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Opposition Mounts To Oracle's Attempt To Copyright Java APIs
An anonymous reader writes with a bit from Groklaw: "The remarkable outpouring of support for Google in the Oracle v. Google appeal continues, with a group of well-known innovators, start-ups, and those who fund them — innovators like Ray Ozzie, Tim O'Reilly, Mitch Kapor, Dan Bricklin, and Esther Dyson — standing with [Thursday's] group of leading computer scientists in telling the court that Oracle's attempt to copyright its Java APIs would be damaging to innovation." As usual, Groklaw gives a cogent, readable introduction to the issue.
Where is the link?
So Oracle think they can just jump in and claim ownership of APIs that are in the Java specification -- most of which were added to the spec via the JSR process? They have no chance here.
. . . to Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Funds File Amicus in Support of Google in Oracle v. Google Appeal.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Hey Timothy, wake up! How about the link?
Here it is in case you can't find it:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130531131600482
"Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Funds File Amicus in Support of Google in Oracle v. Google Appeal ~pj"
However unlikely it is that Oracle wins this, if this were to pass it would be the end of the software industry as we know it.
I really hope that somehow there is some kind of backlash against Oracle when this ends. Well I can dream at least.
As a Java developer let me just say - God I hate Oracle... Can't we just turn Java over to the Apache project now? They would be far better stewards of the technology. Christ *anybody* would probably be a better steward of it than Oracle.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
perhaps you haven't heard. Oracle grinds the last drop out of the turnip and takes the shoes for resale on the way out of the conference room. there is a reason that Larry Ellison can spend 3 months a year racing sailboats and flaunt FAA noise rules flying back home after quiet hours night after night. it's called money, honey, and they excel in it.
considering it takes Oracle longer to patch an exploit in Java than it does for Apple to patch an exploit, if indeed they acknowledge one, perhaps it would not be a bad thing to let ol Larry take 120 percent of nothing, and standardize on another universal API across the web.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Let's croud-source the work then patent the results.
I'm just hoping against hope that they leave VirtualBox alone.
.. to object to this. These good people basically say "it would be godawful if Oracle managed to get a copyright on APIs". What they should say is "according to copyright laws, APIs are not material that can be protected by copyright". Because that is what matters to a court. _If_ APIs could be protected by copyright (which they can't) it would be absolutely wrong for a judge to listen to these people.
(Why do APIs not have copyright protection? Because copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation. If a file contains just the API itself, it is not protected. If it contains comments, preferably in poetic form, the file cannot be copied, but still the API can be extracted. And making use of the API description is most definitely not protected by copyright law).
If Java API's are copyrightable, does this mean that Oracle has a copyright interest in every program ever written that uses those APIs? Does every Java programmer need to add a comment "Copyright Oracle" to every file that uses a Java API?
The software industry as a whole has been very cavalier about APIs. It is not hard to find examples of big vendors like Microsoft, IBM, or DEC claiming copyright ownership of APIs taken from elsewhere. In return, rarely, if ever, do they become involved in litigation claiming ownership. Some vendors (e.g., The Open Group) consider use of APIs (including implementation) to be covered by "fair use".
Oracle wants to tread in waters that the industry as a whole has deliberately avoided in the past.
I am not a Java developer, and give the way that Oracle has turned the language into toxic waste, I doubt I will ever become one.
I thought this was already settled, in court?
Sorry, that's spurious. The layout of controls in a passenger car cabin (and for that matter, the menu items in a GUI product) are usability factors for the consumer of the product. APIs are buried and are issues to developers (engineers) of products and services. End users don't interact with them directly. Let's not "dumb down" the issue by making analogies that don't really apply.
So Oracle "wrote" Java and did not make a single call to strcpy(), fprintf(), et. al.
That's what they're claiming.
If strcpy isn't in the public domain, then calling it requires a license; likewise, re-inventing
the strcpy API is infringement. No kidding. I really hope the argument is made this way.
It's also good to know that Java implements its own kernel, because I got dibs on many of the kernel's APIs.
You see where Oracle is headed...
Maybe they are just trying to have the GPL completely invalidated.
Oracle are looking to make the most amount of money it can from its purchase of Sun and finding ways to sue people and get them to pay it more money for using Java is a key part of that strategy.
And while Oracle databases may be in businesses everywhere, nowhere is there a business that wants to do more business with Oracle. Everyone wants to contain that tumor to the smallest region of its IT business possible.
Maybe it's just me but Java has become a massive buzzword for the corporate rubes. Anything that makes them rethink the bottom line using this language simply because it's ubiquitous (and programmers are therefore cheaper) is a positive step.
What do you mean.. worth 230 billion dollars vs. Oracles 160? Having 10x the EPS of Oracle? 19th on the Forbes 100 (vs Oracles 89th) ?
