Google beat Oracle in the trial court, where a judge with a software background ruled that APIs could not be copyrighted. but the Appeals court sided with Oracle, ruling that APIs can be copyrighted. Google now asks the Supreme Court to review the issue of whether APIs can be copyrighted and is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court decision.
(Of interest may also be the earlier dispute in 2012 whether a programming language can be copyrighted. This presumably relates to whether Google violated copyright by using a variant of the Java language and its APIs in the Android framework. Oracle, who thinks it can be, has used J.R.R. Tolkein's Elvish language as an examples (PDF) of a language that can be copyrighted. Google disagrees)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Dunbal on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:08PM
Someone who thinks they should copyright their "Application Programming Interface" is basically declaring that they don't want anyone to program with their application/library/etc. Fine. Treat these companies the way they deserve. Leave them alone. Let them survive when no one wants to buy their product. And if it's not your decision then get the legal team on your side and enlighten your purchasing manager as to what a massive copyright lawsuit would do to your company's bottom line.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @08:08PM
Yes, because that's how things work. All the people buying software are aware of how the software came to be. The people who do not need the API anyway mostly don't care, because they have stuff to do with that software, and those who care probably do not get to make the decisions.
Why is it, that when someone does dirt, you are just supposed to take it and leave it to the market? Let the asshole just continue? The market knows shit and it does not need to know everything anyway, that's what the laws and ethics etc. are supposed to be for. I say off with their heads. Stop the "understanding" of commited criminals. Execute Oracle. Do you not learn from the fucking history?
Your "logic" does not compute.
(Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Thursday October 09 2014, @11:44PM
I think, on a tech-oriented site frequented by software deveopers, the advice to not support companies who copyright their API is **great** logic.
In today's web-service-centric software world, the popular success of many services is made or broken by the efforts of 3rd-party software developers, who use the public API to extend the service and make it more specifically useful (See Twitter for an easy example). This point doesn't totally address your criticism of "letting the market figure it out", but GP's "logic" (or really their solution) was functionally valid and appropriate to the audience.
Your ranting was neither.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:29PM
Like the .gif format, this will only work if companies float it out there "for free" like Microsoft essentially did with DOS/Windows for a decade (allowing it to be pirated with zero practical enforcement), until it is firmly entrenched in the economy, then spring the IP and licensing claims on unsuspecting users who have been getting a free ride.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday October 10 2014, @12:30PM
Insightful? REALLY mods, dafuq? Care to explain to the class how EXACTLY you can lock down a 16bit OS that runs on a CPU that is slower than our dollar store calculators and which came with less space typically than our $5 flash sticks? Because I'd like to hear this, it ought to be good. What, they were gonna use code wheels or call and response messages, both of which were broken almost the second they came out?
And before anybody trots out that stupid Bill Gates quote let me ask you something...WTF was the guy gonna say? think he was gonna tell the press "yeah they stole our software and there ain't a damned thing we can do about it, the pirates got us by the short hairs"? Yeah watch the stock hit $0 so fast it'd make your head swim! Gates said what he said because he had no choice, the pirates were coming out with copies of his OS almost as fast as they could and they had the press breathing down their neck. Frankly Gates should be commended for such a brilliant piece of bullshitting by taking a negative and spinning it into some "master plan" when in reality there wasn't a damned thing he could do, just like he can't do shit about those hacked versions of Win 7 and 8 that passes WGA that is on TPB right this minute.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:43PM
here is why an API can't be copyrighted...
char* cure_cancer(struct human_genome* patient_genome)
char* prescribe_drug(* medical_chart)
I can claim these magical things to a magic black box that carries them out. The API is just an index, the actual magic code is elsewhere....
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:15PM
You can copyright the names:
cure_cancer
human_genome
patient_genome
prescribe_drug
medical_chart
Or their use in a certain order.
Or the binary sequence number that is the API.
And of course any description of the interface.
Otoh.. I think this is all nonsense. And if the supreme court side with Oracle the whole industry (in USA) will have a big problem. The emulation called Wine for starters will be in big trouble. Same for ReactOS, 3rd party clients to facebook etc. An interesting situation would occur if companies outside of USA can make use of affected APIs but companies within USA can't..
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:55PM
No, I don't think you can copyright those words, but people have tried this in the past. They just about always lose in court.
There has to be more substance than simply a couple words. If you invented ALL the words, (say of Elvish or Klingon) you might have a case, but simply stringing common words together with a few joining characters isn't going to cut it.
See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Gravis on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:56PM
If they do, it would mean every java program and JVM would have to be killed or pay royalties. i eagerly await the sound of Java's death knell. :)
call it a troll or not, I have a vested interest in the death of Java.
