Oracle Claims Google 'Directly Copied' Our Java Code

itwbennett writes "On Wednesday, Oracle amended the lawsuit it filed against Google in August, saying that 'approximately one third of Android's Application Programmer Interface (API) packages' are 'derivative of Oracle's copyrighted Java API packages' and related documents. In particular, 'the infringed elements of Oracle America's copyrighted work include Java method and class names, definitions, organization, and parameters; the structure, organization and content of Java class libraries; and the content and organization of Java's documentation,' Oracle says. 'In at least several instances, Android computer program code also was directly copied from copyrighted Oracle America code,' Oracle alleges."

Comments

Here we go again (SCO)

[Anonymous Coward]

Fire up Patty at Grocklaw./.... this is identical to the IBM vs SCO case

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[poetmatt]

Also, is oracle really trying to state that they have never heard of clean room design? Oracle is pretty screwed on this case, and with google's intent to fight hard, all Oracle is going to do is kill their own business off.

Java has now become a liability, so now people won't want to use it. Simple.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[wonkavader]

I don't think it's that bad, but certainly ORACLE becomes a liability -- don't use anything they control.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[Z00L00K]

And then the question is - move to WHAT?

C# is too windows-oriented to really be useful, but maybe this will be a revival for Ada?

However - it's more likely that a spoof of Java called something else will spring up.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[Joce640k]

Well, at least we found out why Oracle bought Java...

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[digitalunity]

Oracle isn't going anywhere. This lawsuit isn't going to be anything at all like SCO/IBM or SCO/Novell because Oracle is many times larger than SCO is and is at least 2 orders of magnitude more relevant.

Java is everywhere. Schools teach it. Companies use it.

If Google really copied things from the Java source like actual source code or documentation, they might be screwed. It sounds like from the summary that the bulk of this 'copying' was the API, which I don't think is even eligible for copyright(not artistic).

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[man_of_mr_e]

Uh.. what?

C# has absolutely nothing windows oriented to it. It's a completely platform agnostic language.

Now, if you're talking about .NET, that's a slightly different story, although much of it, especially the CLI is also platform neutral. The only parts that are windows specific are things that can be replaced, such as the GUI framework.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[freeshoes]

Yeah like all the C libraries out there?

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[Anonymous Coward]

Anon because skewering is anticipated....

Really? Comparing to SCO?

I'm replying to a post that is thinking it through vs. some of the others.

I know Google can do no wrong in some people's eyes, but isn't it possible that some middle manager and his crack wiz kids didn't think and indeed copied code directly from Oracle's Java (it pains me to say that name...I already miss Sun). I've seen this many times where people see code, use code, and don't think of the legal ramifications. I'm sure everyone on Slashdot looks at the copyright language for every snippet of code they find on websites but doesn't mean everyone does.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[man_of_mr_e]

What I find ironic is that everyone was worried about Microsoft suing open source implementors of .NET, and claiming that Java should be used instead. ... Oops.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[DrgnDancer]

C isn't portable. If I write something in Java it will probably (for a very high value of "probably" too) work on any of a dozen platforms. If I write something in C I have to port it. Porting it costs programmer time and we've already established that programmer time is more costly than machine time. In theory C could be made to be somewhat portable (It would still have to be compiled on every platform and the binaries distributed separately), but in practice this would require a lot of OS vendors that hate each other to standardize a lot of APIs. It's probably not going to happen.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[drinkypoo]

I don't think it's that bad, but certainly ORACLE becomes a liability

Becomes? You must be new.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[AmaDaden]

James Gosling confirmed this some time ago "During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer's eyes sparkle. Filing patent suits was never in Sun's genetic code. Alas.... " http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/the_shit_finally_hits_the

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[DrgnDancer]

C is portable, a given piece of C code is not necessarily. I guarantee that if I write a program of any complexity in C on Windows, and don't make specific efforts, that program will not compile on Linux or MacOS. You're continuing to ignore the point. Yes, you can write stuff in C and port it to any platform. No one is denying that. The point is that it costs extra money to port it, when you could just write it in Java and have it work on all those platforms. This is a significant cost savings for multi-platform apps.

There are a great number of applications (and the number grows every time Moore's Laws increments) that simply don't need more performance. The person behind the keys simply doesn't care that his/her accounts receivable application *could* have responded in .0005 seconds had it been natively compiled but instead responds in .001 seconds because it runs through an interpreter. Faster than human thought is faster than human thought.

