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From TechDirt: Top Oracle Lawyer Attempting to Gaslight Entire Software Community: Insists APIs are Executable:
Last week, the Solicitor General of the White House weighed in on Google's request for the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit's ridiculously confused ruling in the Oracle/Google case concerning the copyrightability of APIs (and whether or not repurposing them is fair use). Not surprisingly, as the Solicitor General has been siding with Oracle all along, it suggests that the Supreme Court not hear the case. Of course, it does so by completely misrepresenting what's at stake in the case -- pretending that this is about whether or not software source code is copyright-eligible
[...] Except... that's not what this case is about. Even remotely. Literally no one denies that software source code is subject to copyright. The question is whether or not an Application Programming Interface -- an API -- is subject to copyright. As we've been saying from the beginning, the most frustrating thing about this entire case is that you have non-technically savvy lawyers and judges simply refusing to comprehend that an API is not software. It's not executable code. It's not "source code" for software. An API is a set of specifications for allowing the access of data, an application, or service. It's a "method of operation," which is simply not subject to copyright law. Indeed, back in 1996, the Supreme Court ruled in Lotus v. Borland that a user interface to a computer program is not subject to copyright under Section 102(b) as the interface is a "method of operation."
Whew! At least the .h files in C/C++ would never be considered an API and are thus safe.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday October 01 2019, @02:54PM (2 children)
Apache Harmony was an open source clean-room Java workalike implementation.
IBM was the primary contributor to Apache Harmony. (eg, this large project was done on their dime)
Sun licensed Java with "field of use" restrictions. This was to prevent smartphones from running real full blown Java, but only subsets of Java such as J2ME. You might remember J2ME from the days of flip phones. I did actually dabble (just for fun) with building J2ME apps for my, and my friends' flip phones. I build an asteroid game to be specific. It was cool to see your own code running on a phone. The entire compiled Java app was 21 K bytes.
Apache Harmony does not contain any Sun (later Oracle) code.
Sun made all of Java fully open source GPL + Classpath exception. (Classpath Exception: if you are only using Java to execute your own application, which adds significant value above and beyond just being Java, then your code is not subject to being under the GPL. So it's kind of like LGPL, but maybe better.)
Google was building Android. They chose Apache Harmony because it was open source, didn't have "field of use restrictions", and . . . it was Java.
Sun seemed to have no problem with this. So how exactly was Oracle harmed?
Oracle bought Sun with the idea of seeing a "sue google" sign pinned to Sun's back.
So just to please Oracle, in Android 8 (I think), Google switched from Apache Harmony to genuine open source GPL OpenJDK. Now Oracle should really be happy, no?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:07PM (1 child)
During the takeover Oracle lawyers specifically interviewed James Gosling about this.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:18PM
Very soon after the acquisition, Gosling left Oracle. He didn't agree with something they are doing. Then came the lawsuit.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.