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Microsoft, BSA and Others Push For Appeal On Oracle v. Google Ruling
sl4shd0rk writes "In 2012, Oracle took Google to court over the use of Java in Android. Judge William Alsup brought the ruling that the structure of APIs could not be copyrighted at all. Emerging from the proceedings, it was learned that Alsup himself had some programming background and wasn't bedazzled by Oracle's thin arguments on the range-checking function. The ruling came, programmers rejoiced and Oracle vowed Appeal. It seems that time is coming now, nearly a year later, as Microsoft, BSA, EMC, Netapp, et al. get behind Oracle to overturn Alsup's ruling citing 'destabilization' of the 'entire software industry.'"
Means "we've built an industry by holding our boot to your necks. Now how will we accumulate billions?"
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You mean just the BSA?
I mean maybe it's just me, but why is it ok for one entity to object multiple times to the same case and have it count as a a widespread rejection just because they've created several shell companies to espouse their ideas? i mean how many times have we seen "numerous" organizations write into a court case only to later find out they're all being paid by a single entity with a vested interest?
Legal Reform Idea: Any objection to a case must be done by individual companies, not group membership, and must declare conflict of interest
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
Like the hell POSIX brought down upon the industry.
Have gnu, will travel.
Everyone's been telling me (not here, just everyone else on the web) that Microsoft is better now - that they aren't quite the assholes they were in the 90's/early 2000's. There we were thinking the worst was behind them with their support for open standards on the web and not trying to kill kittens in their sleep. That if anyone still hated them in 2013 that they were being difficult, stubborn, misguided and childish.
Think I'll stay away from Neowin for a while.
Raenex is a dickhead
I'm filled with an all consuming hate for some reason. Oh yes. I know why. It's like trying to copyright the idea of a recipe for chocolate cake instead of the particular recipe you devised. These companies deserve to be dissolved. Not even kidding.
Isn't there pretty strong case law against copyrighting APIs? It strikes me that there's not a whole lot to appeal here.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Software Mafia's argument is the exact opposite of the truth. Up until now, everyone has generally assumed that APIs could not be copyrighted, and overturning that finding would be incredibly destabilizing and harmful to the industry, as it would redefine as "infringement" practices that have been considered perfectly acceptable for over 30 years.
With all those players on one side of the issue, it's pretty easy choose sides... even if you don't know what the issue at hand is.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Too bad there's no giant meteor to wipe out this batch of dinosaurs.
Any vendor of a Unix based operating system (including Apple, HP and IBM) should in fairness oppose this motion because they've all been very successful selling systems based on an open API. And that's just one example. I'm sure there are examples from the Graphics/GPU world.
Remember, most businesses ethics are only governed by what their government has legislated. There are always execptions but this is the general rule. This is why the USA is having so many structural problems. By making being elected such an expensive exercise, a politician who's most important priority is re-election, needs funding from corporate sponsors. This creates an obigation to support those sponsors, which creates legislation to support corporates over the public interest which courts must enforce.
The best thing to happen for American Politics is to break the obligation cycle. I'll leave that to others on how you would achieve that.
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> Judge William Alsup himself had some programming background and wasn't bedazzled by Oracle's thin arguments on the range-checking function.
At long last, an awesome judge. Many other decisions from the courts about IP reflect minds still set in the stone age. Check into him. We may have a hero.
> Microsoft, BSA, EMC, Netapp, et al. get behind Oracle to overturn Alsup's ruling citing 'destabilization' of the 'entire software industry.'
Well that is funny. Microsoft, a company becoming irrelevant, could end up locking itself out of future markets.
> The ruling came, programmers rejoiced and Oracle vowed Appeal.
On careful reflection I think it is better if Oracle goes and fucks itself.
Did Oracle also have a copyright on the ConvertToPercent function?
The only way to bring stability to the software industry is to make sure that compatible APIs are outlawed. You know, like what we had during the UNIX Wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars
Well, pedantically (but not legally), they are correct. There is creativity involved in designing an API. The problem is that an API is also a functional element. According to case law precedents, functional elements (e.g. chip masks) are protected only if there is more than one way to do something. By definition, it is not possible to create something that is functionally compatible with an API without copying everything that makes that API a creative work (everything but the parameter names, essentially), and therefore it cannot be protected under copyright law under any circumstances. There simply are no situations in which allowing copyright to protect API would not result in a substantial judicial overreach that dramatically expands the scope of copyright.
Put another way, an API is the software equivalent to the shape of a connector. Just as a connector is the physical interface for electrically connecting one thing to another, an API is the software interface for programmatically connecting one piece of software to another. There is no less creativity involved in the design of a connector than in the design of an API. Therefore, given that you can patent connectors, but you cannot copyright them, this lawsuit has exactly zero chance of success.
I am of the opinion that the BSA's appeal should be declared frivolous, and that they should be spanked with a hefty fine for bringing this lawsuit in the first place. That would set a strong precedent that such absurd abuse of copyright in an attempt to protect obviously non-copyrightable things will not be tolerated.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
There are many applications and utilities written in Java that are quite far from useless, and which are not web-based applications. The website Java.net alone has an enormous number of open source ones. I've personally played around with Klooge Werks, a virtual gaming table for RPG's, which is written entirely in Java. Minecraft was originally developed in Java. A large percentage of IBM's Watson is written in Java.. And of course, Eclipse is mostly written in Java, which is the most widely used development environment for Android
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I wonder if anyone has considered the position of a professor (full, associate, or assistant) who teaches a course.
Students who follow that course learn (among other things) intellectual concepts, structure, sequence, and organisation of algorithms to solve certain problems. Much of that can be found in the literature, but not everything. Some of that is what the professor thought of and added. And that literature is usually copyrighted too
Now the student graduates, goes away, and applies those concepts, structure, sequence, and organisation to solving problems in the real world, possibly even writing software that incorporates knowledge learned in university.
Can I (plus anyone who has contributed to the literature) now ask that student (read: the company employing him/her) to buy a license for the copyrights on the non-literal copying of what I taught that student?
One might argue that the tuition fee covers this, and that hence the student indemnifies his/her employer against me in regard of using what he learned. Fair enough. But now his employer asks my ex-student to pour his knowledge into software. Software that will continue to work (and may even be sold) long after my ex-student has moved on in his/her career, or even left the company. Why should that be covered? One could very well argue that the tuition fee only covers my student's personal use of that specific part in his knowledge that I and others contributed, no? I foresee interesting legal discussions on the topic, and my guess is that many a college president and many a commercial publisher would like to have this possibility scrutinised very closely.
I think that if the court decides to recognise non-literal copying precisely this idea *will* be scrutinised by the parties I mentioned. And it's no good threatening no to hire US graduates anymore because we're talking about tons of stuff that has already made its way into commercial software over decades.
It's only fair that universities (producers of knowledge) and publishers (purveyors of knowledge) should protect their valuable intellectual property, right?