Court: Oracle Entitled To Copyright Protection Over Some Parts of Java

An anonymous reader writes "Remember the court battle between Google and Oracle? It's the one where Oracle claimed Android violated Oracle's patents and copyright related to Java. Oracle thought they deserved $6 billion in compensation, but ended up getting nothing. Well, it's still going, and the tide is turning somewhat in Oracle's favor. An appeals court decided that Oracle can claim copyright over some parts of Java. It's a complicated ruling (PDF) — parts of it went Google's way and parts of it went Oracle's way — but here's the most important line: '[T]he declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the 37 Java API packages at issue are entitled to copyright protection.' A jury's earlier finding of infringement has been reinstated, and now it's up to Google to justify its actions under fair use."

Comments

Bye-Bye Java

[Mikkeles]

... and good riddance to bad rubbish, say I.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[i kan reed]

Yep, I can safely say that there is now literally no reason to use Java over, say, Microsoft's offerings. The pretense of openness is long-gone.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Sure, if your entire userbase is on Windows.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[i kan reed]

Mono is a thing you know. A thing not being sued by Microsoft.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

The sooner the better IMHO.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

And the implementation is 100%? Nope. With Java, though, I get everything Java has to offer, anywhere Java is available. Maybe platform consistency isn't important to you, but it matters to some people.

From a purely logical standpoint, Java wins if you don't want to have to double-check whether each of the APIs you're about to use is actually implemented on all of your target platforms. From an idealistic standpoint, yes, I can see why someone would avoid Java (and, in fact, I have managed to do so for the entirety of my career, thus far), which is why the Mono projects exists, and why it is important. However, it's just not there yet, from a logical perspective.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono is a thing you know. A thing not being sued by Microsoft.

Ha ha ha ha, if this ruling goes through you can bet your stinkin' ass that Microsoft will join the party.
Want to develop for the .Net framework ? Pay the toll guys (even if you're using an open source reimplementation of some .net libraries). Shit just got real.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[VTBlue]

Umm if you actually check mono's compatibility notes, it has ridiculous good compatibility distinguished between the various versions of .NET. While there will always be a lag, if you develop with Mono, you know what works and what doesn't. .Net 3.0 and 3.5 are pretty mainstream and 4.0 is pretty much good to go for a broad set of use cases.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

No, instead you get to find out that that *some* of the APIs you used behave *slightly* differently on *some* of your target platforms.
At runtime.
"Write once, debug everywhere" didn't pop out of thin air.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

There's a gap between "ridiculous good" and "perfect" that's simply too big, just by the way of its existence. Add to that, most consumer users will have Java installed already; how many will have Mono? Not such an issue if you're talking about Windows users, as they'll likely have the .Net libs installed already, and the smallest subset of desktop users, desktop Linux users, will be able to fetch Mono from their distro's repository (and hopefully it's a recent version), so the #1 and #3 groups are covered. The #2 group, however... You don't expect the average Mac user to track down the Mac port of Mono, do you? And I'm asking this as a Mac user.

Until it's there by default, It's simply unacceptable for consumer software.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[OhPlz]

"This new Microsoft has not only removed the problematic restrictions on its licenses, but also worked with Xamarin to solicit design feedback, and published documentation under a Creative Commons license so that it can be redistributed."
http://arstechnica.com/informa...

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[VTBlue]

There are three issues I can see that would be helpful to distinguish:

1. This ruling has impact on Android, how severe is TBD.
2. This ruling has a broader impact on the Java community outside of mobility.
3. This ruling has some impact, but not clearly, on the server-side front.

For issues 1 and 3, your points don't really hold IMO because the devs will almost always have perfect knowledge of the target device or platform. You issue seems to be (I could be wrong) more relevant to the desktop or client-side where I would argue Java is at a distinct disadvantage compared to .Net/Mono. You just have to look at the windows install base. As for other platforms I don't really see the issue especially of apps can bundle the Mono framework with application installations.

If one examines the community response using consistency and trust as values, the ultimate question in my mind is, "who does the community trust more, Oracle or Microsoft?"

I'm biased but but I think Microsoft / Mono is a no-brainer.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[tepples]

Perhaps the issue is how much power Microsoft will have to shut down Mono.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Grishnakh]

A thing not being sued by Microsoft.

Not yet.

If you want to be safe, you have to avoid proprietary vendor-owned platforms and languages altogether.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[afidel]

JAVA isn't consistent from one EJB server to another, let alone from one version to another. Anyone who has ever dealt with non-trivial sized java projects knows this and isn't going to complain about the slight implementation variances in any other language runtime.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

People are still doing EJB?

Ditch the EJBs and use Spring.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[phantomfive]

Mono is a thing you know. A thing not being sued by Microsoft.

When there is money to be had, you can be sure Microsoft will sue.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh... don't shatter his opinion with pesky things call facts and truth.

Just let him believe the Big Bad Micro$oft is bringing a dingo to eat his babies.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[WaffleMonster]

And the implementation is 100%? Nope. With Java, though, I get everything Java has to offer, anywhere Java is available. Maybe platform consistency isn't important to you, but it matters to some people.

Google's implementation of Java is not 100% java either.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

You just have to look at the windows install base.

As cross-platform development was the crux of my argument, no, I don't have to look at the windows install base; I'm considering Linux and OSX users, here.

As for other platforms I don't really see the issue especially of apps can bundle the Mono framework with application installations.

That's par for the course in Window-land, but nowhere else.

No argument re: trust and values, but that's the idealistic viewpoint I already said I agreed with, not the logical viewpoint nobody seems to be able to poke any holes in.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

.Net isn't consistent from one version to another, either, so I might be missing your point. You target a version of the Java API just like you target a version of the .Net API; the difference being that you can trust the implementation of a given version of the Java API to remain consistent across platforms, whereas on non-Windows platforms, how consistently a given version of the .Net API will be implemented depends on which version of Mono the user has installed.

I'm sorry, but I prefer to be able to debug my application against a known system, rather than an array of unknowns.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

We're not talking about Dalvik, we're talking about Java. If I code against JDK 1.7, I know that anyone with Java 7 installed will have the same experience. I also know it won't run on Android, and I don't care; and if I so, I'll port to Dalvik.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Name a platform that is end-to-end not proprietary in any way shape or form?

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to go on about 3 numbered groups of users. You should be a little clearer about what those 3 groups are. The way you wrote your comment you should have just avoided the numbered groups and just explicitly named them as that's what you did anyway.

Finally, who gives a shit about Mac users?

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Bengie]

Oh my gosh, mono doesn't support Windows only features that have no equivalent on Linux?! Say it isn't so!

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Wootery]

Until it's there by default, It's simply unacceptable for consumer software.

Just bundle Mono and be done. Problem solved.

• On Linux, package-managers solve the dependencies (and Mono is hardly an obscure dependency)
• On Windows, one can generally depend on .Net being installed. If you don't like this idea, you can always bundle Mono with your program
• On Mac, you can just bundle Mono with your program, right inside the .app

In my opinion, the 'culture' of not bundling virtual machine software is a real problem. If your Windows program uses Java, why not just bundle it? You avoid version compatibility issues, and you avoid installing an enabled-by-default blight on web security (Java applets). Everyone wins. (Some programs do this today, but not many. The indie game Blocks That Matter is one such.)

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Well, the numbering system should be obvious. Windows, #1, has the largest userbase, Mac, #2, has the 2nd largest, and Linux, #3, is, well, #3 in that regard. Follow? Anyone who is writing an app with cross-platform support surely cares about the largest and smallest of those groups and, likely, also cares aboiut the groups in-between therefore, they care about Mac users, as well.

But, I see that you're just another AC troll. Carry on, good sir.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Everyone wins.

The user, who ends up with several hundred megabytes of libraries for *each* of those installed versions, and likely multiple identical versions (e.g. wasted space) certainly doesn't win in this scenario. Just sayin'

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Of course you know a Windows-specific feature isn't going to be there. What you don't know is how differently (and how subtly different and, thus, difficult or impossible to track down) the parts that *are* implemented will be. You must develop for cross-platform projects, my friend.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[lgw]

If you're targeting the "non-windows, non-mobile Linux home PC user consumer", then, yeah, Mono sucks for that user base (both guys!).

But for the interesting consumer Linux market, which is to say Android, Xamarin has it sorted. I was skeptical of that dev environment for a long time, as the legal situation with Mono seemed unclear to me (even though they're in the right, MS could still sue to be a nuisance). But all that recently changed with an official MS-Xamarin partnership.

C# is a joy to work in compared to Java (and I've spent years writing in each professionally), and now the legal issues flow the other way - MS is partnering while Oracle is suing.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Grishnakh]

Writing C applications on Linux (or *BSD) has no connections to anything proprietary. You can also do C++, though there you might have to be careful about some toolkits (e.g., you can use Qt, but only if your application is GPL, otherwise you need to buy a license. BSD-licensed toolkits won't have this problem.). I believe Python is also safe for avoiding anything proprietary.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh... don't shatter his opinion with pesky things call facts and truth.

Just let him believe the Big Bad Micro$oft is bringing a dingo to eat his babies.

Yeah, 'cause a corporation has never reneged on something it said/did.
You know in the 80s and early 90s Microsoft was rabidly anti software patent. Then guess what happened ? Those assholes in the courts came up with idiotic decisions that changed the software landscape in worse. And Microsoft from anti software patent started becoming one of the biggest corporations patenting software. And today it has no problems at all sueing left and right even for debatable patents. So you can keep your rose tingled opinion about Microsoft. Corporations smell the coffee and act accordingly. If this ruling is upheld Microsoft will be handed an enormous stick with which to beat down big competition let alone small fish like xamarin.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

We should be saying bye-bye copyright, especially since Oracle did not create this. Why we allow copyrights and patents to be sold and traded I'll never know. It's speculation and thievery at its worst.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[tfranzese]

The .NET CLR is also inconsistent between Windows platforms (e.g. Framework 4.0 on XP does not exhibit identical behavior to Framework 4.0 on Windows 7; this is without Framework 4.5 on the Windows 7 system, which would only muddle the comparison). The only place I can recall encountering this was with WPF's visual tree where on a couple occasions I've had to rearrange XAML in order for it to not cause XP to crash when loading it.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[farble1670]

java was never about openness, it was about portability. the open flavors of the JDK came very late in the game. openness was never a core philosophy behind java.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

And Microsoft would never fund an operation that claimed to own the property rights to all Unix derivatives

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[benjymouse]

Perhaps the issue is how much power Microsoft will have to shut down Mono.

None. Zero. Zilch.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Tough Love]

Java was always about ruling the universe in every possible way, embedded devices were just a way to get a foot in the door. As it turned out, Java is a horrible waste of hardware resources and so ended up mainly as an enabler for mediocre programmers, and a poster child for everything that is wrong with proprietary control of a common resource.

Larry Page getting fixated on Java was a blunder, pure and simple. Only ego stands in the way of backing down from that and shifting the core of Android C++. I do not doubt that the Java strategy will be made to work even with Oracle's bad acting, but not putting plan B into effect is just dumb.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Mono is certainly interesting for the mobile market; especially given that you can target the two big platforms, Android and iOS, and be relatively sure everything will work more or less consistently, given that you're using Mono in both places; if anything, you'd have to make accommodating changes for Windows Phone, to account for subtle differences between Mono and native .Net. Assuming you target the major platforms first, that is.

For the desktop market, you're likely targeting Windows first if you're going .Net, which means portability is likely an afterthought, if it's a thought at all. On top of that, your choices are more or less to bundle the runtime or hope the end user has the correct version installed; less than ideal in most consumer use cases. With Java, you can be fairly certain that at least JDK 6 is available (currently supported versions of OSX ship with Java 1.6 installed by default, for example) and a newer release of Java will maintain the correct behavior (save for cosmetic things, like better font rendering in 1.7) for the JDK requested.

I think we might be on the same page, overall.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[benjymouse]

Name a platform that is end-to-end not proprietary in any way shape or form?

Even if such a platform exists, how does that preclude Microsoft from suing? Remember that the thesis here is that Microsoft would disregard the licenses already granted for C#, .NET Framework, compilers etc and just sue to exhaust your funds. Why couldn't they claim that you infringed an algorithm (or whatever) even if you were using Java or Python? After all, they have no legal standing but are considered *so* malicious that they will sue even when they have no legal standing.

The whole "Microsoft will sue!" is nothing but FUD.

In reality - because of the promissory estoppel of the community promise - users of .NET and any other technology under the community promise is much better protected than when using alternatives. This is because the promissory estoppel can be used to dismiss a lawsuit outright.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Wootery]

It's true that applications aren't as compact as they might be in a perfect highly-optimised world, but a JVM isn't that big a dependency. I don't have numbers to hand, but iirc it's not all that much bigger than Qt.

If you really wanted to, you could have an install-time option to use an already-installed JVM instead of unpacking one. You'd open yourself up to version incompatibilities though.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Or, you know, don't develop against the bleeding-edge newest version if you don't have full control over the environment. Pick a version that's a generation or two old and you're most likely not going to have problems. If your end user happens to have a newer JVM installed, it will behave appropriately based on the JDK you developed against.

