No tears will be shed, I am sure, if Google has to pay some billions to fatten the already fat pockets of Oracle but the decision by the Federal Circuit being appealed here made a hash out of key legal foundational items that facilitate the very idea of interoperability in the computing world and therefore cries out to be corrected.
My comment at the time the decision was rendered: "This ruling will do what its [the Federal Circuit's] prior expansive reading of patent law did: it will set up a legal standard that invites lawyers and litigants to engage in endless second-guessing over copyright and fair use in areas of connectivity and inter-operability in the computing world and this in turn, as a standing invitation to litigate, cannot be good for future development." (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 for fuller analysis)
The Supreme Court quite often fails to take up discretionary appeals even if the issues loom large for a particular industry or even if an important case was wrongly decided. Sometimes it does so to resolve conflicting rulings among lower federal courts on an important issue; other times, because a case raises important issues of public policy. Don't know if this case will fit the criteria (it didn't on its first cycle of appeal - see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9801251#9802457; also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4050490#4051761).
I have long been an advocate for solid protection of IP rights but the Federal Circuit here has almost fetishized the idea of copyright protection to the point where it has, in the API and fair use areas, become a caricature of itself. Strong correction is needed on the legal merits of the case.
Let us hope that the high level of interest in the tech community, as revealed by the number and quality of amicus briefs filed, will prompt the Supreme Court to intervene and bring soundness and clarity to an important area of law that affects the tech world in profound ways.
> Sometimes it does so to resolve conflicting rulings among lower federal courts on an important issue; other times, because a case raises important issues of public policy. Don't know if this case will fit the criteria
It will. The CAFC's rulings are in open conflict with the normal court that would handle this, the ninth circuit.
It would be easier and clearer, I think, for Congress to intervene. Copyright is a legislative creature, the judgements are about the meaning and scope of the legislation. Congress has the power to clarify it and thereby overrule any previous interpretation taken by any of the relevant courts.
The aspect of this case that I don't understand is why, even if APIs are copyrightable, why Google would need a special license for the Android. If Java is available under the GPL, and Android is a derivative work but is also licensed under the GPL, then where's the problem?
Conversely, by Oracle's logic, any application that uses the Java API would be a derivative work (the method signatures are perfect copies), and thus the app would need to be either GPL itself or pay for a commercial license for Java. This, too, seems incompatible with existing practice (e.g., Apache's Java applications are licensed under its own open-source license which is more permissive and thus can't be a derivative work under the GPL.
"At this point in time, the OpenJDK implementation offered by Sun was not as mature or complete as the Java Standard Edition. Instead of licensing Java, Google chose to develop a cleanroom version of the Java Standard Edition libraries, developing the libraries from a completely fresh start without any access to Sun's code."
OpenJDK was released in 2007. Android was founded in 2003 and acquired by Google in 2005. It's entirely possible that if the schedules had been shifted a few years, Android would have gone with OpenJDK.
Note that OpenJDK is available under the GPL with the "classpath exception," allowing you to link non-GPL software against it (sorta like the LGPL). Android avoids the GPL in userspace, to the extent of writing their own libc (apparently glibc being under LGPL was not enough).
"Two of the three questions from the jurors have focused on Apache, but the issue is actually
very simple: Apache never obtained any license from Sun permitting its use of the Java
specifications for Harmony. As made clear by Apache itself, Apache never had a license from Sun or
Oracle for Harmony. Apache had no rights to Java technology that it could give to Google. This not
even a case in which there is a “cloud over Apache,” to use the Court’s phrase (4/20/2012 Trial Tr.
1114:16-20). Apache simply had no title at all, and has publicly conceded as much: When Apache
resigned from the JCP in protest based on its inability to obtain a license, it stated in its resignation
that the “Java specifications are proprietary technology that must be licensed directly from the spec
lead under whatever terms the spec lead chooses.” (TX 1045 at p. 2.)
Thus, Google’s use of Apache Harmony provides no defense for Google. Oracle seeks an
instruction to the jury that will prevent confusion and clarify that Google’s use of Harmony provides
no defense to Oracle’s copyright infringement claims."
For your first point, Google was trying to avoid the GPL (for whatever reason), but since the lawsuit they’ve switched from Apache Harmony to OpenJDK in order to take advantage of it:
For your second point, using an API is different from consuming it; among other things, you don’t generally copy and paste the full method declarations into your own code.
