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Ralph Yarro enriched himself tremendously. While SCO the company might be bankrupt, a lot of the money ended up with him.

Robert Penrose and Val Kriedel (Noorda) both committed suicide over their involvement.

 
There was a veil attempt to clear the name of Val Kriedel after her suicide - http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20050407113517663 - but anyhoo, what do we do with Ralph Yarro ?
 
We should not leave him scot free after what he had done to thousands and thousands of us
 
If we let Ralph Yarro go we only send a clear signal to the world - come and troll us, hurt us, impair our ability to renovate, and at the end, we will let you go scot free
 
I am not calling for a violent vengeance or a jihad or anything like that, what I am saying is we should not let that motherfucker go scot free, just like that
 

I've got an accumulator bet on a number of horses at odds of 1/2349088560, would anyone here like to invest in this legitimate business opportunity.
--

ref: "the Chapter 11 Trustee believes that it is in the best interests of the Debtors' estates and its creditors to continue the prosecution of the District Court Action, which was the subject of this Court's Order Granting Stipulation and Order Modifying the Automatic Stay [D.I. 1396]. Based on these circumstances, the Chapter 11 Trustee requests that this Court grant the Motion to convert these cases as soon as possible".

I'm still trying to figure out what happened to Caldera. They used to have a their own Linux distribution and tried to make it user friendly with the Looking Glass Desktop. They even ported Sun's WABI to x86 Linux. Back in 1997, they were pretty much viewed as a Linux company. Groklaw did a nice piece about it: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20080807125817699

Have a look at this http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120724125504129

The fact that he was loudly and incessantly and inaccurately criticizing Google throughout the trial while being a paid Oracle consultant and turned out to be completely hilariously utterly stupidly wrong about every single thing raised some eyebrows in the right places. Finally.

If you have the patience to trawl through some of his writings you immediately realize how biased he is. He has a deep unexplained hatred for anything Google and is constantly harping on how all Android manufacturers should just pay Microsoft to license their patents. Guess the other paid consulting relationship he revealed, yup, it's with Microsoft.

He claims he is conducting a study on FRAND patents for Microsoft, and he continues to write on the issue with a decidedly pro-Microsoft perspective (one appropriate for a company with limited standard essential FRAND patents but thousands of software patents). So his perspective on FRAND patents is exactly the same as Microsoft, he is doing a paid study on FRAND patents for them, and yet he continues to write on the issue like he is an unbiased commentator.

His pro-Microsoft leanings predate his pro-Oracle posts (because the consulting relationship with Microsoft is older). You won't find a scrap of writing that criticizes anything about Microsoft in his blog. When something happens that is embarrassing to Microsoft (like the B&N trail before MS gobbled them up), he completely ignores it. He sometimes criticizes Apple mildly but treads carefully, so I assume he wants to work for them but they haven't thrown him a bone yet.

He is a self proclaimed expert with no law degree. The reason he is quoted so widely is because he is known to email his blog entries to every single media outlet and until recently, there weren't that many people writing about technology patents. Yes, I find it infuriating to find him quoted exclusively in major media outlets. Imagine if there was a consultant conducting a Google-funded study on privacy writing about online privacy and how Google's practices are acceptable, and getting quoted by every single major media outlet.

They would Osborne themselves for the third time in three years -- which is admittedly world-class.

Osborning isn't about changing strategy. That's a perfectly reasonable response to realising you have a bad strategy. Osborning is about the boss of a company telling people about the new products which are to come before he has them ready to sell whilst making his old products sound worse than they are.

There are plenty of ways around Osborning. For example, you promise customers who buy now cheap upgrades later or you explain how your current systems will be compatible with your future systems or you explain limits in your future systems which mean that your current systems will need to keep going on. Even just promising to support your current systems for a year or two after your new systems become dominant in the market

To "Osborne" takes a kind of special incompetence that even Osborne himself didn't really show (the common understanding is a bit unfair on Mr Osborne). The "Elop Effect" on the other hand is to go beyond even that and to more or less deliberately set out to destoy your own products.

Nokia needs to get rid of Elop, possibly demoting him but keeping him around for his contract length, and then, quietly, change strategy and "smile at [Microsoft] while we pull the trigger".

That's not how it actually began, and you really should RTFA. Quinn's declaration is a nice read.

That's not how it actually began, and you really should RTFA. Quinn's declaration is a nice read.

I don't think the costs for the patent protection is that high. I really hope that the Apple vs. Samsung case will show us the terms. See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120730152649225

Rather, Apple has sued Samsung for combining so many visual and behavioral elements from the iPhone and iPad that they have obviously ripped off the design.