For lots of things performance remains important. For those things, people will keep using compiled languages and dealing with the headaches of porting. For everything else, Java is fine, and a huge cost saver in a lot of cases.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[gstoddart]

A better point would be that these languages have features that make it easier to write code, such as garbage collection.

And, my personal favorite ... generics.

God, I love being able to declare a hash table of without needing to care any more about how one would write the innards of a hash table.

For me, having data structures on tap is one of the best features of modern languages. That and the huge libraries of code which I can just use to accomplish my task instead of starting from scratch. I'm not interested in writing an XML parser -- I just need it parsed in as few lines of code as possible.

Java isn't perfect, but I fear Oracle is ruining it.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[Nethemas the Great]

I thought most of us saw the obvious reasons already. Sun was rather like a gift wrapped fruit basket.

• They were constantly struggling with money problems making them weak to takeovers.
• MySQL, Oracle's database division's biggest threat was purchased by Sun.
• Sun owns Java, and more importantly J2EE--the technology powering the overwhelming majority of every corporate back-end that isn't .NET.
• Sun railed hard against software patents, Oracle loves software patents, uses them as a profit center
• Sun possesses a 10-year, patent non-aggression pact with Microsoft (started in 2004)
• Sun has a somewhat sizable patent portfolio, including pertaining to Java, anyone not deriving from OpenJDK (which has permanent indemnification) is subject to litigation.
• Most of Sun's software patents were as yet untapped (they never sued for licensing agreements) potential points of licensing revenue.
• The Java specifications are copyrighted. There are a number of APIs that have similar designs

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[drewhk]

There are two types of fools:
1. The fools who trust in the optimization skills of the compiler/JIT compiler
2. The fools who trust in their own optimization skills

My personal experience is that Type 1 fools are harmless, you can speed up their code easily. Type 2-s on the other hand do a lot of mess, code in assembly, whatever and still manage to fuck up performance and it is a pain to correct it later. Modern CPU architectures are extremely complex, and different architectures have different characteristics (e.g Atom vs Pentium 4). There are many programmers that used assembly in their college years and think that those skills apply on current systems.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[UnknowingFool]

The main difference is that SCO didn't own the copyrights (and we all knew they didn't) but it took a long, protracted court case to work that out. Once that was settled, SCO didn't have any legal standing to sue IBM for copyright infringement. It is clear that Oracle owns the Java copyrights. The code will probably be similar; it's a matter of how much quibbling Oracle is willing to do. Unlike SCO, Oracle has lots of their own money to battle this out.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[paulsnx2]

Just because something is "hard to do" doesn't mean you can copyright it. And it doesn't mean that something is primarily an artistic expression.

It is instructive to consider why you cannot copyright fashion in current law (something that the Fashion copyright bill intends to change). Fashion is considered primarily utilitarian, i.e. you wear a shirt to cover your top, and wear pants to cover your bottom. To allow copyright to control basic utilitarian functions would be hugely damaging to the fashion industry. Even the Fashion Copyright bill acknowledges this fact, restricting fashion copyright to 3 years, and only to identical copies.

Nobody says making attractive cloths isn't hard to do. Nobody is saying that poorly designed cloths make some people cringe. In fact, there can be huge artistic components to the design of both cloths and APIs.

But at the end of the day, you wear boots to cover your feet, gloves to cover your hands, and hats to cover your head, and belts to hold up your pants, etc. etc. You use APIs to paint buttons and fields on windows, write to files, access the internet, etc. etc.

These functions are primarily utilitarian in nature...

APIs are designed to allow certain functionalities in computer systems, and the market is ill served by restricting the control of their use perpetually to one company.

If copyrights are allowed for APIs, then we are all screwed. Let's count the ways:

Copyright on APIs would amount to a nearly 100 year lock on building systems that conform to various interfaces. APIs are all derivative, and companies like IBM could assert control over vast ranges of APIs that are clearly derived from their earlier systems. At the same time, changes to APIs produce opportunities to produce new copyrights (even as their use might be prohibited due to infringement on other APIs). Copyrights on APIs would effectively drive all small businesses out of programming, as nothing can be done without the use of an API, and all the control of APIs would reside with the historical companies who first designed the APIs we all use. Even the big companies today might not be able to assert control over APIs whose original authorship might be hard to nail down today.

As I have pointed out in the past, not one single company has secured all the IP required to produce a smart phone. If the courts side with Oracle on their claim that they have a copyright on an API, then no company will be able to secure the IP required to write a single program. Only by having vast army of lawyers can any company produce a smart phone today. Allow copyrighted APIs, and only by having a vast army of of lawyers can anyone write a program.