I must admit I have not been following this case too close. But I get the general sense that most people in the CS community is in favor or Google and against Oracle. I'd like to understand it better.
Can someone please explain in technical terms exactly what Google copied and what is Oracle complaining about? Is it just the Java API declarations? Most of the articles I find try to explain the issue in layman's terms which makes it harder for me to understand exactly what was copied.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a huge failure that, over thirty years after computer programs were explicitly added to copyright law, it isn't clear to what extent APIs are copyrightable, and we have to watch lawyers argue over strained analogies to chapter titles in Harry Potter books.
I think the process where the legislature writes a vague law and leaves it for the courts to decide what it actually means over a series of cases has fallen down badly here.
I've discussed this topic once with a developer who sided with Oracle, which was a fun exercise for me, because I side with Google.
The insight I got from that exercise was that, to him, APIs represent a product (e.g. I put a lot of effort into making this API, it's nice and clean, why should someone else be allowed to copy it?) and the implementation is typically straightforward grunt work, with intrinsically less value (e.g. we all know how to square a number).
As a developer, it was easy for me to sympathize with that thinking, because who hasn't been amazed by how elegant some of the APIs are and how difficult it is to create a simple, yet powerful API?
However, I believe that in the general case, it is the implementation that's the difficult part, which is why I'm against copyrighting APIs. Anyone can come up with an API for a Map, not everyone can create an efficient implementation of HashMap.
Doesn't this sound vaguely familiar? I think it's the same argument as "ideas vs execution", it's just that, as a community, we've discussed the pitfalls of ideas, NDAs and execution an order of magnitude more than copyrighting APIs vs implementation, and so there's less of a divide.
If you side with Oracle and you agree that execution > idea, then you should consider that implementation > API, and, similarly to how you can't copyright an idea, you shouldn't be able to copyright APIs.
In the case of Oracle vs Google, both the API and the implementation are trivial, which is a special case of the more general "API vs implementation", and it is unfortunate that a precedent will be set for the general case, based on a special case. That sounds like a recipe for future trouble.
I hope Google wins the legal case for the sake of maintaining an innovative software industry. But at the same time I still think that they acted like jerks by creating their own proprietary pseudo Java for Android rather than negotiating a formal agreement with Sun. Now the Java ecosystem is fragmented so many Java tools and libraries can't be used for Android development. That's bad for everyone.
Is there anything we can do as developers? Obviously I don't want to DDOS/DOX the supreme court, but can we write letters or do anything else to show _how massively important_ this is?
EDIT:
For those unable to read between the lines, HN is a large forum read by thousands of people of different backgrounds. Often when someone suggests something, small actions can add up to create a large problem. DDOSing/Doxing is never acceptable for any situation. I want to "do something" but without accidentally creating a problem.
Donate to the EFF - they write amicus briefs and generally empower the legal profession to have that understanding.
That said, courts generally don't focus on "how important" something is - that's supposed to be Congress' job. The exceptions are where the importance triggers some other area of law.
How does it impact us as developers either way? Both are titans that have contributed vital pieces of tech infrastructure as well as committed evil acts in their space. Oracle is arguably more evil here, but is it that big of a tragedy if Google loses? They have obscene amounts of cash; what difference does it make if a pile of cash goes from one evil pocket to another? Please if you downvote give an explanation. I honestly want to know what's at stake here for us.
This is still in certiorari phase (i.e., SCOTUS hasn't decided whether or not to hear it), but there's already 15 separate briefs filed all urging SCOTUS to hear the case, and only Oracle is opposing it. There's nothing you can do at this point to urge SCOTUS as to whether or not to hear it.
Assuming that SCOTUS will hear the case (which is probably pretty likely--this is a Big, Important IP question which means the only reason not to hear it is if there's a better case coming along soon to hear it), the best chance at influence is an amicus curiae at that point. Talking to your company's legal representation is probably the best bet to get on one of the amicus curiae, but if you don't have any legal experience, you're probably not going to be capable of writing an effective amicus.
You say this as though you'd normally DOS or dox someone you disagree with, or that it's a normal course of action for a developer, or something that a reasonable person would consider.
This whole case is contrived, and both actors acted in bad faith, so the outcome will be troubling no matter what.
