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The case Google v. Oracle America, previously named Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc., is being heard by the US Supreme Court. At the center of the case is whether programmers require permission to use an application programming interface (API). The outcome will determine the extent to which APIs can or should be copyrighted. If it turns out that copyright can be used to lock competitors out of using any given API, then there are severe repercussions for software development, as all programs these days rely heavily on pre-existing libararies which are then accessed via APIs.
Google: The case for open innovation:
The Court will review whether copyright should extend to nuts-and-bolts software interfaces, and if so, whether it can be fair to use those interfaces to create new technologies, as the jury in this case found. Software interfaces are the access points that allow computer programs to connect to each other, like plugs and sockets. Imagine a world in which every time you went to a different building, you needed a different plug to fit the proprietary socket, and no one was allowed to create adapters.
This case will make a difference for everyone who touches technology—from startups to major tech platforms, software developers to product manufacturers, businesses to consumers—and we're pleased that many leading representatives of those groups will be filing their own briefs to support our position.
At bottom in the case is the issue of whether copyright law bars the commonplace practice of software reimplementation, "[t]he process of writing new software to perform certain functions of a legacy product." (Google brief p.7) Here, Google had repurposed certain functional elements of Java SE (less that 0.5% of Java SE overall, according to Google's brief, p. 8) in its Android operating system for the sake of interoperability—enabling Java apps to work with Android and Android apps to work with Java, and enabling Java developers to build apps for both platforms without needing to learn the new conventions and structure of an entirely new platform.
Devclass: Google says nature of APIs under threat as Oracle case heads to US Supreme Court:
The case – ten years in making – centres on Oracle's claims that its Java patents and copyrights were infringed by Google when the search giant created its Android mobile operating system. An initial ruling in Google's favour was overturned on appeal, and the case is finally due to land in the Supreme Court this year. Google filed its opening brief for the justices this week.
When was the last time, outside of school, when you yourself have written a program entirely from scratch and not used even a single set of application programming interfaces? Yeah. Thought so.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @08:53PM (9 children)
Neither is healthy for you, let alone both.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:25PM (7 children)
Do I envy stalman? Of course not. I have been living at the same address for almost 5 years. Stalman begs online for a room for a few months at a time. His bohemian lifestyle is false pride, same as it's been all these years. Fact is nobody would hire him except for free (his "salary " when he was with the FSF).
I work for free volunteering several days a week. But I won't work for free debugging someone else's shit. That's something I've always been paid to do, and it's something nobody likes doing - which is why so many open source bags are marked WONT_FIX or NOT_A_BUG or just ignored.
Paying customers expect more. And nowadays the paying customers for open source are the big companies that hire developers to work in the companies best interests; not anyone else's. People have been trained not to pay for software, and they get shit that's invasive as all hell and buggy in return. Because in the end you get what you pay for, and Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc are the ones signing the cheques and calling the shots.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @11:34PM (6 children)
Can you demonstrate such with a specific example/scenario?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday January 14 2020, @11:50PM (5 children)
There used to be dozens of home CAD programs for sale, same with everything else under the sun, and they were sustained by people buying them, and that provided programming jobs, and opportunities for programmers to create their own market. Now? It's all about unicorns and getting bought out, because users have been conditioned not to pay for software directly, and little players don't have the platforms to sell their users data.
There's far less variety today than in the past - it's all duopolies and monocultures. Even the infrastructure to sell software through stores directly to the consumer is nonexistent except for games and antivirus.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @12:30AM (4 children)
Ahh. ok. Different AC here but was confused by what you meant as well. I think your definition of "independent developer" is quite narrow. I've worked many many years as an "independent developer" making a living selling my skills to any corporate that need it. You're talking about independent developers creating products/apps/software and selling them first hand.
Sure - but my question is why does it matter when you can also do what I did make the "product" the skill you have and sell that instead. You make a living either way. What does that nostalgic notion bring to the table in terms of making a living?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 15 2020, @01:27AM (3 children)
Glad you asked, because the fact that you phrased it as nostalgic shows just how sick the whole industry has become.
Independence, for one. The ability to sell your code more than once, instead of letting your masters sell it more than once. After all, if it's okay for them to do it, and they don't have the skills to develop it or customize it, why not cut them out of the loop? After all, they won't hesitate to do the same to you.
