191–200 of 965 posts
This is one of the most important legal decisions in the history of software. The US Supreme Court has basically just saved the whole software industry (and FOSS projects) from being wrecked by patent trolls.
Why? It wasn’t about whether APIs are under copyright (they are), but whether this particular case constitutes fair use. I think the effect of this decision was way overblown.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad for the verdict but this is such bullshit. Google implemented exactly enough to create the illusion of letting people use their Java talents then dragged their feet with a half broken out-of-date language environment. And they did all this to save money, not some sort of noble rebellion or clever hack. > Sun offered a licensing deal of between US$30 and 50 million. Schmidt said Google would have paid for tha…
I don't know why people are acting like this is some victory of open source I don't know that anybody is saying that Google did anything specifically Good or Just or Noble or anything. The celebratory aspect is more based on all the Bad Things that would have happened in the future if this decision had come down in favor of Oracle.
This is one of the most important legal decisions in the history of software. The US Supreme Court has basically just saved the whole software industry (and FOSS projects) from being wrecked by patent trolls.
Why? It wasn’t about whether APIs are under copyright (they are), but whether this particular case constitutes fair use. I think the effect of this decision was way overblown.
I love this analogy, and I'm going to use it to describe this case from now on. If I have a great idea for a new keyboard, maybe great new clicky keys or something, I have to make it QWERTY. I can't just come up with some random key ordering. And it has nothing to do with how good or bad QWERTY is as an idea. It's just that QWERTY happens to be what people have skills in.
This is one of the most important legal decisions in the history of software. The US Supreme Court has basically just saved the whole software industry (and FOSS projects) from being wrecked by patent trolls.
Good, now can we get a ruling that prevents Google, RedHat, Microsoft and others from wrecking FLOSS projects with their stifling influence? Or prevent them from eradicating competing or even original projects by doing hostile rewrites or forks?
Oh, I forgot this little apocalypse was hanging over our heads. It's good to see some sanity.
https://github.com/JoshCheek/clisp/blob/master/doc/Why-CLISP...
For better or worse, the same arguments ( "API is copyrightable" ) is what was used in the past to prevent 98's Microsoft from doing embrace-extend-extinguish to Java with their "JavaVM with P/Invoke'd Win32 API". The idea in that case was that when you try to implement something identical to the Java language and standard library, it doesn't matter if you call it Java or "Visual J++"; you are still implementing Java…
The real answer is that copyright is the wrong tool to go after what Microsoft did and the correct tool for that is antitrust. EEE is anti-competitive even if copying an API is fair use.
It's interesting reading Thomas' dissent. As per typical Thomas appears to be arguing that it's the letter of the law that matters, whereas it's the majority opinion that the motivations and substance of the law are primary. Hackers and programmers tend to try and read the law like computer code to be "hacked" and exploited based on the letter of the law. So you'd expect us to be more sympathetic to Thomas' view. So…