I know I said, earlier, that I've thus far avoided developing in Java, but that doesn't mean I'm completely unfamiliar with how it works; I might not develop in it, but I do use it. A lot.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[angel'o'sphere]

"Java" on Android (Google) is not Java.
It is only a programming language that 'looks like Java', where the _core libraries_ have the same API. In other words: there is no Swing or other javax language features.
As far as I know Google does not even call it Java(TM).

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[angel'o'sphere]

Care to give an example?
I never had any issue regarding Java compatibility from platform to platform or version to version and especially not from EJB server to another one since ... 1995 or so.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Right, they call it Dalvik, because it's not Java. Since it's not Java, it's probably not what I was talking about. Thanks for pointing that out, though, for those who may not have otherwise been able to follow along (or use Google)...

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[angel'o'sphere]

Every second sentence of yours contains 'Java', so about what are you actually talking then?

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Java. Oracle's implementation. Not Google's implementation, which you're referring to, which is called Dalvik. I apologize if you're having trouble keeping up, but I'm not sure how to make it any more clear that, when I say Java, I'm talking about Java, not Dalvik (which is what Google's incompatible implementation is called).

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[kqs]

Only ego stands in the way of backing down from that and shifting the core of Android C++.

Depends. Who owns the C API?

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

> Mono is a thing you know. A thing not being sued by Microsoft.

Not right now. You realize that this ruling, if it stands, applies equally as well to Mono's implementation of the .NET API?

Or Linux (and the BSDs)'s implementation of the UNIX API?

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Mom.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono is just a joke as the name implies. With Java, one can get cutting edge features from the language designers on the operating system of his choice, because the reference implementation JVM is actually made by Oracle. I'm already using lambdas and the new stream API from Java 8 in Linux. Imagine that with mono? You'd have to wait years until some hobbyist programmer implements them (or tries to).

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[socode]

20-30MB is larger than the deployment for enterprise applications I've written / worked on and would describe as "sprawling", but which also helpfully include substantial functionality and do useful work.

Adding that to every application download, and installing dozens of "WORA" libraries on every machine is way beyond being a little suboptimal (it's a nice demonstration of Java having completely failed to deliver on its original goals though).

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

> With Java, one can get cutting edge features from the language designers on the operating system of his choice,
Yep, that's what we want. A WORA language that was badly designed in the first place, that is now
  adding half-assed shit that will take 5+ years to percolate through to end-user systems.

> the reference implementation JVM is actually made by Oracle.
You say that like it's a good thing, as if Oracle could even produce an installer that works correctly and reliably.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: EJBs aren't what they were...

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

(e.g., you can use Qt, but only if your application is GPL, otherwise you need to buy a license. BSD-licensed toolkits won't have this problem.)

That's not true (at least, it's no longer true). Qt has an LGPL license in addition to the commercial and GPL licenses.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I consider that a good thing because the language creator is making the actual tools you use in every operating system. So those incompatibilities which exist with mono are not a problem in Java.

Another different thing is the quality of the tools produced by Oracle. Although I've never had any trouble installing Java on my computers so far.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[MrResistor]

Yeah, Mono...

If you don't mind being stuck at .NET 3.5, and don't care about WPF support. No thanks. Mono is a joke.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[niftymitch]

... and good riddance to bad rubbish, say I.

Marked as flamebait...

However... One implication here is that Java has been deployed on
a bazillion devices and permissively marketed.

Now I see an attempt get that JavaHorse back into the barn... But wait
that stallion has made my mare pregnant without my
permission and Oracle now wishes to claim ownership of the colt
but dismissed responsibility for the foal.

To call it Java requires testing the virtual machine. My guess
is none of the licensed Java ports identified these libraries as special
copyright material and simply permitted them to be included.

i.e. there have been lapses at Sun and Oracle over time where this
can be demonstrated. Most importantly any of the products that
depend on the big pile of java poo in question directly or indirectly
are in violation and failure to protect "Java" in these cases keeps
the horse out of the barn. Oracle needs to litigate many many more....

If there are contracts out there that notice libraries and make
no distinction and include them all then it can quickly become
an all or nothing game. i.e. if they claim all but only own a little
bit then no organization could discover the truth in this big
pile of poo.

One subtle turn is the tiered hardware and use layers to all this. Java had
no restriction on many classes of biger machines. Later the mobile
thing was introduced but mobile devices today have more
power than "non-mobile" machines. Mobility is slippery too.
The older mobile phones were bigger and heavier than many desktop
devices (look at the Apple Mac Mini). If I can run java on
it then phones are little different. Mobility of many Solaris
machines in ships and aircraft come to mind.

Next is the way java is installed. If the installer uses Java
before the EULA then where does the EULA live in the sequence
of gates, Oh wait it is out of the barn.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[fuzzy2k]

Finally, who gives a shit about Mac users?

People who make business decisions based on dollars spent. Mac users buy stuff besides expensive Apple products. If you want to sell your product, they are a viable target audience. Even for software.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Xest]

I think your lack of understanding of Windows / .NET is beginning to show at this point. Saying you have to bundle the .NET run time or hope that the user has the correct version install, but that you can count on JDK 6 is complete nonsense.

Far more Windows users have uptodate .NET installations than Java, and each version automatically contains support for the older versions.

This is even more the case since the countless recent Java vulnerabilities that have had people uninstalling it in droves.

Whether a user has .NET install on a Windows system is a complete non-issue nearly all the time. Unless you want to do something obscure like target ancient Windows 2000 PCs or something then you really don't need to worry. .NET 4 is more than sufficient and available as an automatic update for every version of Windows that matters.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Mono. I'm talking about Mono. This whole discussion was about Mono. This should be obvious, if you've been reading the thread and not just cherry-picking comments, as the post to which I was replying mentioned "non-windows, non-mobile Linux home PC user consumer", the post before that (written by me) specifically mentions Mac, Linux (though not explicitly by name), and Mono, and the 3 posts leading up to that post all mention Mono, immediately following my post slyly pointing out that there are platforms other than Windows and that people do use them.

I think your lack of understanding of what you are currently trying to comment on is beginning to show at this point. We're not talking about Windows users being up to date, either; and your understanding, thinking that an up to date .Net installation is the end-all-be-all of being able to run any .Net application, is seriously flawed; a .Net application written against version 4.0 of the API will refuse to run if you only have version 4.5 installed, even though 4.5 is newer. Why? Because 4.5 isn't just newer, it's different. It is common to see Windwos systems with 4 or more versions of the .Net libraries installed, for this very reason; in fact, the "Turn Windows features on or off" pane in Win7 lists only .NET Framework 3.5.1, while I also have 4.0 installed, and on my Win8 instance, I have both 4.5 and 4.5.2 installed for various applications that rely on the subtle implementation differences therein.

As a recent Mac convert, who cut his teeth on WFW 3.11 at age 5 and has worked with and developed for every version of windows from then to now, I don't think my understanding of Windows is reasonably in question, here. I use all three major platforms on a daily basis, so it is important that I keep up; and so, I do.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

This. I've written more software for Windows; I've sold more for Mac. Likewise, I've bought more for my Mac in the year I've owned it than in 27 years as a Windows user.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Xest]

"Mono. I'm talking about Mono. This whole discussion was about Mono."

Then don't mix and match terminology, because in that case your argument makes even less sense. Why would Windows users even have mono? Because you were talking about Windows.

"a .Net application written against version 4.0 of the API will refuse to run if you only have version 4.5 installed, even though 4.5 is newer. Why? Because 4.5 isn't just newer, it's different."

This is just out and out false. 4.5 is based on 4.0, it's just an in place upgrade for it. 3.5 and 3.0 are based on the 2.0 runtime, so you generally have both runtimes, and then the subsequent API versions.

Honestly, I was just making an observation, but now you're just digging deeper and confirming that you really are out of your depth.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

it's a nice demonstration of Java having completely failed to deliver on its original goals though

And .NET picking up that torch and running with it. Java 8 will happily run applications written against the 1.8, 1.7, and 1.6 APIs, whereas you need to have .Net 4.5.0 installed alongside 4.5.2 if your application was written against 4.5.0; there is no backwards-compatibility there. Now, I don't fault Microsoft for this; trying to maintain perfect backwards compatibility is what made Windows a pile of shit in the first place, and it's gotten a lot better since they stopped.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Java may be a horrid language (as I stated elsewhere in the thread, I've been lucky enough to have avoided writing anything in it thus far in my career, so no argument there), but it does work as advertized. Even their installer.

The only time I've had issues with Java, it's been with IcedTea on Linux, or the 1.6 JVM that Apple bundles with OSX. Oracle's Java, on the other hand, has never caused my any headaches. While I despise them as a company, I'm going to take whatever I can get from them without giving them a single penny and use it as long as it works better than the alternatives.

With that in mind, is there a better administration tool for mySQL than Oracle's mySQL Workbench? It has its quirks, but I've found nothing better, thus far.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Because you were talking about Windows.

Or, really now?

you're likely targeting Windows first if you're going .Net, which means portability is likely an afterthought

So it means nothing that the entire thread has been about cross-platform development and I explicitly mention portability in the very sentence you're referring to. I talk about .Net in the post because, well, Mono is a cross-platform .Net implementation. You won't code in Mono, you code in .Net (e.g. C#), and I would have sounded like an idiot implying otherwise, which is what you seem to be doing right now.

This is just out and out false. 4.5 is based on 4.0, it's just an in place upgrade for it. 3.5 and 3.0 are based on the 2.0 runtime, so you generally have both runtimes, and then the subsequent API versions.

So, then, it stands to reason that 4.5 should supersede 4.0; in fact, by the same logic, 4.5 and 4.5.2 shouldn't coexist on the same system, either. Yet here I am, looking at it on two different Windows installations, one Win7 and one Win8.

Honestly, I'm just stating facts, but you seem to think you're important enough that your opinion of me can change those.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Anonymous Coward]

are you anything to do with the B-Con who published the crypt library on github? if so kudos.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Xest]

"Or, really now?"

Yes, when you say "For the desktop market, you're likely targeting Windows first if you're going .Net" it means you're talking about Windows. I probably shouldn't have to explain basic English from your own hand to yourself, but it seems I apparently do.

"You won't code in Mono, you code in .Net (e.g. C#), and I would have sounded like an idiot implying otherwise, which is what you seem to be doing right now." .NET and C# are different things. You don't seem to grasp that. It's not my fault if you don't even grasp the basic terminology of what you're discussing.

"So, then, it stands to reason that 4.5 should supersede 4.0; in fact, by the same logic, 4.5 and 4.5.2 shouldn't coexist on the same system, either. Yet here I am, looking at it on two different Windows installations, one Win7 and one Win8."

Look, you don't grasp the basic facts about how the .NET framework is packaged and deployed. The .NET framework is the set of libraries that are used to build applications, each framework version requires a runtime to execute. Versions 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 are framework versions that run on the 2.0 runtime, and 4.0 and 4.5 run on the 4.0 runtime. Saying 4.0 applications wont run if you have 4.5 installed is a complete nonsense, because 4.5 is based on 4.0 so you can't have 4.5 without having 4.0 and if you have 4.0 then of course you can run 4.0 applications. When you see 4.5 and 4.5.2 on the same system it simply means you have the libraries that correspond to those versions on the system, but the runtime is still the same for both of them (and 4.5.1 and 4.0). Of course they co-exist because you have installed the different library versions, but you still only have one runtime which supports all those framework versions equally, there were only a handful of fixes between these versions, most were outright improvements such as implementation of PLINQ style queries as standard where possible.

"Honestly, I'm just stating facts, but you seem to think you're important enough that your opinion of me can change those."

You're not because you have no idea what you're talking about. Your "I've been programming Windows since WFW 3.11 when I was 5" or whatever means jack shit if you're still completely clueless about .NET, which you really are. You can't even get basic terminology right for crying out loud. Stop pretending you know what you're on about and stick to what you do know, because this is very obviously something you don't. Christ, if you were doing WFW programming when you were 5 then you're at most what, 27 years old? You're still an inexperienced kid for crying out loud. You couldn't have fit as many years in if you tried - you weren't even of legal full time employment age when .NET came out which in itself makes a farce of the idea that you think you're a .NET know it all when you're obviously not.

But I'll give you some advice kid, you'll ignore it, because you're obviously stubborn, but it's worth a try as it's the one thing that separates the wheat from the chaff. You want to know what makes a great programmer? Humility. Knowing when you know you don't know. If you're not capable of introspection then you'll never be particularly great, you have to know when you're out of your depth and saying things that come across like "BUT .NET MONO SHARP 7 ISN'T COMPATIBLE WITH 4.0.012.5!!!!111" shows you don't have this quality, you'd rather talk nonsense and not even get basic terminology right than actually stop and try and learn something. It's not like I was even having a go at or arguing with you originally, just pointing out a slight inaccuracy in what you said and what? you then jump straight into a full fledged argument rather than do the rational thing of stopping and accepting that maybe there is actually someone that knows more than you about a particular topic.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Yes, when you say "For the desktop market, you're likely targeting Windows first if you're going .Net" it means you're talking about Windows. I probably shouldn't have to explain basic English from your own hand to yourself, but it seems I apparently do.