Do you have any link to documents that back that up?
here (pdf) is the actual Apple filing. Reading it tells us that, although Apple is attempting to imply what you are saying, the actual court case comes down to their design patents. i.e. "rectangle with rounded corners" not the combination of behavioural elements from the iPhone/iPad as you are claiming.

As people have noted here many times, there are plenty of smart phones created before the advent of the iPhone with many of the same elements that the iPhone later came out with. Everyone was talking about what direction the smart phone would go, and it seemed obvious to most even at that time, that the full screen phone was what was going to happen. LG Prada

What really seems unfair about this to me is that where Samsung spent years and billions of dollars in R&D to help develop cell phone standards like 3g, Apple has not added anything to the development of cell phone standards and even refuses to negotiate with Samsung for any sort of payment for those patents. Meanwhile Apple wants Samsung to pay literally all of their profits to Apple for "allegedly" using their design patent (rounded corners).

Microsoft moves to seal their agreement with Samsung for Android licenses.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120727084323510

It would be nice to get a close view of the MS-Samsung deal.... it would be even more interesting if it is found that Microsoft PAID money to Samsung rather than the other way round.

They recently sued Google claiming that the Dalvic VM (heavily used by Android phones) was infringing their patents and contained copied code, as well as trying a rather unusual step of claiming that you could copyright an API (not the implementaion, just the API: the function names and arguments) They lost on almost all counts, except for about 6 lines of code which were copied by an external company and removed once Google were notified they were there. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120531173633275 This case was widely taken as a move to either kill Android or simply to profit from it by licensing patents. However, since part of the appeal of Android is that it's free, forcing a fee for each android installation would probably have killed it.

This is why Groklaw's excellent, direct publication of the relevant court documents is so very useful to understand the case. the trial transcripts are available, starting at http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120602215245555&query=microsoft+novell+api, and your claim is not consistent with _either_ side's claims.

Look for the key word "ISV" in the transcript, it's at the core of the problems and multiple violations of commercial agreements with Novell as a business partner, and is core to Microsoft using its monopoly position to lock out competitors from office suite products. Microsoft had a contractual obligation with Novell to publish those API's, and suddenly stopped doing so shortly before release, when Novell had already committed their engineers and project plans to working with those API's.

That's not "changing from the BETA", that's bait and switch.

OP is right.

Judge Motz (who flew out of his district to run this court) ignored an 11:1 "hung jury"
and voted to say no jury could find against Microsoft. He's already once been handed
his case back on appeal because he's too pro-Microsoft.

There is no excuse to allow a JMOL (Judgment as a Matter of Law) -- implying no
reasonable jury would find for Microsoft -- when the jury was 11 to 1 in favor of
finding Microsoft guilty. This too will be returned to trial by the appeals court.

There's no excuse for the article to be on slashdot. It's entire "summary" is biased
and incorrect. The editors who approved it have no knowledge of facts. The
moderators who modded down the parent are clearly part of Microsoft's encouragement
of its staff to "read" slashdot (troll on articles) in the hopes they can mod down
disparaging articles.

Judge Motz is biased; he has flown from outside his district to judge this case; he
has been overruled on appeal ON THIS CASE before. It will happen again. All but
that last comment are facts.

See http://www.groklaw.net./

Ehud

Really,
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20111018190335196

"We may change those interfaces (or at least their GUID) after M7 to intentionally break those apps (please let me know if you are using those mechanisms internally)."

And no IBM didn't "gift" them the monopoly it was an accident...

The government did, in fact, make the argument the Court ultimately adopted. Here's a quote of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli arguing for the government:
 

JUSTICE SCALIA: But fees, you know, license fees, fees for a hunting license, everybody knows those are taxes. I mean, I don't think there is as much of a difference between a fee and a tax as there is between a penalty and a tax.

GENERAL VERRILLI: And that, and -- and I think in terms of the tax power, I think it's useful to separate this into two questions. One is a question of characterization. Can this be characterized as a tax; and second, is it a constitutional exercise of the power?

With respect to the question of characterization, the -- this is -- in the Internal Revenue Code, it is administered by the IRS, it is paid on your Form 1040 on April 15th, I think -

JUSTICE GINSBURG: But yesterday you told me -- you listed a number of penalties that are enforced through the tax code that are not taxes and they are not penalties related to taxes.

GENERAL VERRILLI: They may still be exercise of the tax -- exercises of the taxing power, Justice Ginsburg, as this is, and I think there isn't a case in which the Court has, to my mind, suggested anything that bears this many indicia of a tax can't be considered as an exercise of the taxing power. In fact, it seems to me the License Tax Cases point you in the opposite direction. And beyond that your -- it seems to me the right way to think about this question is whether it is capable of being understood as an exercise of the tax -

JUSTICE SCALIA: The president said it wasn't a tax, didn't he?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, Justice Scalia, what the -- two things about that. First, as it seems to me, what matters is what power Congress was exercising. And they were -- and I think it's clear that the -- they were exercising the tax power as well as -

JUSTICE SCALIA: You're making two arguments. Number one, it's a tax; and number two, even if it isn't a tax, it's within the taxing power. I'm just addressing the first.