I can only hope our courts can see the problem with this idea.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[the Haldanian]

Also after SCO - no lawfirm will be nearly as stupid as SCO's..

You mean represent an insanely deluded client who throws all of their money away at them?
The *lawfirms* would *fight* for that chance!

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[butlerm]

In Baystate v. Bentley Systems (1997), a district court held that technical interfaces including programmer APIs are not copyrightable under the scenes a faire and other copyright doctrines. If this logic is followed by the court in the Oracle case, Google will be held harmless from any claims of copyright infringement.

This all despite the creativity that went into the API design in the first place. The practical benefit of not proscribing the copying of technical interfaces should be obvious. If such copying was proscribed, no one could make compatible software without permission of the original manufacturer anymore. File formats themselves might be protected to the degree that in the absence of any patent, it might be illegal to write code that reads and writes your own data.

Re:Here we go again (SCO)

[Haeleth]

C# has absolutely nothing windows oriented to it. It's a completely platform agnostic language.

Don't be disingenuous. You know as well as I do that when anyone other than Miguel de Icaza says "C#" they are talking about .NET running on Microsoft Windows, and that is never going to change.

Even if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that Mono is an excellent platform for Linux-native development, it is still ridiculous to suggest that it might replace Java. Where is Java used? In big enterprises. Do you really think that a company that is afraid to use Java for fear of Oracle is going to be happy using a third-party implementation of a Microsoft technology?! They would be crazy to do so. Anyone who is still running Java on Windows, and has no interest whatsoever in retaining cross-platform compatibility, might consider switching to .NET at this point. Indeed it would probably make good business sense for them to do so. But C# is not a serious option for any enterprise scenario that involves non-Microsoft platforms.

Dangerous claim

[TheRaven64]

"The infringed elements of Oracle America’s copyrighted work include Java method and class names, definitions, organization, and parameters; the structure, organization and content of Java class libraries; and the content and organization of Java’s documentation," Oracle says.

All of this stuff should count as an interface, and therefore not covered by copyright under US law. If they win this, then it sets a very dangerous precedent. Any project that implements an interface defined by another would potentially be violating copyright - including every single PC, which includes a BIOS that implements the behaviour of the IBM-copyrighted PC BIOS. Projects like WINE and GNUstep would also be in serious trouble and Linux (implementing UNIX APIs) would be illegal.

Claiming that Google copied their code is interesting. I was under the impression that the java.* classes in Android came from Apache, not from the Sun releases. Is Oracle trying to pull a SCO here? (i.e. it does something like what our code does, therefore it's ours).

They really should have kept this as a patent / trademark issue. Bringing copyrights in is a terrible idea.

Re:Dangerous claim

[vtcodger]

***Is Oracle trying to pull a SCO here? (i.e. it does something like what our code does, therefore it's ours).***

Lawsuits are written by lawyers. Being a lawyer means that you don't actually need to know what you are talking about, you just need to sound like you do.

I agree, that this stuff other than indenting, comments, layout probably is not copyrightable. My understanding is that basically, you can not copyright the only way to express something.

I'm in no way shape or form a lawyer. Does formulating this in the way they have give Oracle access to the Google code to see if the code was in fact copied byte for byte from Oracle rather than simply implementing the same externally interface?

Re:Dangerous claim

[Anonymous Coward]

All those perfectly valid points aside, there's the slight matter of Sun having released the vast majority of their API implementation as open source.

Re:Dangerous claim

[somersault]

Does formulating this in the way they have give Oracle access to the Google code to see if the code was in fact copied byte for byte from Oracle

You mean this code?

Re:Dangerous claim

[yincrash]

under a very specific license. if you copy code, yet don't abide by the terms of the rest of the license, you are in violation of copyright.

And so it begins.

[contra_mundi]

Oracle makes Java unusable, by being Oracle.

Re:And so it begins.

[MrSenile]

Sadly, they aren't stopping there. They're slowly (ok, not so slowly) making Solaris unusable as well. As well as the hardware support.

Paying $160,000/year for 25K support why again?

You don't know what the fuck you are talking about

[pavon]

The JDK that ships with Android is just a subset of Harmony, which is released under the Apache license. All improvements made by Google have been folded back into the project. The additional non-standard libraries they ship with android, are also opens source.

Doesn't this sound a lot like SCO's suit?