Well, yes, you're 100% correct; assuming there's not other context, that is. The fact is, that was said in the context of comparing ".Net/Mono as a library for cross-platform mobile development" to ".Net/Mono as a library for cross-platform desktop development". Read it again now that you have the missing pieces (or just go back and read the whole post as a unit, instead of fixating on that one sentence -- the pieces aren't missing, you just missed them).

Look, you don't grasp the basic facts about how the .NET framework is packaged and deployed.

Of course I do. What good is the runtime without the corresponding library? Follow?

Christ, if you were doing WFW programming when you were 5 then you're at most what, 27 years old?

My bad. I was 5, you don't actually expect me to remember in that level of detail, do you? I would have been 11 when I started using a PC; I cut my teeth on an old TI and various Atari machines, my favorite being the 1040ST. Good job estimating my age based on my misquoting, though.

Thank you for the advice, I appreciate the time you took to write all of that. Thus far, you haven't shown me that I don't know anything; I never claimed to know everything about .Net (in fact, I'm so far from being a .Net guy it's not even funny), but you're trying to cram the "4.5 is 4.0" crap down my throat, then in the same breath mentioning that they're only the same runtime, but the libraries are different. I'll admit that was one piece of information I didn't actually know if you'll concede that the runtime is useless without the libraries. Then, you taught me something, and I wasn't completely off-base with both my observations and assumptions; it's a win-win.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

Wow... misspoke... In the last paragraph, I meant to say "Thus far, you haven't shown me that I don't know anything I actually claimed to know".

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Xest]

All I ever really took issue with was your suggestion that 4.0 applications don't work with 4.5 and the implication that you could run into problems with compatibility issues. I was merely pointing out that they share the same runtime anyway, and it's merely the library versions that differ.

I think if there's one thing .NET handles well it's versioning, much of that is because it was built from the outset with the issues of the earlier DLL hell problems that plagued many older Windows technologies. The framework was design from the outset to cope with this and that's why I took issue with the suggestions that it has versioning problems.

I agree things get more complicated with mono, but it's quite hard to break things on Windows unless you specifically go out to do so and as a primarily Java/C++/.NET developer I've actually seen more compatibility issues (though still rare in the grand scheme of things of course) with Java over the years, with C++ obviously being the worst out the lot for the simple reason you have to do pretty much everything yourself.

The biggest changes with 4.5 were simply additions, and the things that actually changed tended to be parallel implementations of some LINQ tasks - so for example, if you execute a lambda against every entry in a collection with 1000 elements using a LINQ method it used to just do them sequentially, now it'll automatically parallelise it if the collection is big enough. This is why the 4.5 libraries can retain backwards compatibility with 4.0 - the changes, rather than additions simply optimise what is already there, rather than change it and this is why you shouldn't really see any incompatibility issues between 4.5 and 4.0. The only exception would be if you wrote some 4.0 code that required something broken in 4.0 to be broken that was then fixed in 4.5 but that's bad practice anyway, and it's something Java has suffered in the past too (well, I'd be surprised if there's a major language framework out there that hasn't suffered this at some point).

I wont lie, I do like .NET a lot, but I wasn't having a pop at Java, I have a lot of respect for Java and it's my go to choice for cross-platform projects. I've never used Mono precisely for the reason that I figure if you're going cross platform then you should probably have just used Java (or gone native with C++) in the first place. But if you're using just Windows with no requirement for portability then I think .NET is unquestionably a superior option - you can get more done in less time and better.

I hope that clears up what I was getting at and where I was coming from, as I say I really wasn't gunning for an argument.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

It wasn't until your last post that you mentioned that they shared a runtime, a fact which I was truly unaware of. And take all the pops you want at Java (I realize you weren't), I'm not a Java guy, either. Glad to see, at the end of this, we're actually on the same page; that also explains why you didn't read my post in the context of cross-platform development. I definitely agree re: Windows-only development and .Net, though; I was at the Win7 launch event and actually got excited about Metro (which is what they were calling the .Net version that shipped with Win7 before they decided they wanted to use that name for the Win8 interface), I just never had a use case for it. Years later, here I am still having never used .Net and with minimal interaction with Java, though one of those is going to change in the very near future; and as someone who uses Windows, Linux, and OSX side-by-side, it's not looking good for .Net.

I still stand by my assessment of .Net/Mono as a platform for mobile development, though; I think my reasoning is sound. I know you were never arguing for or against that, but now I'm curious, do you have any thoughts on that? It makes sense to me, if you're developing a cross-platform mobile application, you're likely to target the most popular platforms first, which means iOS and Android, which would mean Mono; at that point, you're developing against the capabilities of Mono and just have to make any required fixes for one platform, Windows Mobile (or Win RT), if you choose to release on that platform. Java is not an option on iOS or, as far as I'm aware, Windows Mobile, and Dalvik isn't real Java anyway; and the other available cross-platform libraries are all basically wrappers for HTML and javascript, so they're not viable for any processing-intensive tasks, or where you give a damn about performance, which really just leaves Mono. This is quite opposite the likely situation for cross-platform desktop development (and this is, I think, what got you thinking I was talking about .Net in terms of Windows-only development), where a .Net developer would likely target Windows first, then have to fix Mono quirks on the various other platforms they were targeting; and there are other, better, options available for cross-platform desktop development, but we're already in agreement on that, I think.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[Xest]

If I'm honest I've really tried to avoid mobile development. I worked at a company for a while that did a lot of it and the bandwagon jumping hipster types on that side of the industry just drove me mad. It's a section of the development world that is still undergoing a lot of upheaval even now in terms of toolchains and so forth and there's a lot of fly-by-night types who have no idea what they're doing making a mess of things. I suspect it'll calm down eventually, but honestly I've never been too hung up on insisting on a one solution fits all type scenario unless the offerings are really really good. Maybe Mono is a decent option for mobile now, I've not been following it, but without evaluating it going on my now a couple of years out of date knowledge of the mobile world I'd probably just be inclined to write portable C/C++ libraries with the shared functionality it and then write a specific UI to consume that for each device. I've just not seen many successful toolchains that manage to pull off writing cross platform UIs particularly well, especially when the standard UI varies so much.

Swing and JavaFX and so forth vs. WPF comes to mind for example. As great as cross platform Java is, it just can't compete with writing a native Windows UI using WPF for example. I believe Qt is a counter-example of this sort of thing though that is actually pretty decent, but it's been many years since I touched it. In fact, it looks like Qt has a specific mobile version also, so maybe C++ with Qt would be an equally good or better answer to Mono on mobile? I don't know, I'm out of my depth without further research :)

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

I'll be honest and say I'm not sure about C/C++ on any of the mobile platforms. I know Palm started allowing native code on WebOS shortly before HP bought and killed that platform, and I'd be surprised to learn that it wasn't an option on Windows Mobile, Apple used to be very strict about all iOS apps being written in Objective C, but apparently they've relaxed quite a bit, and Google seems to actively discourage using their native C/C++ interfaces in most cases. I know BlackBerry is all Java, unless BBOS 10 changed that, so C/C++ doesn't seem a viable option if you want to target BlackBerry; but, then, Xamarin (the for-mobile release of Mono) doesn't seem to support BlackBerry, either.

I do know that Microsoft was involved with Xamarin, which actually has me wondering whether Windows Phone apps using Xamarin bundle the Xamarin libraries like they do on other platforms, or if they just use the native .Net libs. On one hand, bundling alleviates any platform differences, as far as program logic is concerned; on the other, using the native libs makes for a smaller package.

If you have the time to write your own libraries for each platform you're targeting, by all means, that's probably the best way to go, as you'll end up with the smallest footprint and the ability to optimize each platform's version of the library, as well as the library codebase as a whole, leaving out code that doesn't get used. Since you're a .Net guy, though, Xamarin might be something for you to look into if you ever need to do anything mobile.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[BronsCon]

To be clear, I'm out of my depth on this, as well. By quite a bit, actually.

I'm just posting what seems logical at this point and hoping that someone will swoop in and point me in the right direction. I'm actually about to start development on a small mobile app for a client who doesn't have the budget to pay for custom libraries for each platform, so this is useful discussion at this point. There's plenty of budget going forward, for building the application incrementally; just no real immediate budget and the requirement to have it run on iOS, Android, and Windows.

Re:Bye-Bye Java

[TheRealLifeboy]

I'd mod you up multiple times if I could!

You're 100% right. Java is the worst, convoluted, bloated, bulky programming contrivance that has ever been!

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[TemporalBeing]

Umm if you actually check mono's compatibility notes, it has ridiculous good compatibility distinguished between the various versions of .NET. While there will always be a lag, if you develop with Mono, you know what works and what doesn't. .Net 3.0 and 3.5 are pretty mainstream and 4.0 is pretty much good to go for a broad set of use cases.

It may be compatible, but it is not as feature rich. Mono only implements the parts of the spec that Microsoft put out in the open, which consists of may be 30% of the all the APIs really needed to do .NET development. You cannot develop an application on Windows using Microsoft's tools without paying attention to which APIs are used - even the Window Forms - and expect the application to work under Mono - chances are it won't.

That is, however, the case with Java.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[TemporalBeing]

Perhaps the issue is how much power Microsoft will have to shut down Mono.

None. Zero. Zilch.

Actually they have quite a bit if they chose to exercise it. If mono develops outside the small framework that Microsoft blessed as being "open" in their C# specification, then it is ripe for Microsoft to shut down. Even if they stick inside that framework, there is nothing saying Microsoft won't try to charge for it - even at a F/RAND rate, which would effectively shut it down.

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[VTBlue]

If I'm getting you correctly you seem to be implying that mono should be used as a compatibility framework to enable windows .net apps onto other platforms. This is absolutely not the use case for mono. The Point of mono is that if you start with it, it will work everywhere, even on windows because it's basically a subset of .Net

Re: Bye-Bye Java

[TemporalBeing]

If I'm getting you correctly you seem to be implying that mono should be used as a compatibility framework to enable windows .net apps onto other platforms. This is absolutely not the use case for mono. The Point of mono is that if you start with it, it will work everywhere, even on windows because it's basically a subset of .Net

No. I'm saying Mono is far from being a complete .NET implementation, which many of the most important parts missing - especially if you are using it as a cross-platform framework.

And there's also the legal quagmire that it is in. Microsoft gave a 5 year promise to Novell/SuSE not to use Novell/SuSE's users over use of Mono in a limited context - that being what they submitted to the commit for the C# standard. If you're not a Novell/SuSE user, you're screwed - you're not covered; That 5 year period is also over and they didn't renew the agreement - so you're still screwed - especially if you started development after that agreement expired as you could not "reasonably rely on that agreement". The standard body Microsoft (ECMA, which is basically a standards stamping organization for companies like Microsoft, IBM, and others that want a quick standard without the ISO process) used doesn't forbid them from requiring licensing fees, nor did they submit it under a given fee structure or fee structure promise (f.e F/RAND). So in the end, if Microsoft wants to sue you for using Mono instead of .NET they can; the fact they haven't just means Mono isn't a big enough target (yet) for them to consider a threat worth suing over.

Now the new CEO may change the policy and attitude so that this is all moot; but that's yet to be seen - and he'd still have quite a bit of challenge within Microsoft to keep it from rearing its head again.

lesson to be learnt

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a lesson to be learnt here: Never depend on programming language, which is not under appropriate free license.

Apache Foundation, do you hear me?

Re:lesson to be learnt

[MightyMartian]

I can't wait for phone books to be copyrighted.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[barlevg]

See: Feist v. Rural.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[phantomfive]

This has nothing to do with using Java. It has to do with implementing your own incompatible version of the language. If all you want to do is use Java, or implement a compatible version, the license is good and you will have no problem.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[ackthpt]

There is a lesson to be learnt here: Never depend on programming language, which is not under appropriate free license.

Apache Foundation, do you hear me?

Once the ballyhoo and excitement at the birth of a new language have subsided it is quickly supplanted by the motherly urge to control and protect.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Rich0]

This has nothing to do with using Java. It has to do with implementing your own incompatible version of the language. If all you want to do is use Java, or implement a compatible version, the license is good and you will have no problem.

The problem with this is that you now are subject to somebody else's sole determination that you are/aren't "compatible" or else you get stuck in endless litigation.

If you build entirely on free-licensed components, then nobody has any control over what you do.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they actually have a test suite that determines "compatible" or not

Re:lesson to be learnt

[king neckbeard]

That's incorrect. With Java, you have a few options: 1) Fork the GPL version of Java. In such a case, you can have absolutely no compatibility and still be in the clear. 2) Write your own Java implementation, but have it meet the standard. I'm pretty sure what is and isn't compatible is laid out pretty clearly. 3) Pay Oracle enough for a license to do what you want.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[phantomfive]

The problem with this is that you now are subject to somebody else's sole determination that you are/aren't "compatible" or else you get stuck in endless litigation.