GENERAL VERRILLI: What the president said -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Is it a tax or not a tax? The president didn't think it was.

GENERAL VERRILLI: The president said it wasn't a tax increase because it ought to be understood as an incentive to get people to have insurance. I don't think it's fair to infer from that anything about whether that is an exercise of the tax power or not.

Source - Groklaw

Then you don't know what a mathematical formula, is, what a Turing machine is, or what a program is.

Hint: all three are different forms of the same thing.

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20091110152507492

http://silentcoder.co.za/2010/08/why-computer-programs-should-not-be-patentable-in-easy-to-understand-terms/

Among those things: a simple, testable proof of my claim. Unless you can refute my proof with evidence, I win.

After full briefing and oral argument, Psystar was found liable for infringement of Apple's copyrights in Mac OS X by violating Apple's exclusive reproduction right, distribution right, and right to create derivative works (Dkt. No. 214 at 10). Psystar was also found liable for contributory copyright infringement by intentionally inducing and encouraging its customers to directly infringe Apple's copyrights through its sale of unauthorized copies of Mac OS X to the public (Id. at 10). 1 Finally, Psystar was found liable for violating Sections 1201(a)(1), 1201(a)(2), and 1201(b)(1) of the DMCA for circumvention and trafficking in circumvention devices (Id. at 13-14). Each of Psystar's asserted defenses were rejected as either waived or without merit.

Since the primary reason to go to Delphi was to get advice from the Oracle, what do you do if you consider the Oracle unreliable?

In my opinion there is a logical fallacy in your comment.

What arguments do you have for the assumption that Canadian law (specifically) has not evolved with the times? Canada naturally needed laws that applied to their domestic circumstances a long time ago. What's more the close relationship and borders with the US have necessitated the creation of similar laws for trade and commerce. US political influence and monetary power certainly have had their effect on Canadian law.

Both the US and Canada were founded on the same [English] Common Law, so I don't understand how you hold that against them. Note that while part of their respective countries Scotland (UK), Quebec and Louisiana are still not Common Law jurisdictions but rather mixed hybrids. I challenge the notion that US law has changed substantially. While clearly it has changed, it has not forgotten its foundations.

The whole world exchanges legal viewpoints on a regular basis, more so for "First World" countries obviously, and mostly with their peers of the same legal systems. If you need evidence of this just look at the US Supreme Court's consideration of old and new UK law in its cases. It is not too "distant" a source to consider exactly because of the similar legal foundations.

This even extends to general [non-common law] European Union legal decisions such as in the very recent Oracle vs. Google Android/Java case (2012):

"The judge presiding over Oracle v. Google, the Hon. William Alsup, has told the parties they can respond to a list of questions he has, now that he's read yesterday's decision by the EU Court of Justice that found APIs not copyrightable expression. They are to respond by noon on May 10 if they wish to add to their previous briefs on the topic. Then they have until May 14 to respond to the other side's brief."

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120503175821298

While foreign law and cases have no binding effect in US courts they do provide them with inspiration and arguments.

Read groklaw. They had thorough reporting of the jury selection. Nearly every juror that had a technical background were dismissed. It is long, but a good read. If you are interested in the case, I thought they had the best coverage. (I have no affiliation with the site).

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120416085550303

A few highlights from the article. These are questions asked to the whole jury. Spoiler: number 14 gets excused right after these questions:

"Next question: Does anyone has a smartphone that uses Android system? Juror # 17 said yes. It is an HTC Droid Incredible. Had it since last September. "I am happy with the phone". Judge explained that you cannot reply on what she already knows about Android system. She said she can do it. Nothing against or in favor of Google."

"Raise your hand if anyone has specialized training in computer software or hardware development or design? # 17 and #14 raised their hands. #14 works with databases and Oracle is in that field. She writes software using Linux, SQL. She will be able to be impartial at the trial.

# 17 worked in the film industry and worked in web worlds using different browsers. She will be able to be impartial at the trial."

"here are geeky types of people and people who are not into technology. If you are on a geeky end, could you raise your hand? -- NO hands."

"Any knowledge of Java programming language? -- No.

#17 had heard about Java language, just heard about it. Living in the Bay area she'd heard about it. Never studied it or read manuals."

Draw your own conclusions.

Except that SCO does not, and never did own the licenses to Unix APIs. Novel owns those, and this was a huge factor in the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit. Licensing with SCO would not do a damn thing if Novel decided to suddenly charge for the UNIX APIs.