I would think Oracle would LOVE to be where IBM is now.
If you hate Python, how do you feel about PHP?
I don't know much about this case but it seems to center around Google replicating many of the Java APIs and creating their own VM for Android. Why did Google need to be interoperable with Java? Why start with Java as a jumping off point but, then again, not really? This is a fundamentally different situation from interoperability needs of file formats or SAMBA. This is nearer a situation of cloning... an issue for something like ReactOS, WINE, et al. Google is trying to have its cake and eat it too.
At what point, in your opinion, did you think Java became a god-awful mess of a programming language?
Those who claim "from the start" are either delusional idiots, and/or completely ignorant of the history of programming languages.
Personally, I believe Generics were where Java started going horribly wrong. Generics were a solution to a problem almost nobody was actually having, to the detriment of the language. Oracle taking over just accelerates the problem.
If Gosling had spent as much time developing C libraries as he did developing Java, we'd still be stuck with a shitty collection of C libraries; C is a great systems language, but the whole reason for Java is that the average developer does a really shitty job writing in languages like C. They don't write better code in Java, it's just that many of the the common mistakes in C _don't_ _happen_ in Java.
And that's what Gosling et al forget when they listened to the type-theory weenies foist Generics, annotations, etc. into Java. They forgot that they had created a language for the average undisciplined develper, not the self-disciplined cream of the crop.
Type safety is supposed to make it harder for developers (including the average undisciplined ones) to shoot themselves in the foot. I find it a weird thing to criticize about the language so harshly.
The problem with Java is not so much the language itself, i.e. that part which is written up in "The Java Programming Language" by Gosling et al. It's that the libraries (really frameworks) are huge and seem to be provisioned from a central authority. OK for the *language* to be managed by a central committee - it's tough to see a way around that - but "all the worthwhile APIs" (for J2SE/J2EE/J2ME or whatever the correct acronyms are these days) is a different matter. Contrast that with the size of the C++ standard library - not small, but it has been covered reasonably well in a single volume book (Josuttis). With Java you'd need a bookshelf.
Type safety-type schmafety, who cares as long as it passes unit tests?
I'll say "from the start". The whole excessively stratified "Objective Oriented" approach pays my salary because I have to *clean up* the crap from "object oriented" programmers who simply have no idea, and can't be bothered to learn, what a function actually does.
Man, don't get me *started* on garbage collection!!!!
I completely agree with this sentiment. I'm in favor of anything that will make fewer people use Java. Oracle has proved time and again that they can't even the lowest of bars for security, and the language itself has simply fallen behind other similar languages developers should use instead.
Your signatures belong to me.
I can't tell if this comment is meant to be ironic or not.
Your signatures belong to me.
Didn't this come up in court last year and didn't the court send Oracle packing?
But it would be precedent saying that APIs can by copyrighted, which they can't because they're technical methods, not creative works, and if the Oracle API becomes copyrighted, every API that isn't called public domain by its makers can be copyrighted and almost no matter what you use, you will have to pay several different entities for function calls, API calls, etc.
And kill the nightmare that is java FOREVER!
I know my programming language history and I say "from the start". Had Java, the language, achieved its goals, it could have supplanted C++ entirely.
-It was and still is proprietary. Where are all the fuckers who told us we could trust Sun now? .NET a foot in the door.
-It was supposed to be secure, simple, and fast. Pick 0.
-WORA. Works does it?
-EverythingIsNotAClass
-AWT was implemented poorly, but was native. Rather than fix it, we got Swing, which ultimately gave
-The API design is kitchen-sink and designed to offer a call for everything, poor peformance or not. string.split v substr + returning indices anyone?
-The VM downloads are massive and flaky
-installation topology was poorly thought out. Class Paths rather than dependency resolution for fuck's sake
-Features which could have established idioms for large-scale idioms were left out - e.g. exception chaining
Assuming there are multiple implementations of the same API, Which copright older gets to hold the copyright on the API? the biggest one? the first one asking for it? all of them?
And if the answer is not all of them, are the other implementations banned from existance?
Oracle buying Java was one of the worse things that could have happened to the language. Let's hope Google buys it from Oracle in the near future.
What do you think? If Oracle wants to make more money out of Java, it will do so. By any means. What you complain about is massive investment into the wrong thing.
I think it's important to find new ways. It's ridiculous, that in a world spinning faster and faster copyrights and patents are extended rather than shortened according to their relevance.
Oh, to make money out of things, extending these rights is crucial. But making money out of inventions beyond the patent or copyright holder's imagination is a bit odd, to say the least.
Why should we end a pony?