Control, for another. Ever had an asshole for a boss? A toxic work environment? Been conned into doing crunch time while they go off at 2pm? Fuck that shit! All are grounds for quoting and suing for constructive dismissal. And getting both compensation and having any non/compete tossed. So why not do what you enjoy the way you want? Sure, there's risk, but great risk brings great rewards.
Power. Set your own agenda, your own direction. No need to listen to bosses who want to monetize your talent by turning your code into software as a service and raping everyone of their privacy.
Money. Potentially more than you'd make as a wage slave. The industry started out with people writing software on kitchen tables in their spare time, financed by day jobs, no need for venture vulture capitalists. That hasn't changed. Computers cost 1/20 what they used to, while being far more powerful, so it's not like you need invest large sums for a comp, extra ram, a math coprocessor, keyboard, mouse, and screen - the cheap laptop already has all that, plus a built in UPS and networking.
So what does your boss supply? A regular paycheque, in return for profit from your work. So why not do like the early startups did, work at day jobs and code at night, then when you have a product sell it repeatedly.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:06AM (2 children)
I do believe that you are looking at only the tail of the elephant and concluding its a snake.
The software is shitty because of Apple and Google. Apple showed people that normal people don't know, don't care and can't be bothered to learn about how many processes it takes to run a mp3 player if it looks cool. Google showed that there is more money in advertising than selling software. If Stallman wasn't there, Google would have released chrome into the public domain.
You are angry that most people don't care about software as much as you. But guess what, most people want to be on Facebook all the time, not on a browser. There is less diversity because people don't care. They have not been trained - what a disrespectful thing to say about your "consumers". They don't give a shit.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 15 2020, @01:49PM (1 child)
Developers have to take responsibility. Most of them can't write programs that don't use a server and a browser to do anything significant. They can't even create their own libraries for something as simple as as a string class or a gather/scatter array of buffers in c, or even a ring (circular) buffer to manage disposable events. Linked lists? iSAMs? Loadable modules and thread pools?Even reading a file locally, never mind opening a socket to read it over the network, is beyond most of them. If there isn't some premise code on stack overflow, forget it.
We've gone from assembler to c to pascal to JavaScript, and each step has reduced the capabilities of developers to create something new and exciting. When the only tools in your toolbox are JavaScript and pho and a web browser, every problem looks like it needs a remote server to solve. And that's the hook on which the surveillance economy is built. 30 years ago we didn't need a remote server to do home automation, text to speech, speech to text, etc. All that was done on my 286 with 4 megs of ram running Windows 3.1. Same as computers could communicate directly with each other without the internet - just a modem or even a serial cable. No 3rd party server needed. Same as running a bbs. It was nobody else's business what we did, and nobody could insert advertising or gather data except the government.
People will pay for games, but everything else has been subsumed, and crappy developers who only know web client development are a big part of the problem. So is an education system that doesn't actually teach anything else any more.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:34PM
That's an incredibly insightful observation that the other "anonymous coward" simply doesn't even try to understand.
When I was in college 20 years ago, I had a professor who wrote, and sold, his own tax filing software. He inspired me to write my own software about a decade later when I needed to manage a side business and the market offered nothing suitable. What shows me how sick the industry has become is how employers react to that when I interview (or, God help me, actually join a project). They have no idea why (and, I suspect, how) I ever did such a thing. Their approach to development is much like your observation about Stack Overflow; if there isn't a prepackaged library/service, forget it. It's not that I don't appreciate those resources, just limiting yourself as a "programmer" to cobbling together whatever ill-fitting components you can scrounge up and changing your business model to suit those inadequate tools. The stories I could tell you about modern "development" are as true as they are absurd. I can hardly imagine how much worse things have gotten since I was pushed into operations/management where all I have to do is shrug or parrot ITIL buzzwords to pull down more than I ever did as a developer.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:59PM
Thank you.
Check the date on this return to journaling, something else big happened on that day if you cross ref the calendar:
https://archive.is/MvM1G [archive.is]
Like ali g says if you encounter the bad guys you are going in the right direction:
https://archive.is/cKeB9 [archive.is]
And a positive psa I threw together over the weekend:
https://archive.is/2gVPq [archive.is]