If Oracle wins, others can claim that their API is copyrighted and weaponize copyright law to sue anyone they don't want to interoperate with them -- despite the whole point of APIs being that interoperability.
If Google wins, it means anyone will be able to hijack the syntax, semantics, and interfaces of an ecosystem verbatim for commercial ends to promote an incompatible implementation, like they've done with Android. To protect against this, patents and NDAs will proliferate, and black-box organization and SaaS business models will solidify as the only (commericially) sensible way of distributing software.
How did Google "hijacking" the Java API harm Oracle? If it didn't, why should anyone need to "protect" against such a thing happening in future?
Maybe I'm missing something, but your comment seems to boil down to "If Oracle wins, people won't be able to copy APIs, which is awful! If Google wins, people will be able to copy APIs, which is awful!" Surely you have to be on one side or the other?
Arguably, APIs have been found copyrightable, and the solution is simple: Include a license with your API. In a lot of cases in the modern era, APIs have terms anyways, because they're tied to web services. So adding a clause about being able to implement them is trivial, for any intended use of an API.
The main difference is that developers will have more tools to fight unintended or unwanted uses of their API, such as clones, emulators, scraper tools, etc. There's concerns to be had, sure, but it's not the end of the world by any means, and a lot of those will fall under fair use in a way that Android does not.
> If Google wins, it means anyone will be able to hijack the syntax, semantics, and interfaces of an ecosystem verbatim for commercial ends to promote an incompatible implementation
Hijacking means taking control away from someone, I don't see how that happened here.
The Supreme Court mostly isn't about which side wins. They could come up with a useful way to adjudicate which wouldn't lead to either of the sets of costs you mention.
I'm trying to understand what was copied by Google.
Did they copy the core class names and the different method and attribute names for these objects but rewrote everything else from scratch?
I dont know java but but lets say it was ruby and then i made xruby and copied the same type of things. So, Random.rand (in xruby) still produced a similar random Float like in ruby. But the code that was called by Random.rand was entirely written by me from scratch? Is that the idea?
Imagine Ruby was closed source, but you were allowed to make open source implementations that ran Ruby programs.
Then you implement a language called Crystal that uses Ruby syntax and its stdlib looks a lot like Ruby's, but it can't run Rails because it's designed for car navigators, not webapps.
The Ruby Company comes after you and says that if you wanted to reuse their APIs you should've bought a license.
> "Before Android," Oracle’s lawyers write in their brief to the Supreme Court, "every company that wanted to use the Java platform took a commercial license...including smartphone manufacturers BlackBerry, Nokia and Danger."
Either that's word twisting (e.g. "platform" means something different or the commercial license was implicit) or just false.
1) The US legal code explicitly excludes "methods of operation" from being copyrightable. Does an API count as "methods of operation"? And if so, what ground does Oracle have left to stand on?
2) If this case goes Oracle's way, does this set the precedent that ANY re-implementations of an existing API are in violation of copyright? I don't know who now owns the original rights to Unix, but if they decide to come after Linux where does that leave us?
> 2) If this case goes Oracle's way, does this set the precedent that ANY re-implementations of an existing API are in violation of copyright? I don't know who now owns the original rights to Unix, but if they decide to come after Linux where does that leave us?
We can't know until a decision is made, but this could likely start a precedent for any re-implementations.
The curent copyright holders of UNIX are Micro Focus, who acquired it via buying Attachmade, who had bought Novell, who had bought UNIX System Laboratories from AT&T. Micro Focus mainly sells COBOL and is apparently hellbent on ignoring UNIX as much as possible (multiple people have tried to reach out to them about Ancient UNIX and possibly licensing some missing parts like PWB/UNIX and System III, but the best they've had is a salesperson being confused and trying to sell SUSE Linux). If they ever regain their institutional knowledge that they hold copyrights to UNIX and this decision happens, well, it's open season for Micro Focus v. Red Hat.
Oracle now has a market cap of about $170 billion, give or take a few billion, I'm pretty sure that if a company like Google put its mind to it it could purchase Oracle outright.
It would also allow Google a very good entry on the enterprise market where it could push GCP down its clients' throats, imho there's no other way for them to catch up with AWS and Azure.