One word: bronies.
time for you to re-skill and get those clunky java GUIs replaces with HTML5 ones, then replace the back end with a REST-based API written in [something else]
And have it stop working the moment the user's device leaves the building and loses the Wi-Fi connection. Some people expect to get things done while riding transit, you know.
the state-of-the-art is currently HTML-based GUIs, and they are as identical as you can get
Which means you switch the client side from Java to JS. So how do you make sure that the JS APIs that you rely on are available on all users' devices? Apple refuses to implement WebGL on iOS, and Microsoft refuses to implement WebGL anywhere, for what they call security reasons. And good luck finding one offline storage solution that works across web platforms: some support only IndexedDB, while others support only WebSQL (a thin wrapper around SQLite). Even access to user-selected files didn't work on iOS until iOS 6, and it still doesn't work for anything but photos and videos.
OpenJDK is a temporary tactical move. He wants Java totally proprietary, or else dead. Litigating and IP-trolling is his prime tactic, but not his only one. He wants all Open Source or anything that smells of it, dead and buried. Replaced by something he does own. Look at what Oracle did to OpenOffice.org to screw that up - piss off the development community, let it languish for years, passive-aggressively force a fork by the community to LibreOffice, then hold on to OO.o just long enough that reunifying / rebasing was hard. Finally, upon getting rid of it, give it to a different organisation, Apache, instead of to TDF which had been building upon it with LibreOffice for a few years.
Another company co-founded by Larry Ellison, which is still an Oracle Partner in the CRM space, actually has "using Open Source software" in its employment agreement fine print as a fireable offense. Yes, even OpenOffice.org qualifies for that penalty!
The law firm BS&F [...] will continue to clog the courts with their BS & FUD
It surprised me that Google Search thinks you're the first to expand the F in BS&F's name this way. Google bs&f bs&fud (sco OR oracle) failed to turn up anything. Congratulations on coming up with something that isn't an old meme.
The API is the abstract definition how a library is supposed to work.
Oracle's argument is that the abstract definition itself is original enough to be considered a work of authorship. This argument worked for The Tetris Company when it successfully sued Xio Software for copyright infringement a year ago for having reimplemented the game of falling puzzle pieces made of four squares.
A litigant who loses in district court can appeal to a court of appeals. A litigant who loses in a court of appeals can appeal to a larger panel of judges in the same court, called an appeal en banc. A litigant who loses en banc can appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Anyone who believed, at anytime since the Beginning of Java, that it would remain reliably "open", in the sense of Sun or now Oracle not at some point playing legal games like this, was being naive and unjustifiably optimistic. Even if Sun management was sincere, management can change, by for example being bought by Oracle. Even if this silly suit doesn't succeed, or even if it was never brought, there would always be the cloud over Java that it could happen.
What makes the support remarkable? Seems like a complete no-brainer to me. This is an attempt to exploit the legal system's total ignorance of technology to do something everyone who knows anything about programming would agree is utterly batshit crazy and would destroy the computer industry as we know it. Oracle's effort deserves to be shot down with a scorched-earth display of force. A legal precedent needs to be set in stone that nothing like this could ever happen again.
First off where are you going to move too?
Second, problem is the customer is not you but your boss. You know the same one who has IE 6 apps and wont upgrade as that does not raise the shareprice? The one who buys things without your approval and says support it or find another job? The one who has to check in with accounting before anything can be approved and writes a business plan on how the shareprice will go up if we do X etc?
Third, what about the legacy crap already there? The stuff that just works and is central to a business process that your boss does not want you to touch unless you are upgrading it. Some of this stuff wont go away PERIOD.
Fourth, is money. Money talks and shit walks. So much money has been invested in your career, training, and your employers infrastructure that you might as well flush it down the toilet to start over. Sunk costs are not tolerated in corporate America. Rewritting all this shit even in a much better platform does not make economical sense.
Notice I did not give a single technical reason yet?! ... last on the very bottom are technical reasons geeks care about.
Name one other platform that has hibernate, rest, MVC, spring, and a million other frameworks? I know of just one that comes close and that is another company that is despised here and even that is missing some things if you know who I am talking about?
If you are a geek at school or hobbiest in a basement we do not give a shit about you or your needs frankly. Those who say oh we will leave you ORACLE!! are ridiculous. Management loves them and is dependent on them and with the first 4 reasons above they can't and wont leave. In their mind they never heard of this silly things if you can't Oracle to work like everyone else than perhaps you should consider a different field?? etc.
Worse, same shit will happen to Mono if Oracle wins as this gives SCO and MS a reason to copyright all clones and clean room implementations. This will ruin everyone.
http://saveie6.com/
So, please provide a list of ethical companies in each market or product category.
I wager that for each company you list someone will have an example of a major ethical lapse, probably many. The ethical reputation of many organizations/companies is just marketing. Marketing by its very nature almost always devolves into something unethical.