I'm not going to find all the links for you, instead I will direct you to Groklaw where there is a very complete case history. If you remember, at the same time SCO was taking IBM to court they were taking Novel to court. The suit against Novel was to obtain what they did not have in their purchase agreements, which was the rights to Unix source code, rights to Unix name, etc.. It was found that SCO owned very very little of Unix.

The judge in this case is also aware of the recent EU Court of Justice ruling, and asked to be briefed by both sides.

See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120503175821298

Gotta love how the entire time we heard magic numbers from oracle, all fud, all pulling the microsoft blasphemy train, and the entire thing was clearly debunked by a jury faster than anyone's head can spin. Good thing I got to keep track of the shills.

groklaw had plenty of coverage highlighting exactly this.

I hope people know that this is typical for google and that people already knew the answer before the case even came forward. Now go back and stroll those articles to look who the trolls were from the old articles. History/Karma's a bitch, huh. one troll example .

It's inexplicable, the file has the same serial number yet the contents are totally different.

Demonstrate NTServer as THE Internet platform

Demonstrate NTServer as THE Internet platform

PX04264.pdf

PX04264.pdf

It isn't that difficult to fool Wikipedia, this is the same people that says Windows NT wasn't designed for the Internet, except this says different.

Are you sure about that?

Josh Bloch, who wrote rangeCheck, testified that “[a]ny competent high school programmer could write” that method. RT 815:13-16 (Bloch). Even Oracle’s expert Dr. Mitchell conceded that “a good high school programmer” could write rangeCheck with guidance. RT 1316:24-25 (Mitchell).

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120516083919975&query=rangecheck

To quote Google's lawyer in court today:

[PJ: Let me remind everyone that the testimony was that a contractor, Noser, did it, and it did it contrary to specific instructions from Google.]

Let me come back to rangeCheck. Every time I talk about this, I feel like I'm either saying it's important or it's not important. That's a false dichotomy. No one can say it's a big thing. But it was something that was copied, and it was important to TimSort, which had a significant performance advantage.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120515120106322&query=rangecheck

P.S. I admit that I could be wrong, I'm not following the case that closely, but this does seem clear cut?

Are you sure about that?

Josh Bloch, who wrote rangeCheck, testified that “[a]ny competent high school programmer could write” that method. RT 815:13-16 (Bloch). Even Oracle’s expert Dr. Mitchell conceded that “a good high school programmer” could write rangeCheck with guidance. RT 1316:24-25 (Mitchell).

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120516083919975&query=rangecheck

To quote Google's lawyer in court today:

[PJ: Let me remind everyone that the testimony was that a contractor, Noser, did it, and it did it contrary to specific instructions from Google.]

Let me come back to rangeCheck. Every time I talk about this, I feel like I'm either saying it's important or it's not important. That's a false dichotomy. No one can say it's a big thing. But it was something that was copied, and it was important to TimSort, which had a significant performance advantage.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120515120106322&query=rangecheck

P.S. I admit that I could be wrong, I'm not following the case that closely, but this does seem clear cut?

He wrote it for Sun/Oracle while working for Sun/Oracle, hence the copyright lies with Sun/Oracle.

Lies. This is from Groklaw's coverage of his testimony:

Q. You left Sun and joined Google in 2004. What did you do at Google?
A. I ported existing Google infrastructure that was primarily accessible from C++ so that it was accessible to Java. I joined the Android team in December 2008 or January 2009. Android had already been released, and phones were in the market.

...

Q. Do you know of the existence of other rangecheck() functions?
A. Yes, there's one in arrays.java. I wrote it. [Timsort: from Tim Peters, and originally in Python. The Java implementation was a port.]
Q. Where did you get the Python version of Timsort? Was it open source [this was 2007, pre-Android]?
A. Yes, Guido [van Rossum] pointed me to it, it's under a permissive open-source license.
Q. What did you want to do with your Java Timsort?
A. Put it into OpenJDK (an open implentation of the SE platform).
Q. Who controlled OpenJDK?
A. Sun.
Q. How does someone contribute to OpenJDK, and had you done it before?
A. Yes. [Discussion about source repositories, and Doug Lee at Oswego, NY].
Q. If you worked for Google, why would you contribute to Sun's JDK?
A. Java is important to me; it's given me a lot.
Q. Why did you use the same rangecheck() function in Timsort as was in arrays.java?
A. It's good software engineering to reuse an existing function.
Q. But why use the exact same code?
A. I copied rangecheck() as a temporary measure, assuming this would be merged into arrays.java and my version of rangecheck() would go away.
[Discussion of Timsort dates and Android work dates.]
Q. Was Timsort accepted and added into OpenJDK?
A. Yes.