IANAL... but it seems to me copyrighting an API instead of the actual implementation would be like trying to copyright the idea of "chair" or "wheel" which is not possible AFAIK.
A better metaphor is probably to look at an API as a design blueprint. For instance a blueprint of a house. Describing in detail all the components that goes into creating the house, plumbing, electricity, rooms etc. Clearly it is a lot of work to come up with such a design.
My understanding is that code is treated basically as a literary work [0] with copyrighting. So the API definition is a part of the codebase. I do not think the analogy to copyrighting an idea is applicable. Unless they are trying to separately just have a copyright on the API? If that is the case, I'm not even sure how it would have been filed?
IMO copyright protection is way too strong and long lasting for this type of thing.
The creation of something like Java should be protected by the patent system which at least has an expiration time of a couple decades rather than a century like copyright.
Google taking Java and reimplementing it without paying a penny to Sun (who was requiring a license to other manufacturers at the time) does seem unfair. But I think the law should provide something like the “FRAND” standard for patents, or the mandatory mechanical license for copyright, to prevent a company from blocking interoperability.
As far as who’s actually right on the law today.... the SCOTUS decisions will be interesting to read :-)
It's mindblowing how so many developers are quick to build on the Java ecosystem... an ecosystem backed by a company so hell-bent on stifling innovation.
People have been using Java for decades, when it wasn't even backed by Oracle. It's impractical to think people can just throw out millions of lines of Java code and hours of experience and knowledge just because of some "omg Oracle evil" argument.
Is this copyability issue for software APIs or more general? I feel like if I copied the full user interface of an iPhone (the way it looks and interacts with the user) and provided my own imementation I'm still liable?
[+] [-] grellas|6 years ago|reply
My comment at the time the decision was rendered: "This ruling will do what its [the Federal Circuit's] prior expansive reading of patent law did: it will set up a legal standard that invites lawyers and litigants to engage in endless second-guessing over copyright and fair use in areas of connectivity and inter-operability in the computing world and this in turn, as a standing invitation to litigate, cannot be good for future development." (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 for fuller analysis)
The Supreme Court quite often fails to take up discretionary appeals even if the issues loom large for a particular industry or even if an important case was wrongly decided. Sometimes it does so to resolve conflicting rulings among lower federal courts on an important issue; other times, because a case raises important issues of public policy. Don't know if this case will fit the criteria (it didn't on its first cycle of appeal - see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9801251#9802457; also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4050490#4051761).
I have long been an advocate for solid protection of IP rights but the Federal Circuit here has almost fetishized the idea of copyright protection to the point where it has, in the API and fair use areas, become a caricature of itself. Strong correction is needed on the legal merits of the case.
Let us hope that the high level of interest in the tech community, as revealed by the number and quality of amicus briefs filed, will prompt the Supreme Court to intervene and bring soundness and clarity to an important area of law that affects the tech world in profound ways.
[+] [-] monocasa|6 years ago|reply
It will. The CAFC's rulings are in open conflict with the normal court that would handle this, the ninth circuit.
[+] [-] jacques_chester|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawrenceyan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] liara_k|6 years ago|reply
Conversely, by Oracle's logic, any application that uses the Java API would be a derivative work (the method signatures are perfect copies), and thus the app would need to be either GPL itself or pay for a commercial license for Java. This, too, seems incompatible with existing practice (e.g., Apache's Java applications are licensed under its own open-source license which is more permissive and thus can't be a derivative work under the GPL.
What am I missing here?
[+] [-] geofft|6 years ago|reply
"At this point in time, the OpenJDK implementation offered by Sun was not as mature or complete as the Java Standard Edition. Instead of licensing Java, Google chose to develop a cleanroom version of the Java Standard Edition libraries, developing the libraries from a completely fresh start without any access to Sun's code."
OpenJDK was released in 2007. Android was founded in 2003 and acquired by Google in 2005. It's entirely possible that if the schedules had been shifted a few years, Android would have gone with OpenJDK.
Note that OpenJDK is available under the GPL with the "classpath exception," allowing you to link non-GPL software against it (sorta like the LGPL). Android avoids the GPL in userspace, to the extent of writing their own libc (apparently glibc being under LGPL was not enough).
