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The Obama administration has asked the United States Supreme Court to decline Google's appeal against a 2014 federal appeals court ruling finding copyright infringement of Oracle's Java code:
The case involves how much copyright protection should extend to the Java programing language. Oracle won a federal appeals court ruling last year that allows it to copyright parts of Java, whilst Google argues it should be free to use Java without paying a licencing fee. Google, which used Java to design its Android smartphone operating system, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court then asked the Obama administration in January for its opinion on whether it should take the case because the federal government has a strong interest. The Federal Trade Commission, for instance, must ensure companies do not break antitrust laws when claiming software copyright protection against each other.
According to Google, an Oracle victory would obstruct "an enormous amount of innovation" because software developers would not be able to freely build on each others' work. But Oracle says effective copyright protection is the key to software innovation.
In the court filing on Tuesday, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said Google's argument that the code is not entitled to copyright protection lacks merit and did not need to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Verrilli added that Google had raised important concerns about the effect that enforcement of Oracle's copyright could have on software development, but said those issues could be addressed via further proceedings on Google's separate "fair use" defence in San Francisco federal court.
Google v. Oracle, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-410
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Zinho on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:51PM
So what is "right" in this situation? If software shouldn't be protected by copyright, then what leg does the FSF have to stand on with the GPL and its related licenses?
The alleged infringement was in the structure and naming of the function headers, not for the code itself. Google is not trying to rip off Oracle's code and claim it is their own; instead, Google wrote a clean-room implementation of some of the functions. For that to work, the cloned functions need to present themselves to the code that will call them with the same name as the code they're replacing, otherwise it doesn't work. The District Court's ruling on this [groklaw.net] (pdf warning) is pretty clear on why this is the case:
So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free
under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function
or specification of any methods used in the Java API. It does not matter that the declaration or
method header lines are identical. Under the rules of Java, they must be identical to declare a
method specifying the same functionality — even when the implementation is different.
When there is only one way to express an idea or function, then everyone is free to do so and
no one can monopolize that expression. And, while the Android method and class names could
have been different from the names of their counterparts in Java and still have worked, copyright
protection never extends to names or short phrases as a matter of law.
If the Appeals Court ruling stands, interoperability with existing code would be illegal. The WINE project could be shut down by Microsoft for copyright infringement under this ruling, even if the programmers had never seen a single character of the Windows source.
To make a bad analogy to another field of engineering, Oracle's claim of copyright violation by Google makes as much sense as one architect accusing a rival architect of stealing his blueprints because the designs both call for ASTM A36 steel for the girders and portand cement for the foundation. If Google wants to write a replacement for the API function DoSomething() then there is only one way in Java to write the program headers for the DoSomething() library. Doing so should not be considered a copyright violation, as it is a requirement for interoperability.
Reinstating the District Court's ruling would have no effect on the GPL or copyleft in general.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Touché) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 28 2015, @07:53PM
It is commonly asserted by the misinformed that one cannot copyright header files. I assert that is not the case.
void strcpy( char *dst, char *src ); // Copy the nul-terminated sequence of chars from src buffer to dst
It's plainly apparent that the above is an expressive work which is worthy of copyright, especially so when it is in a header file full of similar expressive works.
Why?
"dst", "src" and the explanatory comment are expressive.
A reasonable clean-room clone that would not infringe might be:
void strcpy( char *a, char *b );
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday May 29 2015, @12:00AM
How does that matter at all to the situation? Comments don't go in the compiled code, and are we seriously going to argue that people should be able to copyright/patent the names of the variables they're using? The fuck difference does that make to the end user?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday May 29 2015, @03:13AM
my point is that a header file is not an interface; it is a creative work that, among other things, describes an interface.
The parts _other_ than the interface can be copyrighted.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Friday May 29 2015, @01:47AM
I don't think you committed copyright infringement. You generated a derivative work by transformation.
It's usually char *strcpy(char *dest, const char *src);
:-)