The test suite that tests for compatibility is now open source (although the licensing is messy, it is ultimately usable), so that isn't a problem anymore. It was a problem before, you are right.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[tepples]

Australia went the other way.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Anonymous Coward]

To further add, why would google need a non-compatible version of java, and how would this be any different than Microsoft's general attempt to do similar things with their famous 3 E's method.

If Google didn't want to use real java, they should have chose something else or made something from scratch.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[symbolset]

The test suite is under a different and nonfree license.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[ADRA]

Tell that to Apache Harmony. Oracle refuses to make the certification 100% free / license un-encumbered, so here we are. You can't release a 'Java' runtime without certification, and you can't be certified unless you sign contracts with Oracle to bend over the barrel.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[ADRA]

1. Isn't actually true. You need to stay well within the lines or draw the ire and lawsuits from Oracle
2. Isn't true because you need to to be licensed by Oracle in order to be verified as 'compatible' and if they say no then guess what?
3. Yup, that's pretty much the only route you have

Re:lesson to be learnt

[HiThere]

They needed it because they were trying to speed up execution on smart phones. As I understand it, Dalvik(?) compiles class files produced by the javac compiler to optimize register allocations, and what they are arguing about is the documentation. They aren't trying to use the same name, so it's not related to the MS ploy of defining a non-compatible Java. They're trying to define a (very large) subset of Java+libraries that can be handled by their compiler.

OTOH, it's been months since I paid close attention to this, so I may well have the details considerably garbled. IIUC, however, the question was whether the order in which class methods were listed in the documentation was copyrightable. Originally the answer was no, but it sound like that answer has been changed to yes.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[farble1670]

The problem with this is that you now are subject to somebody else's sole determination that you are/aren't "compatible"

and that's superior to letting every implementation decide if it is compatible? sort of like having the company that builds a bridge decide if the bridge meets all safety requirements?

it's of the definition of compatibility. there has to be some board, committee, test suite ... some single point that decides compatibility. and yeah, java SE is a big complicated thing and i'd expect that getting accepted as compatible would be a big pain in the ass.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[DrJimbo]

If all you want to do is use Java, or implement a compatible version, the license is good and you will have no problem.

This is completely false. Oracle changed the rules around for what it means to be "compatible" so that only projects that Oracle likes will be deemed compatible. Apache is being forced into a Java Fork:

The problem's core is that first Sun, and now Oracle, won't give Apache a chance to certify Apache's Project Harmony as being Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) compliant.

Apache: I know my rights. I want my compatibility certification!

Oracle: How can you get a certification if you can't take the test?

Re:lesson to be learnt

[phantomfive]

That was four years ago. At least get updated information if you're going to tell me I'm wrong.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong, and the situation has not changed. Your argument is like saying electrons don't exist since they were discovered decades ago.

Oracle changed the licensing requirements around the certification process, and they specifically changed them around mobile platforms. They have not undone those changes.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Darinbob]

Label it as "Certificaiton Pending".

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Jane Q. Public]

I can't wait for phone books to be copyrighted.

As someone else pointed out, it's been tried and shot down.

And not just once, either. Just a couple of years ago I read about a more recent case, even though SCOTUS had already decided this. It was like watching a play about an historical event.

Some big directory company came into a town and spent a lot of money creating its own directory, shoving aside the "little guy" who'd always published the local directory.

The little company said to themselves, "We can't beat their advertising and budget, so we'll just use their listings ourselves."

The big company objected, and said, "You can't do that! We put lots of work and money into our listings." Little company said "Pfffft. So what?" Big comany sued on the basis that their work had been "stolen".

The judge put it down pretty quickly. He said (in essence): it does not matter, even a little, whether you put one dollar or a million dollars into your effort: this type of information just isn't copyrightable. No law says the data is 'protected' just because it was a lot of cost and effort to put it together.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Jane Q. Public]

Qualifier:

You CAN copyright a phonebook. The format, the specific layout, the ads, etc. are all copyrightable.

What are not copyrightable are the actual listings in it.

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say the lesson to be learnt here is: never ever EVER use Java. Ever!

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Rich0]

The problem with this is that you now are subject to somebody else's sole determination that you are/aren't "compatible"

and that's superior to letting every implementation decide if it is compatible? sort of like having the company that builds a bridge decide if the bridge meets all safety requirements?

I get why Sun did what they did with Java, since their whole goal was write-once-run-anywhere.

However, the end result was a legal mess, and as a result companies have an incentive to steer clear of stuff like this.

If you just need glibc to run, then maybe your code isn't quite write-once-run-everywhere, but at least you can come out with a new phone without getting sued...

Re:lesson to be learnt

[Anonymous Coward]

is it too late to re-write Android in PHP? :5a:

Re:lesson to be learnt

[dbeberman]

The GPL precludes Oracle or anyone else controlling what is done with the GPL source code. That is the intent of the GPL license on any source code. The OpenJDK is under the GPL, Java is not. That is, Oracle owns the brand Java when referring to the runtime and runtime classes. Thus you can't "fork Java" by forking the OpenJDK. Referring to the Java programming language or a runtime that runs programs written in the Java programming language,such as running on the OpenJDK is allowed. There are no claims of certification with Oracle's Java with the OpenJDK. To be certified as Java and allowed to use the Java logo, an implementation must pass the TCK tests. Although I saw a previous comment that the TCK's are also under GPL open source, I believe to be certified as Java, a TCK license is required from Oracle. From my reading of the appeallant ruling, Google did not claim the use of the OpenJDK and thus the protection of the GPL license for Android. I don't know if this was claimed in the original trial or not. My reading of the GPL is that Oracle would not have been able to claim copyright infringement on the OpenJDK APIs since the APIs are published as open source under the GPL for the OpenJDK. However, Oracle would be able to claim Java branding infringement and the Java logo if Google made claims Android was Java or "ran Java" instead of stating that it ran an implementation of the OpenJDK. To return to limitations placed on GPL source code, the only limitation is that changes to the source code are also published. There are no limitations on what is done to the source code. It is perfectly legitimate to make a derived work that deletes small or large portions of the source code. There isn't even a requirement that the derived work actually "work". Thus a derived work using the OpenJDK can do anything desired with the source code provided the terms of the GPL are met.

Oh PJ, where art thou?

[pegr]

If ever there was a time we needed you... :(

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

Check out the ruling yourself, it's surprisingly readable and will make you smarter.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[maroberts]

It may be surprisingly readable, but Justice Alsups original ruling was extremely clear cut, no nonsense and demonstrated a clear understanding of technical issues and accepting Oracles arguments. Accepting it also would have also limited or prevented a lot of litigation in the future.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[maroberts]

Oops should read rejecting Oracles arguments.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

It may be surprisingly readable, but Justice Alsups original ruling was extremely clear cut, no nonsense and demonstrated a clear understanding of technical issues and accepting Oracles arguments.

It may have been clear cut, but he was wrong. The present ruling explains why, read it.

Essentially: 1) He muddled his logic between 'copyrightablity' and 'fair use,' two different concepts.
2) He didn't respect previous rulings and standard court procedures (such as the Abstraction, Filteration, Comparison test).
3) A lot of his logic rested on the Lotus case, which isn't commonly used as a precedent, and isn't relevant to this case anyway.

Realistically there's no reason to believe that APIs aren't copyrightable. Do you deny that building an API requires a lot of creativity? Making a good API is hard work, and deserves protection as much as music does. This isn't even a particularly important question (whether anything at all deserves protection is another issue; here we are talking about what is currently legal).

The more important and relevant question is whether the Google usage falls under fair use. If it does, then they can use the API anyway.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad your son can't correct the spelling of his name as easily, eh?

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[excelsior_gr]

Wow! Thanks for the link. Very readable and interesting indeed.

It seems that all the fuss is about some header files that Google copied verbatim from Java, although all the rest was implemented from scratch. Which exemplifies how shit hits the fan when lawyers get involved. Developers would not give a rat's ass on some damn header files. Lawyers on the other hand...

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[craighansen]

Reading the appellate review, I think you've got a good summary of this decision. Particular attention needs to be given to the fair use issue; the decision clearly states that while the copyrightability analysis wrongly incorporates attention to Google's desire for compatibility, that concern may be very much relevant to the fair use analysis. Since this is a decision that Affirms in part, Reverses in part, and Remands - all this goes back to the trial court, which could follow this decision and still end up in roughly the same place - minimal damages to Oracle. Alternatively, if the fair use issues go against Google (and they could, given that the entire interface files were copied verbatim, the use is for comercial purposes, and that Oracle was attempting to license Java into the smartphone market at the time), it could eventualy be A Big Deal.

There's a lot of attention given to the RangeCheck function - IMHO there aren't very many ways to write this function, and even if you write it differently, the compiler ought to optimize it into essentially the same object code. It's a function that checks three things and throws three exceptions. You could change "if (a [lt] b)" to "if (b [gt] a)", [sorry, but [lt] and [gt] characters would make it look like HTML] but if you change the order of the checks, you'd throw the exceptions in a different order - that would change the function of the code. Code that attempted to parse the exceptions thrown by the RangeCheck function would see a difference if you reordered the checks or if you changed the strings in the exceptions. So, using the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test, there's really nothing that is expression versus "idea."

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how any of the precedents are applicable. The thing copyrighted is an API, not a program...

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[kqs]

Oh dear. This could be a problem for anyone who uses a C compiler. Who owns the original C APIs anyways? Dennis Ritchie maybe?

I wonder who owns the SQL APIs? Oracle may have a problem here...

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

No.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

Reading the appellate review, I think you've got a good summary of this decision.

Thankyou. I'm glad you read it.

if the fair use issues go against Google (and they could, given that the entire interface files were copied verbatim, the use is for comercial purposes, and that Oracle was attempting to license Java into the smartphone market at the time)

Yeah, I think Google has the harder row to hoe here. Fortunately, even if they lose, copying an API for interoperability purposes will still be legal, which is the main thing I care about.

There's a lot of attention given to the RangeCheck function.......So, using the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test, there's really nothing that is expression versus "idea."

Yeah, I see it as a non-issue. If that were the only 'copying' done, this case would have ended up in the same place as SCO/Linux.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

Realistically there's no reason to believe that APIs aren't copyrightable. Do you deny that building an API requires a lot of creativity? Making a good API is hard work, and deserves protection as much as music does.

Sweat of the brow -- the amount of work involved -- is plainly not a factor in deciding whether something is copyrightable. This is extremely well established, you may reference Feist v. Rural.

I do deny that building an API requires a lot of creativity. Even if creativity was applied when creating an API, I also realistically believe that APIs aren't copyrightable, and point out that there's no reason to believe that they are (specifically that the copyright act enumerates the things that are copyrightable and no interfaces are included in the list).

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Darinbob]

It's Friday. I don't want to get smarter on a Friday. I'll read it on Monday.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way is he wrong? The C std library api is now copyrighted thanks to this ruling, every implementation of it is now in violation of the copyright. Same goes with the stl, the python libraries, etc, etc... This is literally the dumbest ruling ever made. That you can't see it speaks volumes of your character.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

Creativity is a factor in deciding whether something is copyrightable.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

You obviously haven't been paying much attention to copyright law.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[WaywardGeek]

Thanks for the link. I read: The jury found that Google infringed Oracle’s copyrights in the 37 Java packages and a specific computer routine called “rangeCheck,”

Fuck rangeCheck. I don't care if Oracle gets $1B for that stupid 10-line function that any moron could write in 5 minutes. Oracle succeeding in copyrighting an API, which last a freaking 100 years, is death to our industry.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you are completely avoiding providing an argument, just like in all of your other posts.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

Oracle succeeding in copyrighting an API, which last a freaking 100 years, is death to our industry.

That's a bit histrionic.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

Because the C API was copyrighted a long time ago. If you are shocked by this, you need to read some history.

Incidentally, when you say, "avoiding providing an argument, just like in all of your other posts" I interpret it to mean that you suck at reading comprehension, as well as history. Learn to read.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyrights last for at least 120 years, C was invented in the 70s.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you completely miss the point. That it requires "a lot of" creativity is not relevant since it being a factor to consider whether something is copyrightable requires it be at all a creative act but the converse doesn't hold nor large quantities of the converse--mostly obvious three-lines poems are copyrightable but very creative recipes aren't. Or do we get into the ridiculous and presume that someone who engages in a lot of creative wrangling of noodles on a plate can copyright their meal? Further, that making a good (or bad, for that matter) API *can be* (though not necessarily is) hard work falls into the scope of, as the GP points out, "sweat of the brow" which colloquial refers to, you know, hard manual labor of which is obviously not copyrightable.

Honestly, the biggest gulf in the whole discussion is precisely the issue that fundamentally an API is an *interface* and hence falls into the scope of the mechanical realm and would be potentially patentable. And in general, a lot of what makes a program a program fall more into the scope of the patentable than the copyrightable if we gave any serious thought to the discussion. Sure, there is *some* code that has more to do with creativity and original expression than functional execution, but if anything most people in the programming sphere tend to belittle those functional languages that strive for a sort of "beauty" (although elegance is sometimes lauded) that has a lot less to do with the "dirty" real world uses of programming. Or, in other words, the notion that something being software makes it instantly copyrightable is as insane as thinking every word written on a piece of paper is copyrightable because, you know, it involves pen and paper--"on the internet" patent is the same.