[wonkavader]

Maybe there's more here. Maybe Google took actual, non-open Java code, but it looks a lot like the SCO suit to me. That Oracle is saying that using the same header files (AKA APIs) is infringement. We all know that to make a work-alike system, the strings in the header files (APIs) need to be the same. They really look the same, even if you create them from scratch by following the published specs.

This seems like Darl's work, all over again.

Re:I have to wonder

[characterZer0]

how did Google get their hands on it in the first place?

aptitude install sun-java6-source

Only if they are certified Java

[JSBiff]

I want to start by saying I'm not making any commentary here on the validity of Oracle's claims regarding direct copying (I suspect they are making that claim just because class names and methods are the same for some classes, for compatibility purposes).

The thing is, Google doesn't claim Dalvik is "Java". They aren't using a Java license. Yes, you can create a free/open-source implementation of Java, as long as you are licensing from Sun/Oracle under the terms of the Java license.

Google created something very similar to Java, but they are not calling it Java, and do not claim to have licensed Java from Sun/Oracle. I believe they claim copyright over the entire Dalvik VM and API. That makes a world of difference, legally, and so they can't use the defense the parent is suggesting.

Re:Only if they are certified Java

[tlhIngan]

Yes, you can create a free/open-source implementation of Java, as long as you are licensing from Sun/Oracle under the terms of the Java license.

But really, how long can it be before Oracle's suing open source implementations of Java, too?

I know, GPL, law isn't on their side, etc. But who really thinks that will stop them from trying to manage a win simply based on having more lawyers and money?

Very unlikely actually. You forget that Java on the desktop doesn't make much money - it's far more lucrative to make it free, get people addicted and use Java elsewhere that makes more money - enterprise and mobile devices.

Forget smartphones for a moment, as they are but a tiny drop in total phone sales. The vast majority of those phones ('dumbphones' or 'featurephones') allow apps, and have for years. Those phones run Java, and Sun made (and Oracle makes) a killing licensing Java technology for all those handsets - both from the handset manufacturer and the carriers. And with the hundreds of millions of phones made annually, that's a lot of money.

Oracle's not going to give up such a lucrative source of cash anytime soon. And Android's Java implementation is in the direct line of fire because of it.

Re:The new Axis of Evil has formed...

[somersault]

I wonder who will they make Chairman of this MAO group? Actually Steve has the most experience with chairs, so he should probably be the new Chairman MAO.

Re:Java GPL?

[Lunix Nutcase]

J2se is. J2me is not. That's three problem that Google faces.

Re:I have to wonder

[Surt]

The code in question is publicly accessible, just not licensed for this kind of use. Once you violate the license, your right to copy that code goes poof.

Apple - Java

[aitikin]

So maybe this is why Apple decided to stop updating their java and leave it to Oracle...

Google Buy Oracle

[freeshoes]

Google should just buy Oracle, then it could develop OO etc to kill MS Office.

Re:Behaving like SCO...

[jdgeorge]

Apparently they are getting really desperate and are behaving like SCO now. If you have tons of getters, setters and other small functions, it is easy to have the same implementation in all cases.

My guess: What Oracle is desparate for is a cross licensing deal with Google to give them access to Google's IP related to massively distributed data storage/retrieval. Google, on the other hand, isn't particularly interested in giving away their crown jewels in this way.

Re:PostgreKill

[dkleinsc]

Postgres, like most other really awesome open source projects, is not for sale. To anyone. For any price. That's one reason Microsoft, Oracle, et al hate them so much - when it was startup companies, they could always pull out the checkbook and make the problem go away. With the FSF, Apache, Mozilla, and so forth, they can't.

Re:Um, isn't java code GPL?

[H0p313ss]

Isn't the code for Sun's standard java library GPL along with the rest of OpenJDK? If so, it should be completely legal to copy it as much as you want.

Not all of Sun's Java code went into Harmony et. al. So, maybe.

However, I am both puzzled and worried by Oracle's motivation here. It sounds to me like Oracle is actually going to kill Java by making it impossible to adopt in the name of trying to leverage the (very expensive) IP they bought along with Sun.

Sounds like we need a new, and truly open, language and runtime for the 21st century.

Here's Oracle's Example

[ink]

Here are the examples Oracle is using:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/oracle-says-google-directly-copied-java-code-heres-the-line-by-line-comparison/41025&usg=AFQjCNF1GNdD5_oXwawU7akdBGHETrf57w

http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.scribd.com/doc/40316099/orclgoogcode&usg=AFQjCNFFdZkReVLuVJIS7Xshk1X997VTIA

And a link to the original Sun implementation:

http://www.docjar.com/html/api/sun/security/provider/certpath/PolicyNodeImpl.java.html

We don't know all the facts... but it smells funny.