[+] [-] CodeArtisan|6 years ago|reply
edit:
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-959.pdf
"Two of the three questions from the jurors have focused on Apache, but the issue is actually very simple: Apache never obtained any license from Sun permitting its use of the Java specifications for Harmony. As made clear by Apache itself, Apache never had a license from Sun or Oracle for Harmony. Apache had no rights to Java technology that it could give to Google. This not even a case in which there is a “cloud over Apache,” to use the Court’s phrase (4/20/2012 Trial Tr. 1114:16-20). Apache simply had no title at all, and has publicly conceded as much: When Apache resigned from the JCP in protest based on its inability to obtain a license, it stated in its resignation that the “Java specifications are proprietary technology that must be licensed directly from the spec lead under whatever terms the spec lead chooses.” (TX 1045 at p. 2.) Thus, Google’s use of Apache Harmony provides no defense for Google. Oracle seeks an instruction to the jury that will prevent confusion and clarify that Google’s use of Harmony provides no defense to Oracle’s copyright infringement claims."
[+] [-] comex|6 years ago|reply
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/android-n-switch...
For your second point, using an API is different from consuming it; among other things, you don’t generally copy and paste the full method declarations into your own code.
[+] [-] binthere|6 years ago|reply
Can someone please explain in technical terms exactly what Google copied and what is Oracle complaining about? Is it just the Java API declarations? Most of the articles I find try to explain the issue in layman's terms which makes it harder for me to understand exactly what was copied.
[+] [-] mjw1007|6 years ago|reply
I think the process where the legislature writes a vague law and leaves it for the courts to decide what it actually means over a series of cases has fallen down badly here.
[+] [-] optymizer|6 years ago|reply
The insight I got from that exercise was that, to him, APIs represent a product (e.g. I put a lot of effort into making this API, it's nice and clean, why should someone else be allowed to copy it?) and the implementation is typically straightforward grunt work, with intrinsically less value (e.g. we all know how to square a number).
As a developer, it was easy for me to sympathize with that thinking, because who hasn't been amazed by how elegant some of the APIs are and how difficult it is to create a simple, yet powerful API?
However, I believe that in the general case, it is the implementation that's the difficult part, which is why I'm against copyrighting APIs. Anyone can come up with an API for a Map, not everyone can create an efficient implementation of HashMap.
Doesn't this sound vaguely familiar? I think it's the same argument as "ideas vs execution", it's just that, as a community, we've discussed the pitfalls of ideas, NDAs and execution an order of magnitude more than copyrighting APIs vs implementation, and so there's less of a divide.
If you side with Oracle and you agree that execution > idea, then you should consider that implementation > API, and, similarly to how you can't copyright an idea, you shouldn't be able to copyright APIs.
In the case of Oracle vs Google, both the API and the implementation are trivial, which is a special case of the more general "API vs implementation", and it is unfortunate that a precedent will be set for the general case, based on a special case. That sounds like a recipe for future trouble.
[+] [-] nradov|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|6 years ago|reply
EDIT: For those unable to read between the lines, HN is a large forum read by thousands of people of different backgrounds. Often when someone suggests something, small actions can add up to create a large problem. DDOSing/Doxing is never acceptable for any situation. I want to "do something" but without accidentally creating a problem.
[+] [-] ergothus|6 years ago|reply
That said, courts generally don't focus on "how important" something is - that's supposed to be Congress' job. The exceptions are where the importance triggers some other area of law.
[+] [-] JudgeWapner|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcranmer|6 years ago|reply
This is still in certiorari phase (i.e., SCOTUS hasn't decided whether or not to hear it), but there's already 15 separate briefs filed all urging SCOTUS to hear the case, and only Oracle is opposing it. There's nothing you can do at this point to urge SCOTUS as to whether or not to hear it.
Assuming that SCOTUS will hear the case (which is probably pretty likely--this is a Big, Important IP question which means the only reason not to hear it is if there's a better case coming along soon to hear it), the best chance at influence is an amicus curiae at that point. Talking to your company's legal representation is probably the best bet to get on one of the amicus curiae, but if you don't have any legal experience, you're probably not going to be capable of writing an effective amicus.
[+] [-] panpanna|6 years ago|reply
What you can do as a developer is to ensure your company is not using any of oracles cash cows.
[+] [-] caymanjim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Justin_K|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin_b_er|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sarcasmic|6 years ago|reply
If Oracle wins, others can claim that their API is copyrighted and weaponize copyright law to sue anyone they don't want to interoperate with them -- despite the whole point of APIs being that interoperability.