So, your notion that when all is said and done, it'll still be legal to interoperate with APIs is quaint, at best, under some delusion that copyright is the scope and fair use or some other magic will cover your ass.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

True, true, it requires more than creativity for something to be copyrightable.

In any case, you're wrong, APIs can be copyrightable. I know a case you can look at for precedence.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

In any case, you're wrong, APIs can be copyrightable. I know a case you can look at for precedence.

Funny. Did I say APIs aren't copyrightable? Nope. I did spell out why APIs could be potentially patentable (and give a little rant about why the scope of APIs under, mainly, copyright is inane under current law*). So regardless of whether Oracle wins its copyright suit over Java or whether Google wins out over fair use, it says nothing about the future of API interoperability so long as one can patent an API. I presume that copyright was chosen because it has a much longer term and doesn't require spelling out preemptively what all that's covered--most APIs (and standards in general with computers) are stitched together messes no matter how "good" they're claimed to be**, anyways, so they'd be rather hard to patent first--which allows enough cloak and dagger to thwart cloning.

*Hell, my "on the internet" patent example should have made it clear I was speaking about how it should be if the legal system made any real sense and was written with the mindset of people who were technologically able and legally minded instead of one, the other, or a half-assed mess of both instead of how it actually functioned where software is automatically copyrighted no matter how fundamentally uncreative it is. But, yea, got to win an argument I didn't make just like you want to against the OP.

**You see, what you seem to view as a "good" API has more to do with (1) having a mostly consistent nomenclature (which, btw, requires some forethought but eventually demonstrates how much the designers really didn't plan that far ahead), (2) a consistent mechanism for dealing with data structures/management/state interfacing (be they in the form of objects or not, who deals with deallocation or destruction of state-minded I/O, just how I/O is presented in the API,etc), and (3) a set of arbitrary guidelines on dealing with threading, [a]synchronous events, error conditions, etc. Ie, 99% of it is just arbitrarily choosing some guidelines and sticking with it throughout the API even if it makes absolutely no sense after a while (the nested hell that is File IO in Java is a great example) because really there's nothing consistently sensical about interfacing with everything in the system---it likely relates to Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, but I don't know enough about them to be sure. Well, guess what? Everything I listed above is just a mishmash of previously created stuff and the only real "creativity" left is choosing the mixture and the naming scheme. Well, then, that's only marginally more creative than a recipe but very functionally like a recipe.

Not that the legal system gives a fuck.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

I presume that copyright was chosen because it has a much longer term and doesn't require spelling out preemptively what all that's covered--most APIs

Java is patented. Oracle sued Google, and Google counter-sued, and in the end it didn't amount to much.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[jbo5112]

Congress is given the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" (US Constitution Article I Section 8) The idea that locking an API into 100+ years of exclusive use promotes progress is asinine, and any judge ruling to do that is ignoring our highest laws.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[phantomfive]

Write your senator.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[hobarrera]

And thus, programmers started moving out of the US to countries were developing APIs could be done safely.

Re:Oh PJ, where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

An API is no different than a recipe, most of which is NOT copyrightable.

You can't copyright facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. If Java's API is copyrighted we've gone so far around the bend with copyright protection we've enterted the Twilight Zone. Is there an end to this insanity?

Re:You can't copyright facts

[Shimbo]

I think the appeal court got it largely right: API design is a creative process. Anyone with any experience in programming knows that some APIs are well designed, others are bad ones. I think it's a nonsense to claim the API is a fact.

I don't like Oracle, and I don't really like the consequences of this ruling. However, Google really pushed the boundaries of copyright law to the limit here. And if people choose languages that are explicitly free to reimplement in future, that's a good thing.

Re:You can't copyright facts

[pegr]

I can be creative in solving a math problem, but the expression itself I create is purely functional. You cannot copyright a process, only creative expressions.

Re:You can't copyright facts

[Anonymous Coward]

You're putting the cart before the horse. If no one can implement a compatible replacement, no one can move off the closed system. This isn't about unity of a language or any such thing, this is about vendor lock-in. You made a black-box implementation of our server? Fuck you, that's our money, hand it over.

Or a canadian analogy:
Only we're allowed to speak French! You figured out how to do it too?!?! No dictionary or anything you say?!?! Well you still have to be a member of the French Speakers Club so too bad for you!

Also, I hope you're not saying Samba and Wine should be sued out of existance next, are you?

Re:You can't copyright facts

[MetalOne]

It has been my understanding that an API cannot be copyrighted because the API is a fact. We would not have Linux otherwise. I believe copyrighting APIs would be an even worse nightmare than patents.
Say you want a stack.
push,
pop,
empty.

Well, you'll never be able to write one without paying up to somebody.

Re:You can't copyright facts

[MetalOne]

I guess I failed to understand how fair use plays into using an API. There are better comments below. I wish I could just delete the above post.

So google will appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

and it will go to the supreme court, who will also get it wrong.

Re:So google will appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the supreme's won't touch it so it will stand. However, if they did take it, the only way to get it right at this point would be to revert to the original court's stand that APIs as such are not something you can copyright. Also, Oracle owes Google umpteen bazzillion quatloos for being asshats.

Hurrah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Extortion fees for everyone!

Coder Boycott

[RichMan]

Ok this ruling would seem to invalidate any ability to reproduce any interface.

This needs a coder boycott of anything Oracle until Oracle stands up and pubclically disavows this ruling and claims the court was wrong.

Re:Coder Boycott

[mapkon]

Come-on, get on with your life - there are proper languages you could use.

Re:Coder Boycott

[RichMan]

The ruling means that any library in any language can be shut down. It means that public interface declarations can be copyright. It means it could be impossible for anyone to reproduce a public interface.

AkA it makes all public interfaces private. It is not just a Java specific ruling, it has implications across all coding environments.

Re:Coder Boycott

[mapkon]

That I know, but did you expect anything better from Oracle! It's copy-right history is well documented. Honestly, the entire world has gone to shit

Re:Coder Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

That I know, but did you expect anything better from Oracle! It's copy-right history is well documented. Honestly, the entire world has gone to shit

When something goes to shit, then it is probably best to try and fix it than just ignore it by using something else that can go to shit too. Fix the world, rest easier.

Re:Coder Boycott

[phantomfive]

The ruling means that any library in any language can be shut down.

No.

It means that public interface declarations can be copyright.

Yes.

It means it could be impossible for anyone to reproduce a public interface.

No, because if you are reproducing a public interface for compatibility purposes, it is fair use. There are lots of ways something could be fair use. Even if Google fails to show that this particular case was fair use, that won't prevent the fair use argument in other cases.

In reality, purpose matters for fair use. If your goal is to reproduce the public interface for compatibility purposes, that is fair use, because that is the only way compatibility can be reached. However, the goal of Google here was different, it was to make the life of programmers easier on Android by presenting them with a familiar environment. It will be interesting to see if they can defend that as fair use.

Please don't make the mistake of thinking this will kill Wine or all programming languages or something. There's already enough irrational hysteria on the internet.

Re:Coder Boycott

[phantomfive]

This needs a coder boycott of anything Oracle until Oracle stands up and pubclically disavows this ruling and claims the court was wrong.

Hey, I've been boycotting Oracle for the last decade on grounds that their software is garbage! Count me in!

Re:Coder Boycott

[Kaenneth]

It WILL have a huge 'Chilling Effect' though, even if you are in the right, and it is fair use, can you afford to defend against a huge corporation suing you?

Re:Coder Boycott

[Grishnakh]

The ruling means that any library in any language can be shut down. It means that public interface declarations can be copyright. It means it could be impossible for anyone to reproduce a public interface.

No it doesn't. Any interface declarations published under an open-source license will be completely safe (provided you meet the terms of that license of course). It's only proprietary licenses that will be a problem.

Re:Coder Boycott

[reg]

Don't be naive. This will be used to shut down APIs. Increasingly the software world is a set of web based and hosted APIs, with big money but little business behind them. Imagine, for example, someone like Snapchat copying Twitter's API to enable their service to grow faster. This ruling, it is stands, will be used by incumbents to shut down start-ups or open-source/non-spyware clones.

Probably Google's biggest mistake at the get go was to not do a /Java/Davlik/g. Since all code needs to be recompiled, this can be done easily by the build system while maintaining a single source file...

Regards,
-Jeremy

Re:Coder Boycott

[phantomfive]

If a large corporation wants to sue you, they will, no matter how this case is decided. That is irrelevant.

Re:Coder Boycott

[phantomfive]

This ruling, it is stands, will be used by incumbents to shut down start-ups or open-source/non-spyware clones.

How can you even say that if the ruling on fair use hasn't been given yet? You don't even know if it is fair use. You don't know if the result on fair use will be so narrow it doesn't apply to other cases.

IF you have a legal argument about why you say is true, then I am interested in hearing it. Otherwise your opinion is meaningless. Read the ruling.

Re:Coder Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't make the mistake of thinking this will kill Wine or all programming languages or something. There's already enough irrational hysteria on the internet.

You're giving Wine an automatic win on fair use, because compatibility? Not that I'm concerned for Wine, posing zero threat whatsoever to Microsoft and having extremely shallow pockets already give it all of the protection it needs .

Re:Coder Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

~
The problem with fair use is it is a defensive doctrine. You have to get sued and hauled into a court to even start a defense based on the fair use doctrine. And it costs big bucks. You know what's going to happen ? Corporations will started sueing left and right and except for the very big guys that can have their time in court all the other will have to pay and fair used be damned.

Re:Coder Boycott

[Kaenneth]

No, it makes the difference between a frivolous suit which will get their lawyers sanctioned, and paying your court costs VS 'We thought it was reasonable given this case law.'

Re:Coder Boycott

[phantomfive]

There's a 99% chance you didn't read the ruling, and mostly have no clue what you're talking about. But that's cool. It's the Slashdot way.

Re:Coder Boycott

[bill_mcgonigle]

This needs a coder boycott of anything Oracle until Oracle stands up and pubclically disavows this ruling and claims the court was wrong.

We've all known that Oracle is a corporate asshole for ages, but realize that they are only the complaintant here. Nobody from Oracle is going to bust down your door and haul you off to a cage if you implement a java-compatible language and tell them to pound sand.

Oracle is a symptom here - you can address the symptom but don't expect to do a whole lot of good if you're not going after the cause.

Now then, the shareholders at Sun are quite happy about this, because access to Google's database patents vis-a-vis the Java suit is probably the only reason Oracle bought Sun in the first place. This ruling vindicates that strategy and raises the odds that Oracle will continue to be around to create additional civil atrocities.

Re:Coder Boycott

[gnupun]

AkA it makes all public interfaces private. It is not just a Java specific ruling, it has implications across all coding environments.

So create your library with its own original interfaces instead of cloning some proprietary software's interfaces. That's what Google should have done.

Aside from that, does anyone know why Oracle did not sue Google for cloning the Java Language (its syntax and grammar BNF)? Is a language not copyrightable?

Re:Coder Boycott

[excelsior_gr]

When Google uses the header files verbatim, but makes the underlying infrastructure incompatible with Java, they clearly aim to profit by Java's popularity (by presenting the familiar environment to developers) and this falls very far from the fair use doctrine.

Oracle argued that there are many ways to organize the declarations in an API, but Google chose to just copy Java's, although they could have done otherwise. I think I'm with Oracle on this one.

Re:Coder Boycott

[phantomfive]

Agreed.

Re:Coder Boycott

[blackiner]

The mere fact that this case even exists is already proof it will be abused. And please, if the copyright regime has taught us anything, it is that fair use will continue to get shat upon.

Re:Coder Boycott

[Pecisk]

I think what OP meant is that as it's very rare that little guy can fight back in a court, and as this set some sort of 'legal doubt', which could be enough to scare to do any compatible APIs. This is legit concern, mostly due of how US legal system works.

Re:Coder Boycott

[J Story]

I suspect, rather, that Google thought there were no copyright issues. If Google had thought otherwise, it would have done everything from scratch. Given the amount of resources that Google spent in producing everything else, creating the API, relatively speaking, would have been trivial. If copyright law were more clear, Google would never have gone down the Java-ish path.

As for this judgement, I think the judge got carried away with his legalistic brilliance, but has actually introduced greater uncertainty. He reminds me of the story about classifying military officers as stupid/brilliant and lazy/not lazy, with the best officers being both smart and lazy, and the most dangerous being stupid and not lazy. This judge, it seems to me, is the latter.

Re:Coder Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not dispute the boycott part, but it is not about interface, it is about implementing an API. This has been adressed in the ruling.

Re:Coder Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

> When Google uses the header files verbatim, but makes the underlying infrastructure incompatible with
> Java, they clearly aim to profit by Java's popularity (by presenting the familiar environment to developers)
> and this falls very far from the fair use doctrine.