In other words, a Google engineer, working at Google, wrote a function and contributed it to Java (for free). Now Oracle is trying to sue over it because of that copyright assignment, and claiming that the freely contributed code is hugely valuable and that the contributor therefore owes them big money for using it. Even if this is technically legal for them to sue over, Oracle really deserves to DIAF over this.

Don't let anyone fool you. Today was a major victory for Google

Nullify the copyrights and patents and take this issue to the SCOTUS.

Just look at this. This is insanity, nobody should have to be a hostage to a judge and jury and to the insane players, like Oracle, in any time in their lives. You think THIS PROMOTES INNOVATION?

You think this promotes innovation, invention, anything that is good and positive in the world at all? All this does is it destroys. If APIs are copyrightable, if patents are everywhere, forget Java, forget smart phones, how can you have any new ideas, any new businesses, any new wealth (products, services) created?

This is insanity, anybody supporting a system that allows this is insane, the entire society that believes this creates more innovation and invention and business and ideas is insane.

From groklaw

[ Recap of the day: Google won everything but the one issue that the judge has to decide anyway, the API SSO issue. The jury found, as they had been instructed to assume for the purposes of deliberation, that APIs can be copyrighted, the structure, sequence and arrangement of APIs, but that is by no means established. The same question, in a b) section, asked if fair use excused any infringement if found, and the jury couldn't resolve that issue. But the judge has to decide whether or not that is true, that APIs can be protected by copyright. That comes later this month. Meanwhile, Oracle prevailed only on 9 lines of code that Google admitted prior to trial to have included by mistake and then removed from current Android. Oracle's own expert, the judge pointed out in court, valued those 9 lines of code at zero. This is 9 lines out of millions. So that means, if we are looking at damages, that so far Oracle has won nothing. There is no liability. You can't have infringement without considering fair use, Google asserts, and there will be briefing on that. Somebody has to decide that fair use issue. And then the judge has to decide about the API copyrightability issue. If he rules that APIs can't be copyrighted, as the EU Court of Justice just ruled, then fair use is moot. And Oracle takes nothing at all from the copyright phase of this litigation, and this was heralded far and wide by Oracle people as the big ticket item, if you recall.

Don't let anyone fool you. Today was a major victory for Google. That's why after the jury left, our reporter says that Google's table was laughing, and Oracle's mighty glum. And I see some journalists are surprised or confused, because they have been listening to a steady flow of Oracle FUD from the wrong people. Remember the headlines about this being a $6 billion dollar case? It never was and now it never will be. Oracle attorney Michael Jacobs was reported to have visited the press room at the courthouse during the trial for a talk with the gathered journalists. So did a PR person from his firm. I mean, come on, fellas. And that doesn't even count the huge stream of misinformation from ... well, you know. And look at the outcome. Not what you were told to expect, is it? Live and learn, y'all. Live and learn. If a person is paid by Oracle, why would you take it as necessarily so? And here's why the API decision matters so much.]

Maybe so, but this case has nothing to do with those abuses. Google took Apache Harmony (you know, a free, open-source, Apache-licensed implementation of the Java APIs...not GPL, but still open source) and built Android.

Sun was happy about it, Google was happy about it, the Java language got more widely used...

Oracle had a different point of view, wanted money, and had trouble convincing a jury who was *told* to assume that the APIs were copyrightable that the few remaining copyright claims Oracle brought were valid.

...also, in Europe, they just decided rather definitively that APIs are not copyrightable.

The worst part of this all is that now we go on to the "patent" part of the trial, which is just silly because we're talking about software (turning one number into another number based on a set of rules...aka an algorithm, which is not patentable subject matter).

I'm getting very disappointed with Slashdot this past few years, and they seem to be pandering to the sensationalist. I used to come here for some real news.

It's all over the wire about the jury deliberations, mistrial, infringements. I come to Slashdot thinking I'd get the real scoop. Nope, more of same sensational stuff.

So, Groklaw has the real story, and it turns out, it's not much of a story at all.

There's all sorts of sensational web sites out there. I used to come to Slashdot for the comments, which have always been rational. Now, I'm not sure why I stop by from time to time.

In other words, a very good day for Google, not Oracle.

Here is the link to the Groklaw updates about this case.

It would have been a lot slimper and less confusing if Slashdot had just linked to that in the first place.

The differences between Google and Microsoft is very deep, especially when it comes to origin, management and how they do things.

Read through this "little" list of things Microsoft has done:

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653

Then, compare that mountain of evidence against what Google has done so far. In comparison with most online business Google comes out very clean. Compared to Microsoft you have to compare to something like Monsanto before you even begin to come into the same ballpark as Microsoft.

This article is a sham and probably paid for by MS.

He has asked the parties to brief him in light of the EU decision.

