Oracle and the paid hatred for Google of Mueller. And exactly what tech has been ripping Google?

>But you can't separate the facts from the quintessential paid love for Oracle and the paid hatred for Google of Mueller.

Sure, which is why I was asking you for someone arguing this who was more impeccably non-biased. I realize that some opinions in arguments do not deserve being argued for, such as mass genocide, but I don't think this case is as clear cut and it's a little disturbing to me that the internet was so universally aligned with Google and against Oracle on this one. I just like seeing a little diversity of opinion, that's all.

As for what tech Google rips off, I think that's well established. They clearly had no intention of paying for a license in this case, so they wrote the code first and decided they'd deal with the consequences later. They did this when they copied the iPhone interface for Android too, and they also did it when they created Gmail Inbox which again is substantially similar to Mailbox. It's just sort of their MO.

Google has done a lot of very inventive stuff but it seems obvious to me that they walk a tight line between creating new things and copying old ones from time to time.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#136

Post by [deleted] »

blub wrote: post #116
throwaway30121 wrote: post #68

Oracle is such a shit company. There are still some great hackers there but Larry Ellison is an asshole, and I don't envy anyone who has to work for him even indirectly. "Left Oracle's Java business in tatters" eh? Where was their mobile OS? Their Dalvik? The wounds to Java have all been self-inflicted. If they succeed in copyrighting the API then where does this leave OpenJDK? Operating at the mercy of Larry fucking…

Maybe he is an asshole, but at least Larry Ellison didn't build a company to spy on half the planet like Page & Brin.

[deleted]

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#137

Post by _audakel »

jolux wrote: post #125
nine_k wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He failed to make half the world use his company's products, among other things. BTW I'd appreciate if you gave an example of a highly successful and ethically impeccable company.

>ethically impeccable company First of all this is moving the goalposts significantly and is also an impossible standard. I would say that Apple and Microsoft are more ethical than Google but the question is of course along what axis?

It's easy to hate on big companies for one or 2 publicly criticized decisions, but never know the thousands of non public decisions that made that choice the best one, or the thousands of non public stories of the good stuff they do.

Not to say companies should get of easy, but you can't project a huge multidimensional entity into a single axis of ethical or not.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#138

Post by sangnoir »

jolux wrote: post #125
nine_k wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He failed to make half the world use his company's products, among other things. BTW I'd appreciate if you gave an example of a highly successful and ethically impeccable company.

>ethically impeccable company First of all this is moving the goalposts significantly and is also an impossible standard. I would say that Apple and Microsoft are more ethical than Google but the question is of course along what axis?

TBF, GP was shifting goalposts in turn. Whenever you hear anything like, "Alice did X, but at least she's better than Bob who did unrelated thing Y" you know the goalposts are being moved (at best) or your attention is being misdirected nefariously. It doesn't add anything valuable to the discussion.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#139

Post by 0xffff2 »

DannyBee wrote: post #119
binarymax wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only this had to do with patents. Oracle is claiming breach of copyright - which lasts over a hundred years.

They originally claimed patents too, which is why this keeps going to the federal circuit instead of the 9th, who would have ended this silliness

Huh? "The 9th [circuit]" is a Federal circuit court...

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#140

Post by irq-1 »

Spivak wrote: post #50
seibelj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the logic of saying that the API itself is a creative work and should be copyrighted. Creating a solid, logical API structure isn't simple. But I believe the API signature itself (function name, argument types, return type) should not be copyrightable, in the interests of the industry as a whole. Google didn't steal the implementation, they just reused the same function signatures to make their drop-in r…

But, and I think this is really the main point, Google didn't just use the API signatures they used the API documentation to preserve the semantic meaning of those signatures which are necessary to make the API actually useful. I think Google could argue very successfully that literally just the API signatures should fall under fair use but that's not really what this is about.

If I make a menu with the same items that your restaurant offers, it shouldn't be an issue of copyright, even if I preserve the "semantic meaning" of the menu items (copying the recipes, for example.)
Post reply on HN