No, that's tailoring your business model to reality, and no different to a cycle manufacturer choosing to use common sizes, wheels, bolts and screws so that shops don't need new tooling and they can use the same shocks/brakes as other manufacturers.

Re:Coder Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job commenting without reading the ruling.

Ah, Slashdot, you haven't changed a bit.

Re:Coder Boycott

[Kaenneth]

You're already flagged by my asshole filter, so your opinion means...

Re:Coder Boycott

[phantomfive]

It is an honor.

They will keep trying until they get a judge that

[Anonymous Coward]

They will keep trying until they get a judge that is politically motivated to rule in their favor.

Do you have any questions which political party is more motivated towards this type of 'patent-prohibitive-rulings'?

Thank you SoulSkill for bringing this to our attention, Oracle's stock has risen on the news as you would expect.

When I read the ruling before, I agreed that Oracle did not have a leg to stand on. Did not see anything wrong with the other court's ruling. Its disappointing to see this type of patent-FUD working.

People this is why politics matter, the wrong party, motivated by their own greed to re-distribute wealth to corporations and put laws on the books promoting oligopolies while limiting competition are not good for citizens, ever. It depresses wages, reduces the number of jobs, prevent small businesses from creating jobs, redistributes wealth to a very small number of individuals vs the majority of Americans. It prevents the free market from working correctly.

Some patents are too vague and should never be granted.

There was a time when to patent something, hardware needed to be involved, in the last decade they gave software patents, which is not the way the system was designed. Software was never meant to rise above the level of copyright for legal protections.

To add insult to injury, the businesses that exist only to push patent lawsuits, that don't create anything (esp not jobs) are pushing laws to lengthen the period with which patents can be legally enforced.

Nothing good ever comes of this. Just sad all the way around.

That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[HeckRuler]

API calls.... their "structure, sequence, and organization" are copyrightable? API calls... really?

So I have a door, it has a door bell. It follows a nice standard that if someone wants to get my attention at my door, they ring the doorbell. If they want to leave a message, they put a note in my mailbox. That's a rough equivalent for my house's API. I can copyright that (baring prior art and fair use)?
The contents of my house are my own of course, but the procedure I ask everyone to follow when coming into my house? I also own that?

Really guys?

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You can only structure the *sequence and organization*.
So you can copyright doorbell right of mailbox, doorbell left of mailbox, doorbell over mailbox, doorbell under mailbox, doorbell in front of mailbox, doorbell behind mailbox, doorbell in mailbox and mailbox in doorbell.
If any competitor complains, just tell them they're free to create 4-dimensional space and arrange their doorbells and mailboxes there.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[Peter Simpson]

IIRC, one of the permitted exceptions to copyright is interfaces. You need to be able to copy interfaces to produce code that's compatible with existing code, and that's why interfaces can't be copyrighted.

This is what happens when you have non-technical lawyers and judges trying to rule on technical matters.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[HeckRuler]

No no no, SEQUENCE.
Ring, then knock, then just leave it on the curb.
That sequence of events as the proper interface to my house is now copyrighted.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[tepples]

As of the present appellate ruling, it appears you now recall incorrectly. Google has to make a case that interoperability is a strong enough "purpose and character" without a deleterious "effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" under the fair use statute.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[phantomfive]

I strongly suggest you read the actual judgement, your arguments will be a lot more incisive.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[phantomfive]

If you write down that sequence, then yes, it's copyrightable. Heck, even a scribble on a piece of paper is copyrightable.

CAVEAT: Other people may be able to use it under fair use, and in fact, they probably can.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Far from having a deleterious effect, the hordes of Android programmers make a likely market for official Java.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[gnupun]

So I have a door, it has a door bell. It follows a nice standard that if someone wants to get my attention at my door, they ring the doorbell. If they want to leave a message, they put a note in my mailbox. That's a rough equivalent for my house's API. I can copyright that (baring prior art and fair use)?

You seem to be describing a patent. To do copyright infringement of somebody else's door, you would have to use the same material of wood, the same color, the same design, and an exact duplicate of the knob. But copyright applies only to text and similar content. To protect the door's design, you have get a design patent.

In the programming world an API like this:
int foo(int a, int b)

can be changed to:
int foobar(int num1, int num2)

to avoid copyright infringement. In other words, don't copy letter-for-letter and you can avoid copyright infringement. Although I don't understand why programming APIs weren't protected by APIs before.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[Anonymous Coward]

A ruling from an ignorant judge with no sense of morals or ethics that actively harms the population is not valid.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[dfsmith]

As I read it*, the argument is over the 37 verbatim copied headers that define the API. That's like Oracle making a beautiful (ahem), elaborate sign explaining how to ring their doorbell. Google made their own doorbell but copied the sign, embellishments included. While the content of the sign is "fact", the decorations are arguably product of a creative process.

While I'll have to wait for better analyses of the ruling, I think we can take away that if you're reimplementing a library, you might want to reimplement the headers too.

* IANAL, and I'm not speaking for my employer. I only scanned the ruling.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[HeckRuler]

Unfortunately, it's still legal.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[HeckRuler]

That.... actually makes a bit of sense and I understand how a judge could see it that way.

So if Google wants their fork to interface just like Oracles, they should take a clean-room approach and have all the API's function exactly the same way, but without being derived from Oracle's source.

And they have to function EXACTLY like the one they're copying. That's the entire point of using a standard API. If that aspect is copyrightable, the content of the API of how things interface to other things, then this is sheer madness.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[Anonymous Coward]

The question, then, is if:
int foo(int a, int b)

can just be changed to:
int foo(int num1, int num2)

to avoid copyright infringement, so that whoever has code that has the line "foo(1,5);" can run their code on the original copyrighted part and the noninfringing part without changes. Is the design of the parts that are needed for interoperability copyrighted, such that making it interoperable is, itself, copyright infringing?

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[gnupun]

Well, I'm still reading the court ruling regarding this case. In one place it says, short words and sentence fragments can't be copyrighted. So while a single method/function declaration of foo() is original and creative, it is too short to be copyrightable.

Oracle had argued that the 37 Java packages, comprising of 6000 method API declarations were copied verbatim by Google, should as whole be copyrightable because the taxonomy, structure etc of those package/class/method declarations combined are original, creative, etc. and mostly meet the requirements of copyrightability.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[excelsior_gr]

It is copyrightable if there exists more than one way for someone to enter your house. I could write an API for entering your house through the window by throwing small stones on the glass for getting your attention and sliding a message under the door if you are not there. That's a rough equivalent of yet another implementation of your house's API. Remember, it is not the idea or the act of entering the house that is under protection, but the method of doing so. So yes, since there are many alternatives available, you may also own your own procedure for entering your house.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep telling people to read the judgement. Looks lot me like the law is now 'the courts will decide'. They are claiming that there is not a simple test, but that each case will need a nuanced approach.

This is just welfare for lawyers and it blows big time.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[k8to]

There have already been rulings that decided that headers that define a public api are not under copyright if they represent the only way that that public api can be declared.

In other words, this judge did not follow precedent, or they're in different jurisdictions (I don't actually know).

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[gnasher719]

If you write down that sequence, then yes, it's copyrightable. Heck, even a scribble on a piece of paper is copyrightable.

If you write it down, and there was some creative process involved. For example, if you create a phone book of New York, with names sorted in alphabetical order, we'd all hope that there is very little creativity involved.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[Anonymous Coward]

"So if Google wants their fork to interface just like Oracles, they should take a clean-room approach and have all the API's function exactly the same way, but without being derived from Oracle's source."
But that is what they did, and are now being told that they are infringing copyright!!!!!

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[sydneyfong]

What makes you think that the Java API is "public"? At least Sun/Oracle never said that anyone can use those APIs. Which is why there was this compatibility certification crap.

Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there.

[jbo5112]

So if Google wants their fork to interface just like Oracles, they should take a clean-room approach and have all the API's function exactly the same way, but without being derived from Oracle's source.

And they have to function EXACTLY like the one they're copying. That's the entire point of using a standard API. If that aspect is copyrightable, the content of the API of how things interface to other things, then this is sheer madness.

Google did use a clean-room implementation. The judge did rule that Oracle now owns exclusive rights to how some 6,000 function calls are defined and organized for the next 80-100+ years (depending how much Congress extends copyright in the next century) because the rights improve progress (the only grounds for granting copyrights or patents).

This means that any implementation of C or C++ probably violates the copyright on the respective language's standard library. Google can be sued again for offering a copy of gcc as part of the Android toolchain, along with any Linux distribution that makes a compiler available. Furthermore, the file and edit menus could be considered as much of an API as any programming language, as you're running the algorithm to tell another piece of code to open a file or whatever. It actually was a substantial work to first write something so elegant, so does the original inventor get to sue everyone who writes a program that has Edit->Copy in the menu in the year 2040?

Where can the madness end? What makes an API fall under copyright, and not a protocol? HTTP is copyrighted. Does Tim Berners-Lee get to sue every web server, every web browser, and every use of a REST API?

Copyrighted buy who cares?

[tomhath]

Federal Circuit Judge Kathleen O'Malley wrote. "On this record, however, we find that the district court failed to distinguish between the threshold question of what is copyrightable — which presents a low bar — and the scope of conduct that constitutes infringing activity."

Does this mean that even though Oracle can copyright something (not sure what), Google might still be able to use it without infringing? That's what it sounds like to me. And it took a whole lot of wasted money for Oracle to barely make it over the "low bar".

Re:Copyrighted buy who cares?

[phantomfive]

Yes, it must now be decided if Google's actions fall under fair use.

sh17

[Anonymous Coward]

80s, DARPA saw BSD project. Today, as market. Therefore, baatled in co0rt, AT&T and Berkeley BSD HAS ALWAYS one Here but now this very moment, is also a miserable

Results

[phantomfive]

In the original trial, the jury found that Google had infringed on the Java API (37 API packages including the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization). Shortly thereafter, the judge ruled that those things were not copyrightable, thus Google didn't need to pay.

Now, the appeals court has reversed that, and said that those things are copyrightable.

Because the original jury was deadlocked on the question of whether Google's copying was fair use, it needs to go back to trial. But only the fair use will be considered in that trial, not copyrightability.

Re:Results

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't see why a jury is deciding this. Imagine trying to explain to a bunch of random shmucks about programming languages, interfaces, etc.. They're simply not going to understand it. But I suspect that's exactly what Oracle is counting on

Re:Results

[naasking]

I really don't see why a jury is deciding this. Imagine trying to explain to a bunch of random shmucks about programming languages, interfaces, etc.

It's not that hard with some accessible analogies. An interface is like the table of contents for a book. Is a table of contents alone copyrightable?

Re:Results

[zarr]

...which nicely demonstrates how hard it is to come up with good analogies. If I wrote a book, and you copied all my chapter titles for your book, be certain that I (or rather my publisher) would come after you. I put a lot of work into those titles after all.

APIs are different though. They are meant to be copied. You can't use them without copying them.

Re:Results

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't implement them without copying them.

FTFY.

Re:Results

[Anonymous Coward]

In the American legal legal system highly technical issues like anti-trust, patents and copyright are often adjudicated at jury trials by clueless lay juries. However this is merely a formality; the issues are ultimately resolved by judges at the appellate level perhaps even the Supreme Court. Of course even judges are can be ignorant in technical area, No ones claims this is a perfect system but it is the one we have.

Re:Results

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's more like the metric screw. The complicated patented engine (copyrighted library) you're screwing to (linking with) the rest of your assembly (your program) can be proprietary and patented (copyrighted) to hell, but everyone uses the same metric screws to hold things together.

Re:Results

[naasking]

If I wrote a book, and you copied all my chapter titles for your book, be certain that I (or rather my publisher) would come after you. I put a lot of work into those titles after all.

You can mirror a table of contents structure without using the exact wording verbatim.

APIs are different though. They are meant to be copied. You can't use them without copying them.

No, you can't implement a version of that API without copying them. Analogously, if you wanted to substitute a textbook around which you've designed a series of lectures based on the chapter structure, you can't without keeping that same structure.

Re:Results

[Bacon Bits]

I really don't see why a jury is deciding this. Imagine trying to explain to a bunch of random shmucks about programming languages, interfaces, etc.. They're simply not going to understand it.

As opposed to filling the jury box with what? A bunch of random lawyers that don't know a damn thing about languages, interfaces, etc.? A bunch of random programmers that don't know a damn thing about copyright law, patents, and contracts? How about professional jurors? The French system involves professional jurors rather than a jury of peers. It gets criticized as corrupt or favoring the state.

Far reaching repercussions

[Elgonn]

So at this rate I assume we'll get an appeal to the technologically illiterate supreme court and virtually all code written will violate someone else's copyright.

Re:Far reaching repercussions

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much all code is copyrightable. The question is whether someone else can use it or make a tiny change without violating that copyright. But I don't think that applies in this case anyway since they're arguing over the API, not the actual code.

Qt anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote for Google to replace Java with Qt

Re:Qt anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea.