People and organizations, in general, are NOT ethical when it conflicts with their own goals/needs/biases.Even when those goals/needs/biases are purportedly ethical. PETA is a great example of this. So is the US as regards the so-called "War on Terrorism". We have evolved this way, if we hadn't something else would have happily, if unethically, eliminated us and taken our place.
IOW it is hard to convince someone of something when their bottom line or very existence depends on believing or doing the opposite. Best example here is probably Global Warming, by the measure of which virtually every person and organization in the West/First World is behaving in an unethical manner. (Even the sainted AlGore, with his mansions and jets.)
It might be possible to list companies/organizations that are more ethical than others. This is unlikely to be a static list. Many companies and organizations that purportedly started out as ethical have since made many ethical lapses or become unethical. Google is a prime example.
"No and I mean No" are strong words. I could think of at least one example: Rotatable polyhedra on Mathworld pages, such as dodecahedra seen here, use a Java applet to let the user rotate the three-dimensional figures. Look immediately above the text "The regular dodecahedron is the Platonic solid".
As a language designed specifically for the mass a garbage that is the WWW it is not the best, but it is also not the worst.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
I know everyone love to shit all over Oracle, but you cannot lay all the problems with Java at their feet and to try and do so makes you look rather, well, for lack of a better word, foolish. The problems existed long before Oracle acquired Sun.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
I agree with you. Last tuesday these jerks just tossed my garbage can on its side after emptying it.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Oracle does want MySQL to thrive, because it is first-rate crap with a history of excellent marketing. As long as the "Business" muppets use MySQL as their go-to database server for "small" databases, they can convince the business muppeteers that they need to shell out millions on "large" databases from Oracle, IBM and Teradata. Plus more millions for the "engineered" hardware from Oracle.
What Oracle needs to avoid is the average corporate developer walking to PostgreSQL, installing it on 15000 dollar hardware and saving a purchase order of 5.7 million dollars for an Oracle or Teradata "engineered" solution. I bet 90% of Oracle installations could be replaced by Postgres as much as 90% of Unix servers are being replaced by Linux.
Java is from MBAs for MBAs: tons of non-orthogonal features heaped onto a massive pile of pointy parts, laced with acid and deadly chinese rats.
Boy. Here's a nickel. Buy yourself a decent education before you write.
Java replaced nothing. It's a skyscraper built on Antarctica and it now reaches 100000 kilometers into space. It's an asylum for all the semi-capable programmers. A kind of Social Project To Get The Kids Off The Street.
you forget that most of what you mention already happens. Think MS cared that you learned VB6/Silverlight/Linq2Sql/ASP.NET/etc and now those things are obsolete and your boss is clamouring for a cheap replacement strategy, whilst the geeks are clamouring to work on the next technology that looks good on their CV? Java's just another one of those.
Your career training is a short-term thing in our industry, always was.
I do agree, copyrighting Java will have a knock-on effect that will be detrimental to geeks everywhere - but also beneficial to the corporate technology giants who will then have a hammer to beat the free stuff with.. given your insistence on non-technical reasons, don't you think they will all try to let Oracle win.
I do not live in Silicon Valley so employers do not care about these buzzwords. They do care about worked on Java doing crm for x amount of years for intranet app on CVs.
I saw an ad which stated IE 6 experience A MUST! just last year. Obviously, they had to write something for that browser for stuborn customers who did not want to upgrade.
Point is the customer does not like buzzwords and has no concept of being left behind. I.T. is like plumbing to them where they pay a service (a cloud) and data goes down some pipes and through a black box different data comes back into the output pipe. They do not want to upgrade their systems. They do not care about geek issues.
They just want someone with references and can do boring business apps and won't wine when the platform is Oracle. Maybe I am very cyncical and have worked for very cheap employers who simply do not care and look at me as a cost?
I can't be alone and it would be nice if geeks ran the I.T. departments again and things were like universities where new stuff isn't feared and politicals and picking a winning company and software vendors tying things to bad technology send their base sales people too the non technical bosses.
http://saveie6.com/
Actually I would have to say it went off the rails at 1.4. Prior to this it was a language that fulfilled a laudable goal. After that it was just down hill and that course has not changed. It is the classic too many ornaments on the tree condition.
Java as a language for the web is utterly laughable as evidenced by the massively bloated applications that are Tomcat and Glassfish, Weblogic and the rest.
But the ultimate insult is the world wide web. Stateless, anonymous and ultimately hideous to try and accomplish anything of substance. While some might disagree, they have only to look at web sites with very large java back ends to notice how lethargic they were are and continue to be.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Since oracle v 7 (or 8), Oracle has released their data base products first on NT and then on Unixes (Solaris, HP-UX etc). Oracle's plaint will mostly help microsoft by attempting to finish off java. If they finish off Java as an open source product we can only hope that oracle corporation doesn't get a cease and desist injunction for all past version of the API that are floating about. OK