(Score: 2) by WillR on Thursday October 09 2014, @08:01PM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 09 2014, @08:30PM
And that ring would be owned by SCO (Sauron's Criminal Organization?)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by WillR on Friday October 10 2014, @12:51AM
But whoever buys Novell to get it would need a snappy LOTR related nickname... Maybe "MicroSauron".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @09:48PM
This is a caricature of the case. Oracle isn't going to sue anybody who writes a Java program - that is explicitly allowed under their license, as long as you use Oracle's JVM and SDK. They are suing Google for doing something that wasn't allowed, which is to roll their own without Oracle's permission.
Most programming languages and environments, of course, are not released with licenses with such restrictive provisions. But some are (gaming consoles come to mind).
Google countered by saying API's aren't copyrightable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @11:57PM
Goodbye openjdk
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:04PM
The one time the universe aligns and we actually get a judge who knows his shit (Allsup IIRC), naturally they have to reexamine the case when he gives a decent ruling.
Damn it. Damn it to hell.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:29PM
That's what those expensive lawyers are for -- to make sure sensible rulings don't stand. It worked for Microsoft.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:35PM
The judge in Oracle v. Google, William Alsup, did not have a "software background." He learned to program [oreilly.com] in order to better understand the details of the case.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jackb_guppy on Thursday October 09 2014, @09:13PM
A programming language is also an API to string together APIs to preform a task.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @11:28PM
IANAL, but here is my take.
Any "document" consisting of letters and punctuation can be copyrighted, and rightfully so. Whether its poetry or code. Copyright establishes ownership *of the document*, and the document cannot be reproduced verbatim without consent of the copyright holder. However, nothing prevents a similar document from being created that convey the same ideas.
If the document was a new API meant to only be internally used by Oracle, and somehow it got out and someone else copied it and tried to profit, that would be copyright infringement. No different that if someone heard another person writing a song, and then claimed it as their own.
However, a published API is a document that is published with the intent of its ideas/content being shared and used. The ideas are not copyright, and can be re-expressed. Only the document itself, as a representation of those ideas, is copyright.
So sure, they can claim copyright in that no one else contests that SUN authored the API, and Oracle now hold the copyright on those documents. However, they published that API with intent for public use. Now, that API has been re-expressed (in this case, re-implemented) by Google, and nothing is wrong with that.
Everyone tell me how wrong I am.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Thursday October 09 2014, @11:57PM
Now apply your argument to your Car's owners manual.
Does it still hold up?
Can a car rental company copy the manual to have one in each car but retain the original for when the vehicle is resold? Probably.
Can another manufacturer clone the document in its entirety, changing only the make and model and use it with his cars? Probably not.
A user's manual is a document that is published with the intent of its ideas/content being shared and used.
I get that APIs have to be publicly documented in order to be useful for use with a given system.
I get that headers have to be published if anyone is going to use the system.
There isn't any meat space equivalent to an API, so no analogy is exact, but a users manual is close.
But it gets a little less certain to say that its perfectly ok if someone clones your APIs, and your headers for use with a different system.
Its an argument around just how closely Google cloned the API to re-implement JAVA.
Also, there is some uncertainty that Sun didn't already make that public, and Oracle never had the right to close source them:
http://phys.org/news98440352.html [phys.org]
and
http://www.cnet.com/news/former-sun-ceo-says-googles-android-didnt-need-license-for-java-apis/# [cnet.com]!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 10 2014, @12:49AM
You are right about one thing, no "meat space" equivalent, but that did't stop you from offering a car analogy.
I think most software development projects that publish APIs understand that they are opening themselves up for the possibility of someone making an API compatible alternative solution. It is a risk you take. Someone can always come along and make a system with methods that exactly match yours as to entry point names and arguments but work very differently and very much better than yours.
Oracle is just to immature or greedy to accept the fact someone beat them with something that looked vaguely similar to Oracle's own stick.
This is trade dress (rounded corners) all over again.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 10 2014, @07:04PM
The API isn't the manual; the API is the way you interact with the controls. No, another manufacturer can't just photocopy an existing manual and toss that into their cars. But they CAN use pedals to control acceleration and braking, and they can write their own owner's manual describing how those work. They could even just write "please refer to [other manufacturer's manual] for operating instructions" if they really wanted to.
A document describing the API (ie, the owner's manual) can be copyrighted. The API itself cannot.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday October 10 2014, @10:04AM
It should be also the correct way to deal with copyright in media. You should not be able to promote a song pushing it on radios if you then want to be draconian about its piracy. You publish a low quality sampler, and do not complain if it gets shared. You want total control, you only sell it without pushing it. Freedom means freedom to keep your own stuff closed too.
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