Now come up with a language and not a toolkit, then maybe someone will listen.

Re:Qt anyone?

[Grishnakh]

Qt has a languange: C++ (or at least a certain subset of it). The OP is obviously implying that Google should switch to C++/Qt. He could also mean Python since there's Qt bindings for that, but generally "Qt" implies C++.

Re:Qt anyone?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If anything, Google would (should?) most likely switch to Go. And it would be a tremendously good riddance, to get rid of Java in Android!

Oracle customer lock-in

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know anybody who voluntarily uses Oracle products. The company is hated, and many of their products are mediocre. Oracle has done an amazing job of locking in their customers. Microsoft could only dream of having as much power. Part of the problem is that Oracle was allowed to buy up most of their rivals. Many customers who tried to escape ended up back in Oracle's clutches. How do you think those negotiations went when it came time to renew support contracts?

Hang them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yaaay down with the steeling Google!!!! Hang them!!!

Re:They will keep trying until they get a judge th

[tomhath]

This is about copyright, not patents

GPL release that Sun did might seem to apply...

[Jadecristal]

http://www.javaworld.com/artic...

I really wish someone would bring this up with more serious force behind it. Sun released Java SE under GPLv2.

Also, going out on a limb, I'd guess that the "37 APIs" aren't part of something outside the core stuff - I'm guessing Sun left out J2EE when open sourcing since I see no note about it.

Re:GPL release that Sun did might seem to apply...

[tepples]

Should Google decide to comply with the GPL, the requirement of non-free drivers to get common Android hardware booting will become a problem.

Re:GPL release that Sun did might seem to apply...

[Max Threshold]

Exactly. Of course APIs are copyrightable. But this one was perpetually and irrevocably licensed. The only question is whether Google is complying with the terms of the license.

Re:GPL release that Sun did might seem to apply...

[pegr]

The components of Android that Oracle is having a problem with is app level interfaces, not the totality of the Android hardware. Hardware drivers are clearly out-of-scope.

Re:GPL release that Sun did might seem to apply...

[afidel]

Nope, as the GPL portion in question would be the Dalvik runtime libraries, not the kernel (which is also GPL but static linking to non-free drivers is a long standing practice that almost nobody thinks is GPLv2 infringing).

Re:GPL release that Sun did might seem to apply...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're allowed to implement the "full" Java without purchasing a license.
You're not allowed to implement a subset of full Java without buying a license.
"Full" Java was considered to big to implement on mobile devices, so Google implemented only a portion of it in their Dalvik machinations.

Re:GPL release that Sun did might seem to apply...

[craighansen]

Not accurate. In order to implement "Full" Java, Oracle wants you to certify it with them, then you can have a "free" license. Not the same as not purchasing a license.

Not Getting the Strategy Here

[Stormy Dragon]

I don't get why Oracle bothered to buy Sun since they seem to be systematically destroying the value of everything they got from the purchase.

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[Nethemas the Great]

The trouble is when you're left without viable alternatives they can pretty much crap on whatever they choose and you have to eat it. Even if you were so fortunate to get the opportunity for "green field" implementations your choices are next to non-existent if your requirements made Java the primary choice in the first place. You cannot simply say "screw Oracle, I'll use C++", or "screw Oracle, I'll use C#", "... Ruby", "... Python", "...".

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[symbolset]

Yes, that was why Oracle bought Sun.

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[jafac]

Most of these acquisitions are really about marketshare, and killing-off competition. When there is market-overlap, the purchasing company is buying that marketshare - and a certain percentage of those customers will abandon it; but some will stay. The abandoners will not likely go to a single (biggest) competitor, but often be scattered, which makes the purchasing player stronger as top-dog. When there is no overlap, it's usually for the purpose of keeping other companies who are nearby in the marketplace, from getting too big and bridging over. They'll talk the talk about "synergy" (which usually means, trying to bundle semi-related products as a suite, to vertically integrate) - but this is usually bullshit.

Source: been through three of these "mergers". Symantec is the devil.

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

That's the normal Oracle procedure. See PeopleSoft, Bea Systems.

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[marcosdumay]

They brought it to kill MySQL.

Somehow they couldn't imagine that people would switch to MariaDB and PostgreSQL instead of Oracle...

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[jez9999]

What's wrong with "screw Oracle, I'll use C#"? You've even got Mono to allow you to develop and run on Linux or whatever.

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[Tablizer]

I don't get why Oracle bothered to buy Sun since they seem to be systematically destroying the value of everything they got from the purchase.

The Vampire Strategy

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[joemck]

Then you find your attempts at making a GUI look like Win95 all over again and run the other way.

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[sydneyfong]

I read somewhere that Oracle wasn't interested in buying Sun until they learnt about Android's use of Java APIs. If they were successful in suing Google for this, the damages could make up the purchase price anyway.

Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here

[Nethemas the Great]

Mono is about five years behind.

A work in progress would infringe

[tepples]

So how do you avoid infringement between the moment when your implementation is a blank slate and the moment it first passes all tests?

Re:A work in progress would infringe

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't distribute it. Alternatively, you call it something other that Java.

The intention of the license isn't to discourage other implementations or to sue people. The intention is to protect the meaning of the term Java such that developers don't have to target the subset of features that are supported by many different, incompatible versions. If Google is allowed to decide that they don't want to implement part of the Java spec because it doesn't make sense in the context of Android (or AppEngine, which was their first foray into incompatible Java), developers writing libraries will stop using those features because they want their software to work on as many platforms as possible. Over time, that will cause the erosion of the Java platform as the subset of functionality supported by all platforms shrinks.

So just refrain from distributing something that claims to be Java and and doesn't pass the compatibility tests. That's not particularly hard to do.

Re:A work in progress would infringe

[tepples]

You don't distribute it.

Inability to toss an incomplete work on a public repository would make it impossible to collaborate with others on the work. So the license appears to force a cathedral model.

Alternatively, you call it something other that Java.

Google doesn't use the J-word in the Android developer tutorial until pretty late, and even then if I recall correctly it's only a namespace name and file name suffix.

Re:A work in progress would infringe

[Anonymous Coward]

By not distributing it.

Re:A work in progress would infringe

[tepples]

What means of collaboration without distribution did you have in mind?

It's bipartisan

[tepples]

Do you have any questions which political party

Both major U.S. political parties have shown themselves to favor expansion of the exclusive rights of copyright owners. See the No Electronic Theft Act, the Copyright Term Extension Act, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Fork! Fork! Fork!

[seven of five]

How 'bout a completely open-source fork?

Wrong, wrong, wrong

[reg]

This is a very bad decision and is only going to harm the software industry. This is Google's fault for using the wrong arguments. APIs are digital forms. You fill one in and give it to a worker, it does what you asked (possibly with side effects) and returns results. This is not an analogy, it is a fact. Forms are not copyrightable, for good reason. Imagine if every bank had to make up a new name for a 'deposit slip', and someone could copyright "First Name, Last Name" on a form! Google copied Java's API, the same as businesses have been copying each others forms since the dawn of time, and for the same reason: its easier to present a known interface to customers.

Regards,
-Jeremy

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong

[phantomfive]

This is Google's fault for using the wrong arguments

Uh, did you just make that up? Do you do that often?

Read the ruling. Not only did Google make that argument, not only was it discussed in court, also the ruling spends several pages discussing it. Seriously, don't make yourself look like a moron. Read before typing. Start on page 28, which discusses that.

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong

[excelsior_gr]

A deposit slip is not copyrightable because every bank requires the same information. There is no alternative to the layout of a deposit slip. For an API of this size, however, there are numerous ways to organize all the declarations in the different header files and numerous possibilities for the names and the naming conventions of the procedures and the variables. When the developers at Sun made the decisions to write them in a certain way, they created an API that was original, but not unique: you could go and write your own library having the same functionality and your own API.

Now the developers at Google decided to copy Java's API verbatim, although they implemented the whole library from scratch. This can be due to numerous reasons:
- laziness (we should not attribute to malice stuff that can have much simpler explanations)
- haste and/or ignorance ("lemme just copy these headers here to save time, it should fall under fair use, anyway")
- malice (they wanted to have their own Java, with blackjack and hookers, that runs only on Android and screw Oracle and their show-off CEO)

I think if Google had made the slightest changes to the API so that it was not verbatim copying, it would have been much easier for them to argue that "we tried to write our own API, but it didn't work out, so as a result our API looks almost identical to Oracle's, really, we did!"

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong

[reg]

I've followed trial very closely, and I read every line of the court transcripts of the original trial, although not every exhibit or submittal. They did not make this argument. They also did not make it on appeal, as far as I know. ("The parties have not disputed the district court's analogy: Oracle's collection of API packages is like a library, each package is like a bookshelf in the library, each class is like a book on the shelf, and each method is like a how-to chapter in a book." pg.7) Instead they used poor analogies for what the API is and does, and allowed it to be defined badly.

Having finished reading the ruling... pg 28 is about the doctrine of merger (expression being dictated by idea). That's not what I am talking about. But it does discuss the issue I suggest on pg. 19. I'm talking about 37 C.F.R. Â 202.1(c). The only reference I can find to that statute in this case is in http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/Or..., where the idea of blank forms is only tangentially mentioned. There was some discussion of Baker v. Selden, but mostly in the context of the SSO of the API. Oracle actually concede in that that the individual method specifications are like a blank form, but not explicitly. Google never picked that up.

*plonk*

Regards,
-Jeremy

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong

[phantomfive]

In other words, APIs convey no information, they are designed for recording information, but in themselves do not convey information? I'm not sure you're going to make a convincing argument that APIs do not convey information.

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong

[jbo5112]

I think the reason for copying Java's API was to have something that developers already knew. I would be surprised if the decision was made after Google acquired the OS, and assume it was made by Android Inc. before the buyout.

Driver license incompatibility

[tepples]

Oracle publishes a copylefted version of Java, but copyleft licenses aren't necessarily compatible with the non-free drivers needed to get a mass-market mobile computer booting.

Re:Driver license incompatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

"Breaking news, Android switched to a BSD kernel while no one was looking!"

Re:Driver license incompatibility

[Tough Love]

Oracle publishes a copylefted version of Java, but copyleft licenses aren't necessarily compatible with the non-free drivers needed to get a mass-market mobile computer booting.

Rubbish. Drivers are linked into the Linux kernel, which is GPL. This is explicitly allowed.

Analogies are Killing Us

[Mateo_LeFou]

You wouldn't steal a car, snatch a purse, etc. So why would you reproduce the sequence and structure of an API !? !

#boycottOracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Share on all media sources.

Hit em where they live, move to MariaDB

[cboslin]

Of course stop using any part of Java that Oracle is claiming a copyright on. Heck I thought it was 9 lines of code, now it might be 37 APIs, come on now...enough already.

If this really pisses you off, especially if you are in a decision making position for IT in your company, seriously look at mariaDB and if possible switch out Oracle's SQL database for mariaDB. If you are considering Atlassian (JIRA, Confluence, Fisheye, Crucible, Bamboo) than use MariaDB instead. The first thing they did when they wrote MariaDB is get rid of all the things wrong with MySQL.

Many Linux distros have finally begun moving away from MySQL and to MariaDB for LAMP. Redhat recently started shipping their Enterprise version with MariaDB over MySQL

If you are the CEO of a company, did your VP of IT even consider the savings to the company that maridb would mean vs Oracle's SQL database solution? If not, perhaps its time to find a VP of IT that will put your company first.

Do you buy stock in companies? Do they use SQL databases? Do they use Oracle? Perhaps its not the best solution. Any company that does not control its cost effectively will take a hit one day, not a matter of if, only when.

Java is a PITA for overhead anyway, ask yourself, can I accomplish my goal without Java when developing applications...you might be surprised at how much faster and customer responsive your app is if you can 86 Java.

If its the entire API and not just 9 lines of code, everyone needs to re-evaluate their use of Java in development and especially in Cloud applications. No more Service As A Dis-service (SAAD vs SAAS)!

If you are reading this, you are a developer, time to think outside the Java / Oracle box!

Re:Hit em where they live, move to MariaDB

[Anonymous Coward]

mariadb is shit.

Use postgresql

Copyrightable APIs? How Far?

[Bob9113]

How far does this copyrightability of APIs go? If I write a program in Java, am I infringing?

Collections.unmodifiableList( Collections.sort( new ArrayList(){{add(String.valueOf(Math.pow(3,9)));add(String.valueOf(Math.pow(3,6)));}}));

Is that enough copying of their API to trigger copyright? If it is, then this ruling means we have to stop all software development, sort this out, then start again once we understand the license terms of every language. If this duplication of their API is not potentially infringing, then how can a copy of the API in a slightly different form (as the signatures of an implementation) be infringing?

The only rational conclusion is that the API are uncopyrightable facts, not copyrightable artistic expression. Anything else makes programming itself infringement.

Re:Copyrightable APIs? How Far?

[excelsior_gr]

You can use the library all you want in your programs (thus making use of the API), but you may not re-implement the library functions and have an identical API as the other proprietary library. You may re-implement the library functions, with the same functionality, and write an new API for it. Granted, it will probably look much like the proprietary API, but if you just copy the header files you are just asking for trouble.