Re:Here's Oracle's Example

[UnknowingFool]

From my non-expert analysis.

• The variable declarations are almost identical.
  There are a few minor differences but the names are exact. This is troubling unless the specifications list or name them. However, the variable declarations may not be protected elements.
• The method names are exact.
  This isn't surprising if the both pieces of code are trying to do the same thing.
• The method parameters are not exact.
  The types are the same but the names are not exact.
• The structure is similar but not exact.
  There are slight differences mostly due to style of the programmer which is to be expected in clean room implementations.. Android versions sometimes squeezed code into one line where Oracle's version spread it to multiple lines. Android's if statements sometimes used braces {} even if it was not required whereas the Oracle version did not. Android did not always use the same structure (i.e. while instead of do while and for iterator instead of while {iterator.hasNext()}

Except the private variables in the beginning, I would lean towards clean room implementation. There is a lot of line by line exactness however they do not appear to be nontrivial parts of the code and there is enough slight differences to where it could be explained by clean room implementations.

Re:Here's Oracle's Example

[shutdown -p now]

Of course, it could just as well be that the code in the screenshot was obtained from the decompiler by creator of said screenshot. Which doesn't make sense, since it's open source... but then the original Java is as well, so neither would Google (or Android Inc) have any reason to use a decompiler.

Oh, so it looks like there is an explanation for that, actually. The class in question is not one of the public Java class library APIs, but rather an implementation detail of Sun JRE. So, apparently, its source code was not available until Sun went truly OSS with OpenJDK. And the presence of that file in Android predates OpenJDK. Which gives some credence to "someone at Google or Android Inc used a decompiler" theory.

It would also explain the various minor and seemingly random differences in the code, such as bracing, or the use of "while" vs "for" - the latter is an example of detail which gets lost in Java bytecode, and cannot be fully reconstructed - the decompiler would have to guess. Here's an example from Oracle's submission. The original code looked like this:

private void getPolicyNodes(int depth, Set set) {
        if (mDepth == depth) {
            set.add(this);
        } else {
            Iterator it = mChildren.iterator();
            while (it.hasNext()) {
                PolicyNodeImpl node = (PolicyNodeImpl) it.next();
  node.getPolicyNodes(depth, set);
            }
        }
    }

As written, this while-loop is the stock Java pattern for the use of iterators prior to the introduction of "collection for" in Java 5. Now look at corresponding Android code:

private void getPolicyNodes(int i, Set set) {
        if(mDepth == i) {
            set.add(this);
        } else {
            PolicyNodeImpl policynodeimpl;
            for(Iterator iterator = mChildren.iterator();
iterator.hasNext(); policynodeimpl.getPolicyNodes(i, set))
                policynodeimpl = (PolicyNodeImpl)iterator.next();
        }
    }

If this for-loop sounds weird - especially its increment step - it's because it is. No-one actually writes code like that - it's a big no-no for readability.

But if you look closely, it's exactly equivalent to the while-loop above! It's what you'd get if you mechanically place the immediately preceding statement of the while-loop as the initializer in the for-loop, and then place the trailing statement of the loop body as the for-step.

Or - alternatively - this is what would happen if a decompiler would look at the bytecode produced from the for-loop (which boils down to if/goto on bytecode level), and said decompiler would have some heuristics in it to try to figure out whether it was a for-loop. Looks like in this case the heuristics is really simple, so if it can be written as a for-loop, that's what the decompiler does.

If you look around that code, you'll notice that the same pattern of shoehorning code into for-loops in strange ways - readily identifiable by inconsequential statement in for-loop increment steps - is all over the code. QED.

Re:Um, isn't java code GPL?

[recoiledsnake]

GPL'ed code will save Google from copyright claims, not patent claims. This is the case for pre-GPLv3 license which Java is under.

Small nit-pick

[nedwidek]

Not all of Sun's Java code went into Harmony et. al. So, maybe.

The point of the project was that NONE of Sun's Java code would go into the project. They started with a clean slate and implemented all of the methods with their own code. They also had processes in place with the intention of keeping out the original Java code in contributions.

Oracle is basically stating that by using the same package names, class names, and parameters that Android is an infringing derivative. This is the same argument as the SCO ABI argument. That was laughed out of court IIRC.