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TheVerge is reporting the Supreme Court has declined to hear the long-running Google, Inc. v. Oracle America, Inc. case concerning copyright over the Java APIs. This is an important case, because it sets precedent if publicly documented software APIs can be copyrighted. This has relevance throughout the FOSS community, from Wine (reimplementing the Windows API) to Octave (reimplementing the MATLAB API).
A brief history of events: The original decision, handed down in 2012 in district court, found strongly against Oracle that APIs were not protected by copyright. Oracle appealed, and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court decision, finding the "structure, sequence and organization" of an API was copyrightable.
Google petitioned SCOTUS to hear the case. The Court seemed unsure, and requested the input of the Solicitor General (Donald Verrilli, appointed by Barack Obama). Mr. Verrilli replied with a brief instructing SCOTUS not to hear the case. Today, SCOTUS officially declined to hear arguments.
By declining to hear arguments SCOTUS defers to the appeals court ruling: APIs are copyrightable. Google may still have a defense under the Fair Use doctrine, but now all other users of APIs will have to prove Fair Use if a suit is brought. There is no option to overturn this precedent save a new case working through the courts. Soylentils, what will the effects of this decision be? Have you used or reverse-engineered code from public APIs in your own work?
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday June 30 2015, @12:04PM
I know some in the FOSS community (for reasons unknown, after all with each release on Android Google puts more and more behind the Playwall [arstechnica.com] and they have flat out refused to allow GPL V3 pretty much anywhere) but AFAIK MSFT has never tried to sue Wine or Crossover for that matter, in fact if they wanted access to the source they could simply license the APIs (as Xandros did with Exchange) and likewise MATLAB has never tried suing Octave.
Nope the only one this affects is GOOG and I would argue its a bad decision for one simple reason...there is absolutely ZERO difference between this and what MSFT tried to do in the 90s with MS Java! In BOTH cases you have a company in a position of dominance (MSFT with desktops, GOOG with mobile) taking somebody else's product (ironically the same product) and "pulling a EEE" and making just enough changes to make it incompatible with the original and give THEM ultimately control over the product. Because hey why would I write for Java when GOOG Java....err I mean "Dalvik" is on the biggest platform on the planet?
Now you watch the incredible gymnastics that will be put on display as the fanboys jump through flaming logic hoops to explain why its perfectly okay for GOOG to do the same dirty trick MSFT was busted for in the 90s because...reasons. I'm sorry but I said MSFT was dirty and deserved to get smacked for that bullshit then and GOOG deserves the exact same treatment NOW. If they want to design their own language, without ripping anybody off? Go right ahead, not like they don't have the money and talent to do so....but that is the rotting elephant in the room, isn't it? They chose to copy Java on purpose so they could leverage the years of experienced programming talent while changing just enough that doing so wouldn't be also giving an advantage to the one they are copying.....hmmm, now why does that seem so familiar [wikipedia.org] I wonder?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by stormreaver on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:10PM
there is absolutely ZERO difference between this and what MSFT tried to do in the 90s with MS Java!
There is absolutely ZERO similarity between this and what MSFT tried to do in the 90s with MS Java. The former implemented some commonly used API's for a completely different product, while the latter claimed to be offering something it clearly wasn't. Google never tried to pass Android off as Java, while Microsoft very much tried to pretend that J++ was a Java-compliant product.
It's very straight forward, with no gymnastics required.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday June 30 2015, @10:07PM
So if MSFT would have just named it "coffee" it would have been okay, is THAT your position? So GOOG or some other large corp could just take Linux and make it proprietary, because "hey this isn't 'Linux' its LOONIX, its a totally different thing!"....NOW do you see why your position is a dumb? Because if it all comes down to the name then any company with market dominance can simply take anything they want and the ones that actually invented the thing? Yeah fuck off peasant, we're the 800 pound gorilla!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:35PM
So if MSFT would have just named it "coffee" it would have been okay...?
You're omitting, either wilfully or just ignorantly, some important details. Microsoft licensed Java from SUN under contract, a part of which said that the Java trademark could only be used by fully conformant implementations. Microsoft certified that J++ was fully conformant, while making it very much not so. That was a breach of its contract with SUN, a breach of copyright, and was an intentionally deceptive act by Microsoft intended to dilute the value of Java in an effort to protect Microsoft's operating system monopoly.
Google reimplemented 37 Java packages using its own code for the sole purpose of compatibility and interoperability with the large existing body of Java code. Hopefully, that makes things clearer for you.
Linux offers Iced Tea, a rebranding of Java, which is perfectly legitimate under the GPL (which is the license under which Java is distributed). And yes, the same could be done for Linux; as long as the result was released under the GPL.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday July 04 2015, @11:53AM
And YOU sir are omitting, either willfully or just ignorantly, some important details. Google attempted to buy licenses for Java, there are plenty of emails where they make it clear that they believed they were on seriously thin ice without a license and then just decided to say fuck it and copy it.
So I'm sorry, come up with as many logic hoops as you like because there is zero difference between what MSFT tried and what GOOG did, the only difference? GOOG got away with it. BOTH took Java, BOTH made just enough changes to make sure "their" version was not compliant (which is called 'EEE', embrace, extend, extinguish, which wadda ya know,has been exactly what has happened to Java since Android) and BOTH used their market dominance in one area (desktops for 1, search the other) to muscle out the competitor.
the only difference is the DoJ is so bought off that Brin and Paige could drop drawers and tell the DoJ to kiss their ass and the only response would be an inquiry on what lipstick they would prefer. The best part? Google is about to get the last laugh as they finish pulling a EEE on FOSS [arstechnica.com] which I'm gonna LMAO when all those that supported this "FOSS friendly" company finds out they supported the creation of the next TiVo, LOL. They are gonna fuck FOSS just like they fucked Oracle, just you watch. MSFT's only mistake was not buying off the DoJ before they tried to steal Java.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Monday July 06 2015, @12:59AM
Google attempted to buy licenses for Java, there are plenty of emails where they make it clear that they believed they were on seriously thin ice without a license and then just decided to say fuck it and copy it.
Google was examining all its options, with licensing Java being one of them. Google decided that the licensing option was too restrictive, so created their own implementation of the needed API's (which, before this case, was generally considered to be legally acceptable).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:15PM
You seem to be conflating Dalvik and the Playwall, but your overall criticism of the state of Android from the perspective of extricating Google from the OS is spot-on. However, there's more to Java than “apping app appers” (as whoever likes to post at random).
I've been dabbling with server-side Java the past few years (mostly Apache alternatives to Hibernate/Jersey/etc) with the rationale that if Oracle went full retard, there would always be Iced Tea [classpath.org]. My Gentoo box at home has Iced Tea instead of Oracle Java and it works just fine.
Everyone thinks Android and applets when Java comes up, but the open source ecosystem for server-side stuff is a cornucopia. I'm not necessarily a fan of Java as a language, but the ecosystem sold me on it.
This situation is fairly disturbing. I never would have thought that an API would be copyrightable. Well, they're going fuller retard than I believed was possible. Crank the retardation to 11!
If re-implementing the Java APIs turns out not to be fair use, the real shame will be losing the ability to legally run Iced Tea, and along with that, some very good libraries will suddenly be dead to me.
Perhaps it's time to polish up on C++. C++11 may actually be usable! (Well, not that C++ wasn't, but I'm loving the auto keyword and user-defined types. I'm sure there's plenty of unexpected-ness there to hang myself. Just need to wrap my head around the semantics of C++ lambdas.)