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

fortune.com

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

#61

Post by jaredklewis »

iSnow wrote: post #13
colechristensen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s It's sarcastic, I get it, but it is also profoundly stupid. Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem as we continually move away from the importance of physical ob…

>Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem Uhm, no. Only for the HN crowd and maybe open source. There are a lot more and more pressing problems that have to do with things like the environment, food production, reproduction, migration and democracy vs. corporatism vs. ideology.

Yea, but I would guess software will be pretty helpful when solving those problems.

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

#62

Post by lorddoig »

Excuse me, non-American here, but a passage from an article linked within states[0]:

> The nine justices request that U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr., the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court, weigh in on about 20 cases a year in which the federal government has a strong interest. The justices generally give greater weight to what he or she says than other third parties that take a side in a case, an influence which has caused the solicitor general to be dubbed the "tenth justice."

Question: what the fuck?

    [0]: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/15/google-oracle-lawsuit-idUSL1N0Y32YG20150515

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

#63

Post by tw04 »

meesterdude wrote: post #29
colechristensen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s It's sarcastic, I get it, but it is also profoundly stupid. Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem as we continually move away from the importance of physical ob…

calling what I said "profoundly stupid" adds little to the discussion, and only stands to subvert my expression of frustration, which is where the sarcasm comes from. You may disagree, but you don't need to knock down what I said to do so. Likewise, take a step back. Maybe take two. What our our priorities as a society, as a species? These two companies with loads of money and resources, battling it out over if API's…

It's not squabble if you're an independent developer or a startup trying to create a new product.

There will be a lot more of those poor people you were talking about if APIs are allowed to be copyrighted. It will stifle innovation in the US, and drive talented programmers to either seek a different profession, or move to a country that isn't draconian.

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

#64

Post by coldpie »

rodgerd wrote: post #16

Welp, IT industry had a good run. Time to wrap it up and hand it over to a couple of companies to run as a monopoly.

Yeah, I don't understand why this is a relatively minor story. This should be filling the front page of HN, on par with Jobs's death. If this ruling goes the wrong way, it will end software development as we know it, especially given the ridiculous length of copyright.

Any reimplementation of an API? Illegal. IBM compatible PCs? Illegal. Any emulator? Illegal. Binary-compatible reimplementations? Illegal.

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

#65

Post by estsauver »

lorddoig wrote: post #62

Excuse me, non-American here, but a passage from an article linked within states[0]: > The nine justices request that U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr., the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court, weigh in on about 20 cases a year in which the federal government has a strong interest. The justices generally give greater weight to what he or she says than other third parties that take a side in a c…

Third parties can generally file something called an "amicus brief" which is more or less "an opinion from a friend of the court."

The court takes this opinion into account, it's not that Oracle and Google aren't listened to, it's that the Federal government basically gets a chance to say what it thinks.

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

#66

Post by bediger4000 »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #22
badlogic wrote: post #4

This advise by the Solicitor General hinges on an interpretation of section 102(b) of the copyright act. That section essentially says that "methods of operation" can't be copyrighted. The Solicitor General does not understand that APIs are a formalized description of "methods of operation" (page 14). I suggest reading the entire advisory, it's quite frustrating and contradicts itself.

All code is a formalized description of "methods of operation". Unless you believe software achieves practical results without the benefit of hardware. And that's assuming you write pure assembly, else you also have firmware, operating systems, drivers, libraries, runtimes, or whatever supporting infrastructure is needed for your code to do anything meaningful.

I agree that all code is a formalized description of "methods of operation", unless the legal phrase "methods of operation" has some exotic, inobvious meaning, like "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches" has taken on.

That's why the US shouldn't allow software patents. Software is either mathematical or a formalized description of a method of operation.

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

#67

Post by ChairmanZach »

dmm wrote: post #48
ChairmanZach wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The .NET standard libraries are part of the CLI which is a part of ISO/IEC 23271:2012, a standard. I have no idea when it comes to the EC2 API. Should it be legal for me to copy all of the declaring code of my employers product and after writing my own implementation selling it as my own product/work under a different name?

Wine reimplements win32 and directx, etc, ot the .Net api.

Wine is a reverse engineering of the APIs, not a blatant copy.

edit: Straight from Wikipedia: "Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse-engineering, to avoid copyright issues.[4] [4] https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?p=37364#37364 "

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

#68

Post by bediger4000 »

rayiner wrote: post #46
iSnow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem Uhm, no. Only for the HN crowd and maybe open source. There are a lot more and more pressing problems that have to do with things like the environment, food production, reproduction, migration and democracy vs. corporatism vs. ideology.

It's profoundly important to the U.S. as a whole. Creation of IP is the last thing that's going to be automated by robots. It's already been tremendously resistant to production being exported to China and India. We're already at the point where the primary product of the U.S. is IP in various forms (Apple designs the computers but they're manufactured in China).

What do you mean by "IP"? If it's "intellectual property" that strikes me (a non-lawyer) as a particularly vague and ill-defined concept. I personally find the idea of owning an idea to be risible: historically, important things have been invented or discovered multiple times, sometimes clearly independently. So, why should I as a citizen finance some monopolies that will be economically detrimental to me and to society as a whole? Seriously. I'm not pulling chains here. Economists are almost 100% against monopolies (although they often differ on what constitutes a monopoly), and "IP" is a state-supported monopoly. Why should we subject ourselves to it?

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

#70

Post by ChairmanZach »

Oletros wrote: post #57
ChairmanZach wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The .NET standard libraries are part of the CLI which is a part of ISO/IEC 23271:2012, a standard. I have no idea when it comes to the EC2 API. Should it be legal for me to copy all of the declaring code of my employers product and after writing my own implementation selling it as my own product/work under a different name?

> Should it be legal for me to copy all of the declaring code of my employers product and after writing my own implementation selling it as my own product/work under a different name? How do you think compatible API implementations have been done until now?

If they are done by copying someone elses work without permission then by copyright infringement. If done by implementing a standard or through a license etc. then no harm is done.

Do you think that I should be allowed to steal the declaring code of someone elses proprietary solution and pawn of as my own?

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