If Google wins, it means anyone will be able to hijack the syntax, semantics, and interfaces of an ecosystem verbatim for commercial ends to promote an incompatible implementation, like they've done with Android. To protect against this, patents and NDAs will proliferate, and black-box organization and SaaS business models will solidify as the only (commericially) sensible way of distributing software.
[+] [-] XCabbage|6 years ago|reply
Maybe I'm missing something, but your comment seems to boil down to "If Oracle wins, people won't be able to copy APIs, which is awful! If Google wins, people will be able to copy APIs, which is awful!" Surely you have to be on one side or the other?
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|6 years ago|reply
The main difference is that developers will have more tools to fight unintended or unwanted uses of their API, such as clones, emulators, scraper tools, etc. There's concerns to be had, sure, but it's not the end of the world by any means, and a lot of those will fall under fair use in a way that Android does not.
[+] [-] jonny_eh|6 years ago|reply
Hijacking means taking control away from someone, I don't see how that happened here.
[+] [-] ErikVandeWater|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wuliwong|6 years ago|reply
Did they copy the core class names and the different method and attribute names for these objects but rewrote everything else from scratch?
I dont know java but but lets say it was ruby and then i made xruby and copied the same type of things. So, Random.rand (in xruby) still produced a similar random Float like in ruby. But the code that was called by Random.rand was entirely written by me from scratch? Is that the idea?
[+] [-] orthoxerox|6 years ago|reply
Then you implement a language called Crystal that uses Ruby syntax and its stdlib looks a lot like Ruby's, but it can't run Rails because it's designed for car navigators, not webapps.
The Ruby Company comes after you and says that if you wanted to reuse their APIs you should've bought a license.
[+] [-] __david__|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kodablah|6 years ago|reply
Either that's word twisting (e.g. "platform" means something different or the commercial license was implicit) or just false.
[+] [-] TheFlyingFish|6 years ago|reply
1) The US legal code explicitly excludes "methods of operation" from being copyrightable. Does an API count as "methods of operation"? And if so, what ground does Oracle have left to stand on?
2) If this case goes Oracle's way, does this set the precedent that ANY re-implementations of an existing API are in violation of copyright? I don't know who now owns the original rights to Unix, but if they decide to come after Linux where does that leave us?
[+] [-] beefhash|6 years ago|reply
We can't know until a decision is made, but this could likely start a precedent for any re-implementations.
The curent copyright holders of UNIX are Micro Focus, who acquired it via buying Attachmade, who had bought Novell, who had bought UNIX System Laboratories from AT&T. Micro Focus mainly sells COBOL and is apparently hellbent on ignoring UNIX as much as possible (multiple people have tried to reach out to them about Ancient UNIX and possibly licensing some missing parts like PWB/UNIX and System III, but the best they've had is a salesperson being confused and trying to sell SUSE Linux). If they ever regain their institutional knowledge that they hold copyrights to UNIX and this decision happens, well, it's open season for Micro Focus v. Red Hat.
[+] [-] kevin_b_er|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paganel|6 years ago|reply
It would also allow Google a very good entry on the enterprise market where it could push GCP down its clients' throats, imho there's no other way for them to catch up with AWS and Azure.
[+] [-] burtonator|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pier25|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sovande|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wuliwong|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.copyright.gov/eco/help-type.html
[+] [-] javagram|6 years ago|reply
The creation of something like Java should be protected by the patent system which at least has an expiration time of a couple decades rather than a century like copyright.
Google taking Java and reimplementing it without paying a penny to Sun (who was requiring a license to other manufacturers at the time) does seem unfair. But I think the law should provide something like the “FRAND” standard for patents, or the mandatory mechanical license for copyright, to prevent a company from blocking interoperability.
As far as who’s actually right on the law today.... the SCOTUS decisions will be interesting to read :-)
[+] [-] shmerl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panpanna|6 years ago|reply
Google could probably do a lot of damage to Oracle if they wanted.
[+] [-] alfalfasprout|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panpanna|6 years ago|reply
Kotlin from jetbrains is where developer mindshare is today ;)
[+] [-] the8472|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jryan49|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pubkraal|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christkv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smadurange|6 years ago|reply