This seems strangely relevant to the Oracle vs. Google case that's going on right now over Android and its usage of Java APIs. Does anyone know how much of a coincidence this EU court ruling is, that it occurs in such close proximity to its US analogue?

100% coincidence.

Also the judge has instructed the jury to deliberate assuming that the structure, sequence and organisation of the API is copyrightable; They're to determine given if the APIs are sufficiently similar, comparing all 166 Java packages not just the 33 accused,)and if so, if Google has infringed and whether or not they're use is allowed under fair use.

The Judge has not said that APIs can be copyrighted. He reserves that decision for himself, and will only be forced to make such a decision if the jury finds that Google has infringed (assuming the SSO of an API is copyrightable). Since the jury is already deliberating in the Oracle v Google case no new evidence will be presented to them. Although US copyright laws are different than EU law, the Judge knows that his decision could have huge impacts on the software market.

I like Judge Alsup, he's smart. He only has to decide if Google's found to be infringing... Furthermore I think he's begun to understand the absurdity of Oracles claims:

Judge: Question about specification. Your description made it sound like a black box with something inside. You have input on that side and output on that side, and the spec says what the inputs gotta be, and the outputs gotta be, and the implementation is what's in the black box.

Owen Astrachan: That is a very good explanation. I like that explanation.

[Judge smiles]

- Reported Transcript

In the black box analogy the API would be like Google and Oracle both labeling their volume knobs the same name and making clockwise rotation increase the volume... It sounds intuitive that if Google's black box has all the same placement and functions and labels as an Oracle box that they coppied the SSO of the Interface (API) -- However, they must have done so in order to provide interoperability, and courts have made exceptions for such use in the past. As long as the operation manual (code comments) are sufficiently dissimilar I can't see where Oracle has a copyright case. Their patent case is another story.

This EU ruling is interesting to me as a software developer... My fellow game devs are dispersed globally. In the near future we'll be selecting a home base of operations. If the APIs are found copyrightable in the US, but not EU, we may opt to have our base of operations outside the US. (we may do so any way for patent concern reasons -- Fix the damn copyright and patent system USA, it's HURTING your business)

No. Oracle claimed that Google copied some code, that Google showed that was some code that they contributed to Java.

Actually, literal exact copying is still an issue in the case, and is part of the charge to the jury. If you read the jury instructions rather than relying on what other people tell you is the issue, you might be better informed.

Oracle also claimed that the APIs themselves are copyrighted, and that is what is being resolved now.

The issue that has been characterized imprecisely in popular media as "the APIs themselves" being copyrighted (which isn't the only issue in the charge to the jury to resolve) is not about "the APIs themselves" being copyrighted. The actual legal issue is about "sequence, structure, and organization" of the of the source files that are undisputedly part of Oracle's copyrighted Java implementation being protected.

I wish I could believe this was all just a part of some complicated prank -- check out their info on installing the SDK:

Installing the SDK on Ubuntu ...
        Oracle Java* v6 or higher version (do not use OpenJDK)

https://developer.tizen.org/sdk/installing-sdk-ubuntu

Who in their right mind would hitch their up-and-coming FOSS mobile OS to Java right now? And Oracle's proprietary, closed source java -- not even the OpenJDK?

Hint: Given the trial that's going on right now, I would just avoid using Java for a whlie. Or, you know, at all (if possible).

An API is more than "all about functionality"; it is an artful expression of the collection of function calls, and their parameter signatures, needed to implement such functionality. Or it could be. Only a judge can decide that.

Indeed it sounds like this case will provide a ruling on that since the judge has reserved the right to rule the the applicability of copyright to the API for himself and told the jury to assume that the APIs are copyrightable so that their verdict will stand even if his finding on the legality of API copyrights is challenged on appeal. However when it comes to the jury's verdict, it would seem that Schwartz' testimony gives really good grounds to Google for estoppel that Sun had limited the copyright-based constraints it asserted on the APIs. More specifically that, since Google had not tried to call Dalvik by the trademarked Java name, that they had complied with Sun's public statements regarding licencing requirements of the Java APIs in that the licencing was only required for access to the JCK/TCK for compatibility testing and use of the Java name.

An API is more than "all about functionality"; it is an artful expression of the collection of function calls, and their parameter signatures, needed to implement such functionality. Or it could be. Only a judge can decide that.

Indeed it sounds like this case will provide a ruling on that since the judge has reserved the right to rule the the applicability of copyright to the API for himself and told the jury to assume that the APIs are copyrightable so that their verdict will stand even if his finding on the legality of API copyrights is challenged on appeal. However when it comes to the jury's verdict, it would seem that Schwartz' testimony gives really good grounds to Google for estoppel that Sun had limited the copyright-based constraints it asserted on the APIs. More specifically that, since Google had not tried to call Dalvik by the trademarked Java name, that they had complied with Sun's public statements regarding licencing requirements of the Java APIs in that the licencing was only required for access to the JCK/TCK for compatibility testing and use of the Java name.

