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

> Dunning-Kruger effect, exemplified in this thread

How does the effect where everyone feels they are slightly closer to about the 70th percentile in performance at a task than they are (and more the farther away from that their actual performance is) have any bearing here?

Or do you mean the D-K effect of popular legend where people who are completely incompetent think they are hypercompetent, rather than the actual effect of that name?

> I think the specification can be, but the API code itself is a mechanical translation of the specification into computer code. Note that abstractions, names, etc are conceived in the specification and are then translated into computer code. Even if you skip the specification step, as sometimes is done, you're then dealing with an implicit, ad-hoc specification.

I think that's a distinction without a difference; you might as well say that a story is a creative work but translating that story into symbols written on a page is purely mechanical.

> So, going back to the max() function example: I believe, based on the way the courts are looking at it, that the parts that are essential to its function are the fact that it takes two numbers and returns the greater of the two, and perhaps also the fact that it is named "max".

> Its being placed into class named java.lang.Math, though, is not.

Its not essential to the function of the library function.

It essential to the function of the API, which is to interface between the code in the library and consuming code, including (in the case of the APIs used in Android) consuming source code (though not complete existing applications, for various reasons that Oracle wants to be given the weight of negating the idea that interoperability is the purpose at all, despite the fact that this is simply false) designed for the existing Java APIs.

> However, if the interface to their tax preparation software were arranged identically to TurboTax's, to the extent that a set of automated UI tests written against TurboTax would also work with H&R Block's app, then we would likely be looking at a case of copyright violation.

The problem with that analogy is that it is self-evident that being mechanically identical is not a functional requirements (though it may be advantageous) for a human-software interface to work, because humans are intelligent actors that can figure out a UI, within some bounds. On the other hand, a client code unit consuming an API cannot intelligently "figure out" a different API than the one it was designed for: the API is, to the extent that it is intended to support the same functionality, either identical or nonfunctional.

Well, the other problem is that the actual legal precedent on look and feel (while not necessarily decisive because the Supreme Court successfully dodged the issue) goes the other way, anyhow. But even if you were right that an identical interface would be infringing as copying expressive components not essential to functionality for a UI, the analogy fails for an API because of the different requirements for functionality.

Someone could also argue your analogy with a cookbook is wrong, because if we talk about headers and APIs, it's more like Oracle claiming that their stove's interface to the pot is copyrightable.

How is heat transferred to the pot? From the stove to the pot, this is the API, and how it's implemented doesn't matter. Oracle claims that this specific thing, that you turn on any button and make it heat up is copyrightable.

But we all know that a stove is useless without that API. We would have to buy a whole new kitchen equipment for all stoves that we are going to buy.

A further question is: When will it end with copyright claims? I mean, at somepoint somebody will claim that the effing powerplug is also copyrightable. But we all know that nobody (speaking of % of the population) even has the skills to connect a device without a power plug without potentially harming themselves.

All technology is useless without APIs. Nonetheless I think that copyright laws is essentially full of flaws here, because if we focus on speech alone (of which most copyright laws are based on), someone might even argue that specific words are copyrightable if they are "uncommon enough".

Tortured analogies like this is why the whole software industry is going to be making a surprised pikachu face when Oracle wins (see my comment a day or two ago on the prior story for substantially similar sentiment).

Heat transfer to a pot is not an API, not even remotely close. It's a physical fact that has been observed since the stone age. The Java API is huge. It's not a mere physical fact, nor even a collection of method prototypes. It's everything covered in the JavaDocs: what happens in error scenarios, thread safety rules, how objects are combined to get different effects, what you can subclass and what's not, what security permissions things need. It's enormous and every decision in that was a 'creative' decision, in some sense.

From a plain reading of copyright law it's obvious APIs far smaller and simpler than Java should fall under copyright. The idea APIs don't is a convenient consensus-quo for the software industry that benefits competition and should probably be preserved, although there is the counterbalancing factor that the non-protectability of APIs probably has invisible side effects we can't see (e.g. under-investment in API design). But the Supreme Court won't or shouldn't care about any of that because it's a political debate. The question before them is about what the current law says, and on that, Oracle probably have a point. Also, it's going to be even more fashionable to hate on Oracle if they do win, but the current situation has always been legally fragile. Sooner or later someone would have observed the apparent skew between the software industry's approach to copyright and what the law really says. We may be at least somewhat grateful that it's a fight between two well resourced firms and not e.g. a patent troll firm type of situation, where the defenders are threatened and have to pay up because they're too small to fight it.