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Oracle and the End of Programming As We Know It
An anonymous reader writes "An article at Dr. Dobb's looks into the consequences of a dangerous idea from Oracle during their legal battle with Google: 'that Google had violated Oracle's Java copyrights by reimplementing Java APIs in Android.' The issue is very much unsettled in the courts, but the judge in this case instructed the jury to assume the APIs were copyrightable. 'In a nutshell, if the jury sides with Oracle that the copyrights in the headers of every file of the Java source base apply specifically to the syntax of the APIs, then Oracle can extract payment and penalties from Google for having implemented those APIs without Oracle's blessing (or, in more specific terms, without a license). Should this come to pass, numerous products will suddenly find themselves on an uncertain legal standing in which the previously benign but now newly empowered copyright holders might assert punitive copyright claims. Chief among these would be any re-implementation of an existing language. So, Jython, IronPython, and PyPy for Python; JRuby, IronRuby, and Rubinius for Ruby; Mono for C# and VB; possibly C++ for C, GCC for C and C++ and Objective-C; and so forth. And of course, all the various browsers that use JavaScript might owe royalties to the acquirers of Netscape's intellectual property.'"
Languages are the least of our worries. Projects like wine will become downright illegal.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
copyrighting code at all is a slippery slope that leads to nothing but hair-splitting. Even if the judge throws that particular claim out, then what? It's legal to copy the top-level calls of someone's API, but illegal to make underlying code that too closely resembles the original? It seems like any line that gets drawn here is going to be stupid and arbitrary, of the form "you are legally allowed to copy/re-implement a certain percentage of a copyrighted work, but no more than that percentage!"
Then you have a developer community whose primary incentive is to reinvent the wheel, not to develop new innovations on already-proven technology.
What is an API? It's basically an agreement about the ordering and identification of arguments either in memory or in series of network messages. If the judge actually finds that the API itself is copyrightable, then any computer program that writes to a standard interface is completely screwed. Write your own SMTP client? Sorry, that interface is copyright. Your own web server? Ditto.
APIs are the most functional part of computer programming -- they tell you 'this is how you communicate between parts A and B.' Yet, copyright is intended to only protect expression, not 'how' you do anything -- that's the realm of patent law. And while Oracle has patent claims mixed in here, Oracle isn't claiming a patent on the Java API.
I'm getting a distinct sense lately that we may be coming to the end of the era of innovation and the beginning of an era where it's essentially impossible to invent anything or innovate in any way unless you have a powerful corporate sponsor backing you. Unless you have a sponsor with a big patent collection of their own and deep pockets, how can the little guy possibly hope to defend himself against a bevy of lawsuits that cover even the most trivial or obvious of ideas these days?
Oracle here isn't even saying that their code was stolen, they're suing a company for writing their own code that implements the same *SYNTAX* as theirs.
Think of it as an age where the Wright brothers have just pulled their plane to a stop only to be greeted by an army of process servers serving them with dozens of expensive patent lawsuits on the shape of the prop, the design of the stick, even the IDEA of a "craft that flies."
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I think the issue is more that we should despise US copyright law.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And with that, the internet fell, and mankind returned to the stone age.
The rest of the world will continue its course while lawyers battle against each other in US.
US is giving a nice warning for those who want to invest in their country: "What a nice product you have, it will be a shame if someone sue you for *insert patent/copyright* infringement".
If APIs are copyrightable, could other companies use that against Oracle?
Oh, for mod points.
This. The judge basically said 'The question of whether copyright law can apply at all in this situation is a legal one, and needs to be handled by someone who has studied the law. That's me. Your job is to decide if the law was violated. So, assume the law exists, while I go research.' The judge can still come back and say the law doesn't apply at all, so it doesn't matter what the jury says, but in the meantime the jury doesn't have to be confused by arguments over whether the law applies.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Languages are the least of our worries. Projects like wine will become downright illegal in the US.
FTFY. If this dangerous precedent is set it is set in the US I'm sure some of the weaker minded countries will follow suit, but many will recognize the idiocy of this.
What if my public API has something like Save()? Did I violate the first person to copyright that interface name? Do I now need to name every function MyTrademarkNameSave()?
Also if APIs are copyrightable I'm certain that much of the Java API was already falls under copyright to previous languages.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
This is a Darwinian process. The US is making itself so utterly uncompetitive with no production no manufacturing no products just lawsuits. Any country with the strength to ignore our bullshit will be so much more productive than the US and its thralls that they will come to dominate us economically and eventually militarily.
At this point it appears that China is the only country that isn't controlled by the same multinational corporations that govern the US, and has any chance of not becoming part of the same game.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
That's actually one of Google's defenses. They didn't copy the entire Java API, just a portion of it. So no, if the ruling is in Oracle's favor (which is unlikely but not impossible), then you can't get away with fair-use.
This is really, really scary for open source and GNU-like projects -- it's an attempt by a corporation to define copyright law in a way that lets big business completely shut down the academic "free exchange" culture once and for all.
This is serious, guys.
Exactly. This sort of thing doesn't happen in a vacuum; it has a real and tangible negative effect on the economy. These leeches have built up such a web of institutionalized parasitism dragging the whole economy down, which is exactly why we remain in this same mess today with everyone struggling just to get by. We the People need the chains unclasped from our ankles so that we can fulfill our potential.
This is serious, guys.
It's really not, for precisely the reasons you gave.
If this case were to go in Oracle's favour and if it were then allowed to set a precedent, the US software industry would be seriously damaged by legal infighting for a years to come. Even if a few large businesses on the scale of Google and Oracle could survive, in the same way that they play the patent pooling game to neutralise that threat from other big business while still screwing small businesses, innovation would die almost overnight and the next big software businesses would all be based outside the US. As the rest of the world looked on, bemused by the litigious culture of US business finally imploding, the total US economy would take a noticeable hit, Silicon Valley would become a historical footnote as investors fled to tech hubs in other jurisdictions, etc.
And so, if this were allowed to stand, it would suck for Google for about ten minutes, and then lobbyists backed by more money than has been printed in the history of humanity would descend on Washington and buy legislation to trump the court case and fix the problem.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It was a legal case just like this which gave us the whole concept of software patents, so the concern is just as legitimate. Software patents were originally just as limited, and indeed the original judicial rulings on software patents were even more restricted than is being proposed here for API copyright.
Heck, I would be much more in favor of having an API patented rather than copyrighted, as the concept of life + 70 year copyrights implies a much longer duration over "intellectual property claims" for this kind of activity. At least a patented API would eventually enter the public domain in my lifetime.
Brilliant plan. Will we be allowed to opt-out of jury duty in your wonderful system? If not, I see little point in even maintaining a justice system since the only safe verdict would be not guilty.