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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.'"
Wouldn't that mean that SQL is also copyright, completely destroying Oracle's business?
The article claims Mono could be sued for copyright infringements, but actually Microsoft's public statements would count against any legal actions they could attempt against Miguel De Icaza.
If I had any concerns about .NET beyond the fact that Mono is pretty crappy and every Mono app ever written feels like it's being hosted under Wine, I'd be upset about this. But actually... from what I hear, C Sharp is a very nice programming language...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Actually you would probably be better off if it WAS Microsoft, as from the sounds of those names they are venture capitalists, aka vultures. MSFT would be leery of an outright lawsuit going after Linux, after all they just got off the hook on antitrust and they sure as hell wouldn't want to have several governments looking at them closely again, but venture capitalists are gonna go for the money PERIOD. After all those corporate raiding types have a rep slightly below leeches anyway so they won't give a shit if there is cash involved.
Of course there is even bigger problems than who owns the old Novell rights and that is this: If this stands you won't be able to do jack shit unless you are one of the "big boys' or working for them. after all they'll be quick to sign cross licensing agreements to keep this from becoming mutually assured destruction, same as even when they were tied up in a lawsuit neither Intel or AMD tried to rescind on their cross licensing of X86, but only the old guard with big bux will be able to play because without enough weight to get your own agreement you'd be sued to death. that would mean you could probably count the corps on two hands..Apple, Google, MSFT, Oracle, IBM, Amazon, it would be a "billionaire boys club" and nobody else would be invited. Scary thought. Any venture capitalists show up with copyrights i'm sure one of the big boys will buy them out to put more weapons in their warchest.
Now does anybody doubt that I'm right when i said the west will be deader than Dixie thanks to all the "IP" minefields and the east will rise to take our place? The copyright and patent minefields are already so damned thick with many things you'd be better off building in China and if they put western 150+ year copyrights on APIs? Give it up chuck, software development here will grind to a halt. The same as the USA built off the "stolen IP" of the UK and Europe to build themselves into an empire during the industrial revolution so too will China and India do the same to us while our own IP laws bury us in lawsuits.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.