Re:Copyrightable APIs? How Far?

[Bob9113]

You can use the library all you want in your programs (thus making use of the API), but you may not re-implement the library functions and have an identical API as the other proprietary library.

Yes, I get that is what Oracle wants to be true, and what the judge implicitly ruled. But that's not the question I'm asking. What I'm asking is; how do you get there from copyright?

Copyright says you can't copy things beyond fair use. But fair use doesn't define the difference between programming and writing a library with a compatible API; are they saying programming is educational? satire? criticism? reportage? And the amount of copying involved in both activities is, or at least can be, the same.

"Remember the court battle between Google/Oracle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope.

There by default

[KingMotley]

What else is there by default? Java certainly is NOT there by default on windows machines, nor is it there on a very large percentage of them. According to *MY* statistics, and my target client base, java support is at 65.6%. A far smaller number than .NET/mono which sits at 85.43% (Windows) + 0.9% (Linux).

Re:There by default

[BronsCon]

Factor in the second-largest userbase (where Java is, in fact, installed by default), not just the largest and smallest. Your numbers are skewed. What, exactly, is your target client base? Looks like Windows-only, to me.

Re:There by default

[KingMotley]

Tourism web site

Re:There by default

[BronsCon]

Oh, so you're referring to the Java browser plugin. Yeah, you can have Java installed on your system without the browser plugin, or with the plugin disabled (as Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all do by default; I'm not sure if IE does, but I would assume so). the JRE is installed on a much larger number of systems than the stats you're gonna get from browser feature sniffing.

Reason why not to use Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is a legal mine field which is why developers and companies should stay far away from its use.

Legally correct decision with awful results

[Anon E. Muss]

(I actually read the court ruling before posting this)

tl;dr version: The results will likely be awful, but the decision appears legally correct.

Google won at trial because the judge decided that the Java API was not copyrightable. I absolutely believe that API's should not be copyrightable, but that isn't what the law says. Copyrightability has a very low threshold. The trial judge screwed up by applying legal standards related to fair use to the question of copyrightability. The appeals court was correct to reverse.

The case now goes back to the district court. There will be a new trail with a new jury, but the only issue will be whether Googe's copying of the Java API is fair use. The original jury deadlocked on this question. Fair use decisions are very subjective, so it's hard to predict how this will turn out. All I can say is that I hope Google wins.

P.S. None of this decision was related to patents. Oracle lost on their patent claims at trial, and that stands.

Re:Legally correct decision with awful results

[bbroerman]

I pray, in the name of developers everywhere, that Google wins. If not, our industry is screwed!

Re:Legally correct decision with awful results

[Garfong]

It kind of looks like the appeal court decision is setting this up for a potential appeal to the Supreme Court. The decision repeatedly talks about differences and conflicting rulings between different Circuits, which is one of the things the Supreme Court looks for when deciding whether to approve an apeal.

Re:Legally correct decision with awful results

[Tough Love]

I pray, in the name of developers everywhere, that Google wins. If not, our industry is screwed!

More screwed, you mean.

Re:Legally correct decision with awful results

[bill_mcgonigle]

The results will likely be awful, but the decision appears legally correct.

Which, if we had proper activist judges, would cause that part of the copyright regime to be struck down as unconstitutional.

It says right in the Constitution that the purpose of these monopoly grants is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. If the law causes harm in that regard, then the law is wrong.

Remember, the power flows: People -> Constitution -> Government -> Statutes. Well, that's the fairly tale, anyway - if nobody acutally follows it, is it really true? Anyway, that's the logic that got this government authorized in the first place - perhaps it was a con-game, but "fool me once" and all that.

Re:Legally correct decision with awful results

[Anonymous Coward]

Providing make a declaration of a function is "a creative work". That is not really sure: just a choice between some words.

Re:Legally correct decision with awful results

[Anonymous Coward]

Providing make a declaration of a function is "a creative work". That is not really sure: just a choice between some words.

When even just 4 musical note is copyrightable, you are going to have a hard time arguing that a function declaration isn't.

Re:Legally correct decision with awful results

[Anon E. Muss]

Splits in the circuits are more common than you might imagine, and the Supreme Court doesn't always resolve them. A lot depends on how substantial the split is. Minor differences don't always get resolved.

In any event, this case isn't "ripe" for appeal to the Supreme Court yet. The Supremes rarely get involved until all lower court proceedings have been exhausted, and this case just got sent back for retrial on the issue of fair use. The process can be maddening for the individual litigants, but it makes sense for the legal system overall.

Re:Legally correct decision with awful results

[Anonymous Coward]

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups milk, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more as needed

The above is not copyrightable.

Why the fuck should:

long skip(long n);

be copyrightable?

This is what we are talking about, an API, not implementation

IBM Should Be Warming Up

[StormReaver]

If this ruling doesn't get struck on appeal, IBM's lawyers should be drooling oceans as they warm up to sue Oracle for copyright infringement on SQL. Oracle owes IBM many billions of dollars in infringement, by Oracle's own logic.

This is yet another judge that is completely incompetent for the job.

Re:Fork! Fork! Fork!

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it run on my Android phone? If not, what's the point?

but why?

[Anonymous Coward]

A crap company claiming parts of a crap programming language. The irony is palpable. OK, Oracle, go for it!

Bye Bye Bye Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that means that Oracles business was 100% based on stolen code.

They ripped off IBM's database all source code, apis, etc to make their first Oracle Database - so that means it's all a sham and Oracle shouldn't exist.

So IBM, dust off your source history, with this ruling it's time to dissolve Oracle Corporation.

huh

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't the 1980's or 1990's anymore, 512gb Hard drives is the norm these days so those multiple identical libraries taking space is not a problem. I have 346 space left out of my 512gb.

Re:huh

[BronsCon]

RAM is still a scarce resource on most consumer level systems, however. Two Java applications sharing a JVM will load the JVM into RAM exactly once; two Java applications each with their own JVM, on the other hand...

I've got 408.5GB free of my 1TB, but that doesn't mean jack if I need to fit more than 16GB of that into RAM.

Re:huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is.

I didn't pay for 512GB and 1TB SSDs so that your all bloated libraries can spunk themselves all over my drives. I wanted to, you know, store my own data. Radical I know.

Those with the money

[nurb432]

Make the rules.

Thankfully both of these companies have lots of it, so it should continue to be an interesting ( and scary, due to its far reaching ramifications ) battle.

I blame Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have known better than to sell to Oracle. Also with the crappy license for their "compatibility test suite"

apis are language

[Anonymous Coward]

and you shouldn't fucking copyright language.

K.S. Kyosuke = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

K. S. Kyosuke: You've been called out (for tossing names) & you ran "forrest" from a fair challenge http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:K.S. Kyosuke = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

K.S. kyosucky is a trolling little illogical ad hominem attack using weasel that ran no doubt about it.

K.S. Kyosuke = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

K. S. Kyosuke: You've been called out (for tossing names) & you ran "forrest" from a fair challenge http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Until...

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL develops a new API, for proprietary customers only (they can).

MariaDB copies said interface.

Oracle take them to court.

You understand this isn't about Java. It is about 'the cloud', yes, but it's about the entire future of the computing world.

So what does that mean for OpenJDK?

[mark-t]

[nt]

Patents?

[Jeremy Erwin]

The Register notes

Google had also submitted expert testimony to the effect that copyright is the wrong legal standard by which to judge software code, and that software should be patentable but not copyrightable. Here, however, the Appeals Court found that it was not within its authority to decide such matters.

This seems like a very bad idea on Google's part.

The judges don't make the rules

[Chirs]

they only interpret them.

If the law was written such that APIs can be copyrighted, there's nothing the judge can do about that.

Goodbye Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

If an API is copyrightable, then Linux is illegal. It is just an implementation of the Unix API. This has HUGE implications.

Qt has GPL, LGPL, and Commercial License Options

[Kalium70]

Qt's "open source" version, cost $0, has included the option of LGPL licensing for quite some time now.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

See why .NET is no option in big business Apps...

[Anonymous Coward]

See the benchmarks:
- Minimum latency for each framework (1.2 ms vs much more)
- Throughput (200k vs at most half that), requirements...
- Alone this two points make .NET a hard sell to informed customers (if they need large fast stuff). And then there is vendor lock-in and available hardware (need a 1024 core machine for your solution, good luck if it is on Windows).

Note: mono numbers are even much worse, so no option for anything serious.
Note: MS shills are going to hate this post, please help to save it, thanks :-*

Updated benchmarks on real servers...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a newer benchmark round 9 with "real" servers (Dell R720xd dual-Xeon E5 v2 + 10 GbE instead of I7 + 1 GbE). This did not go well for .NET and Windows:

Benchmark with "real" servers:

- Throughput for Java went from 200k responses per second to over 800k (even 915k for gemini), it stayed more or less the same with .NET (108k for pure .NET listener)
- Minimum latency Java went from 1.2ms to 0.3-0.4ms. For pure .NET listener 10.1ms, so better hardware does not help you here either.

As you see, .NET and Java do not play in the same league, not even the same game if it is about large fast stuff.

Note: standard IIS and ASP are not longer tested. It would look too sad for them...
Note: yes you will cry "fan boy" again, but these are the hard facts, learn to live with it.

Re:Qt has GPL, LGPL, and Commercial License Option

[Grishnakh]

Oh really? Sorry, I didn't realize that that was now the case. Thanks!

Prior Art goes back to the 1960s

[middlebass]

FWIW, in the late 1960s and early 1970s is was common to replicate some of IBM's APIs in its DOS and OS operating systems. That was a standard for modifying system behavior. A simple example that I remember was writing renaming IBMs main job control routine JOBCTRLA to something like JOBCTLA2 and writing your own JOBCTRLA which would usually call JOBCTLA2 after it was done with its additional processing but might not. This was how job accounting was first implemented, i.e., reading additional info off job cards to determine who was to be charged for the job.

2nd Try - Interfaces are important

[emh203]

I would disagree on this. Interface design often is as important as the implementation. It can take a good deal of effort to design and test a *good* interface. it often requires just as much engineering as an implementation.

That being said, I don't think there is anything remarkable about Java. In some ways this decision is a good thing.

1.) it may turn off enough people to never use java (which is a good thing). It was a horrible idea and runs like dog crap on *everything*

2.) Google should be punished for using such a system on an embedded platform. The whole idea of an interpreted code language on a high performance embedded device is dumb. This is why Android phones:

a.) crash
b.) run like crap
c.) have horrible memory/system requirements.


And if you are concerned about the environment, think of the carbon footprint of these types of systems (Java, .net, etc). All those extra CPU cycles to interpret code using up power..... sigh.

Re:2nd Try - Interfaces are important

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ignorant.

Java is in no way an interpreted language. In nearly every case, Java code is compiled to native, and highly optimized native.

It is also almost the fastest thing you can use on long running server-based applications.

Sure, it uses more memory than C++, but it can compile to native with information that a C++ compiler can never have. Java often doesn't need nop sleds and can accurately unroll a loop whose iteration count is only knowable at runtime, precisely.

Space vs time is a basic tradeoff and can transform crappy O(n!) algorithms to O(some constant).

Good!

[Gallomimia]

Let that dumb language die. It's useless in every way except as a tool to learn coding in a simpler way.

Re:Good!

[abies]

Except is has nothing to do with java-the-language. It is about java-the-platform (runtime + libraries, mostly libraries in this particular case). You are calling to kill Clojure and Scala as well, just because you don't like java-the-language?

This is a radical decision

[werdna]

The question whether copyright existed to protect the "look and feel" of an application was open until the Supreme Court affirmed (4-4 en banc without opinion) the First Circuit decision in Lotus v. Borland. That case took decades to litigate, but addressed whether Borland was permitted in Quattro to execute Lotus 1-2-3 macros (the damned "/" tree of letter commands), even though the macro language was not aptentable. The mere "embodiment" of the "/" tree was deemed by Lotus to be protectible copyright. (In my view, Kapor should have been made a pariah for this assertion, but hey, its just me.)

The First Circuit held that when expression (if you can call the letter tree expression) equates to funtionality, it has merged with the unprotectible functionality. That has been the basis of almost all Copyright law since that time regarding reverse engineering and competition in the software industry. Any other rule would yield considerable chill to adopting new technologies, and in implementing imrpovements. The Internet itself might not have evolved as it did.

The most significant example was the Phoenix BIOS, a reverse-engineered implementation of the BIOS for the IBM PC that made clones possible. Under the Federal Circuit rule in Oracle, the Phoenix (and its progeny) would have been infringing, and we would live in a very different world than we do today.

I am cautiously optimistic that the Federal Circuit will take this matter up en banc and reverse, or perhaps SCOTUS will set it right. Until then, the conflict between Oracle and Borland cases will create a chilling uncertainty in the industry that will educate my granchildren's education, but serve little other good purpose.

In my view, an API merges with its functionality and should be unprotectable. That was the law everywhere in the United States, until today.