Unix (the source and binary copyrights such as are not encumbered by UCSD, not the trademark owned by The Open Group), to include "The C programming language (the language, not the book) and its libraries (in this case including the APIs to the extent they're theoretically protected by copyright)", yes - that is the specific limited property I'm talking about. I don't know who owns or controls these private equity funds that - as you point out - "may" own this property. That's why I was asking. Do you know? The question may be material to the future evolution of technology for the next 60 years or so, so it's pretty important tonight but might be moot tomorrow depending on the outcome of this legal case, and its appeals.

The C libraries' structure sequence and organization (SSO) is heavily used in almost every common operating system, programming language and application programming interface used today. It's the shoulders of the giants we stand on. Huge chunks even of Java are derived from it.

Ownership of this group then is interesting to me because of the myriad people who could be behind this equity group are some who have interesting relationships to this legal case. The group of people who can swing around a billion dollars is pretty small, relatively speaking and not all of them play in technology. In an environment where some dubious activity has taken place, like Baystar, RBC and others, it's only natural to be suspicious of organizations that shield their principals behind an iron shield of privacy. We do know some of the players aren't playing fair. There is big money in play here, and sweeping strategies that take many years to carry out - it's nine years since SCO first started their nonsense and that's still not sorted. At stake is the pace of progress itself - an issue I have a personal interest in.

AKA Microsoft.

The Attachmate Group is also known as "Microsoft"? Note: "Novell sold some intellectual property assets to a consortium organized by Microsoft as part of the process of being bought by Attachmate" is inequivalent to "Attachmate is Microsoft".

Not just WINE. The Open Group, for example, would be able to charge royalties for any UNIX-like system implementing the APIs described in POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification. AT&T might still own copyrights on the original UNIX and C library APIs (since they were not thought to be copyrightable, they would probably not have been transferred, but if they were then Novell may own them), so everyone who implements basic C stuff like printf() would be liable.

This is what the SCO lawsuit was about. It's basically over (except that every time someone announces an end, there is another re-file of some sort)... but even groklaw has moved on to Oracle v. Google.

Also, Caldera (which I think was a previous incarnation of SCO) released versions of Unix developed by AT&T prior to System III and System V as open source.

It actually gets worse than even that. If an API is copyrightable, then all of the law related to derived works also applies. That means that whoever copyrighted the first interface for an ordered collection can count any subsequent API that appears to be inspired by it as a derived work. Do you use subscripting for array indexing? Do you have an API for storing a key-value pair in an keyed collection? You probably owe someone money...

No. Patents, not copyrights, can be used to claim ownership of ideas. Copyrights are used to claim ownership of specific, concrete realization of ideas, covering the "look and feel" and surface aspects rather than essential mechanisms.

Not just WINE. The Open Group, for example, would be able to charge royalties for any UNIX-like system implementing the APIs described in POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification. AT&T might still own copyrights on the original UNIX and C library APIs (since they were not thought to be copyrightable, they would probably not have been transferred, but if they were then Novell may own them), so everyone who implements basic C stuff like printf() would be liable.

This is what the SCO lawsuit was about. It's basically over (except that every time someone announces an end, there is another re-file of some sort)... but even groklaw has moved on to Oracle v. Google.

Also, Caldera (which I think was a previous incarnation of SCO) released versions of Unix developed by AT&T prior to System III and System V as open source.

It actually gets worse than even that. If an API is copyrightable, then all of the law related to derived works also applies. That means that whoever copyrighted the first interface for an ordered collection can count any subsequent API that appears to be inspired by it as a derived work. Do you use subscripting for array indexing? Do you have an API for storing a key-value pair in an keyed collection? You probably owe someone money...

No. Patents, not copyrights, can be used to claim ownership of ideas. Copyrights are used to claim ownership of specific, concrete realization of ideas, covering the "look and feel" and surface aspects rather than essential mechanisms.

It was Pamela Jones of Groklaw who revealed the existence of "The Slog" from the Comes vs. Microsoft case documents. On reading of this latest conflict-of-interest issue with Hopkirk, PJ's February 17, 2008 article is eerily familiar...

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20071023002351958

>"Vanishingly," as in "the similarity you speak of is irrelevant."

Actually - quite the inverse - it's not a similiarity but an EXACT REPLICA. No wait, that's still not the right word, it's not even a replica - it's the EXACT SAME FUCKING THING.
If you think there is ANY difference between mathematical formulas and software programs then you don't know computational theory at all. There isn't. A software program IS a mathematical formula, it is merely a formula specifically intended for a Turing machine - which itself is a mathematical formula.
In fact it is quite possible to rewrite any software program as a mathematical formula, in effect this is exactly what a compiler does. A step further you can actually rewrite any software program using lambda calculus, and the relationship goes the other way as well - there are programming languages that are directly developed FROM lambda calculus (literally the only difference is the choice of symbols - changed for the sake of easier typing: LISP is such a language)

This is not a small resemblence, it's not some outdated "x developed out of y" concept - it's the entire set of laws and theories that allow computers to work, and software to be developed. Software isn't LIKE maths, software doesn't USE maths. Software programs ARE mathematical formulas. Nothing more and NOTHING less.

You sir, are just plain ignorant. Sadly so are all the lawyers who continue to believe otherwise.

Detailed source: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091111151305785

I was responding to a specific poster who is continuing to spread the idiocy that this lawsuit is about a license for the JVM vs using an open source alternative. According to Oracle's licensing, the only legal implementation of Java for mobile is the official JME, Blackdown, OpenJRE, etc, all legal for Desktop and Server, not for mobile.

The open source implementations of Java are licensed under actual open source licenses. There is not one word in the GPL that says you can't use it on a mobile device. The way Sun/Oracle maintains control over "Java" notwithstanding that they released their own implementation under the GPL is by licensing the trademark. If you want to call it Java(TM) then you need a trademark license. Sun has said as much. But Google isn't calling it Java(TM). And given that, it seems like they could pretty easily have done away with the copyright claims going forward just by licensing one of the open source implementations which inherited from Sun's GPL'd implementation, if they wanted to. Apparently instead they've decided that the copyright claims are silly -- it is an independent implementation -- so they'd rather fight it. (I can't say I blame them. Oracle is a bit of a jerk. "We want $6 Billion dollars durr hurr.")

Google violated Sun's license terms by making Davlik, it is explicitly against said terms.

Google doesn't have a license from Sun for Java (or Java(TM) or whatever), the negotiations broke down and Google decided to do their own implementation instead. What do Sun's license terms have anything to do with anything if Google hasn't agreed to them?

The copyright question is very much whether they "need" a license to do what they did, i.e. creating an independent implementation that implements the same API. (I think there is also another question about a few lines of a range check function that is line-for-line identical between Sun's OpenJDK and Google's version... but it seems to have come out that the reason for that is that the code was originally written by a Google engineer and then accepted into OpenJDK. Way to reward your contributors, Oracle.)

Google seems to have drawn or bought a friendly judge

Are you seriously suggesting that they bought off the judge? Give me a break.

First, the point is that this email isn't a "smoking gun". Not by a long stretch.

The patent claims have narrowed significantly, with only 2 of the original 7 patents remaining, and one of those is on shaky ground. Most of the remaining claims are about copyright, not patent. So while there are still patents involved, it's largely about copyright at this point.

See Groklaw if you need to familiarize yourself with other facts of the case.

Why do I think that? Because the case has been going on for a year and a half now, and I've been following it that whole time. The public trial has just started, but the case was originally filed in August of 2010. Between now and then, Oracle and Google have been fighting the whole time, with dueling motions and dueling experts. In fact, their experts were so much at odds that the court felt compelled to appoint its own, so we're going to see three experts testify during the trial. And further, both sides challenged the court's expert before trial and got parts of his testimony stricken.

Indirect copying is simply harder to prove than direct copying. Not impossible, of course, but to even bring a case, you have to meet certain hurdles, which Oracle wasn't able to get over. Their evidence didn't meet the required minimum standard, and the judge disallowed it, except for the few lines that Google admitted were copied, and some vague claims that the API's might be protectable. Oh, and the documentation, which, after further review, I realize you were right about. More on that below.

Remember, this case is primarily about patents. Oracle knows that Google took great pains to avoid copying their code, for the most part, and only threw in a few vague copyright claims in the some of it would stick. The meat of the trial won't come till the copyright part is done. Of course, a year and a half ago, Oracle had more patents than they do now. Google got the PTO to review the patents, and most of them have not survived that review, so Oracle has been trying to switch their focus to the copyright claims, but they've had limited success with that.

Now, as I said above, you're right about the documentation copyright claims still being alive. I mostly ignored those, because they don't affect Android directly, and my interest is in what's going to happen to Android. Oracle wants a slice of the Android pie, at a minimum, and would prefer if Android were dropped in favor of JavaME. Winning on the documentation claims won't help with those goals. Oracle can get some back payments, but only to cover developers--they're not going to get paid per-phone--and Google can simply pull the documentation and replace it, so Oracle's won't get the on-going license fees they're hoping for, nor any leverage to force Google to switch to JavaME. But a win here would at least help Oracle save face, and help justify the suit to their stockholders.