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Supreme Court May Decide the Fate of APIs (But Also Klingonese and Dothraki)

Posted by timothy on from the will-people-finally-stop-saying-frak? dept.

New submitter nerdpocalypse writes: In a larger battle than even Godzilla v. Mothra, Google v. Oracle threatens not only Japan but the entire nerd world. What is at stake is how a language can be [copyrighted]. This affects not just programming languages, APIs, and everything that runs ... well ... everything, but also the copyright status of new languages such as Klingon and Dothraki.

4 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. I don't get it by msobkow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why can't Google just ship an OpenJDK build for ARM instead of screwing around with breaking the portability contract of the byte code?

    This whole situation is the most asinine pissing match I have seen since SCO...

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    1. Re:I don't get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Don't get me wrong, GPL and FOSS is better than commercial, but if we expect the industry to respect GPL, so we need to respect the terms of others - as long as they are legal. If you suspect TOS/Copyright are not legal, you can choose not to use the product or challenge the license / copyright in courts. But you don't get to ignore other's copyright and TOS, sell billions of copies of stuff with dubious legal standing and only then claim, oh - I understood the terms, but thought they were not legal.

      ... allow, indisputably, commercial code for which source code is not provided ...

      Indisputably? Ahem...

      Dalvik doesn't get anybody out of any license, nor was that the intention. Certainly not GPL3 or Java EULA and copyright which at the centre of the dispute. If you think it does, please spec which aspect of which license and which court ruled so.

      Anybody can make a VM and release it under any terms, as did IBM, Symantec, Microsoft and many others, including non-commercial and foss implementations. They could have built their own, forked an existing one, or taken one off the shelf - sticking with Java bytecode - and still stake a claim similar to the one you propose. Instead, they deliberately chose to ingore the license. For that, they - and all android vendors - will pay, and keep paying.

  2. So in layman's terms... by tlambert · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So in layman's terms... the SFLC want the Supreme to refuse to hear the case, because they think that the copying of a trivial function, difficult to implement in any other embodiment, allows a "thin end of the wedge" argument in favor of GPL'ing everything on Android.

    They specifically cite the Lotus v. Borland case in support of this.

    They specifically avoid citing the Ashton Tate v. Fox Software case, because doing so would contradict their claims, and weaken the argument that the Supreme court should hear the case.

    Clearly, someone needs to file an Amicus brief citing Ashton Tate v. Fox Software, and suggest that the brief needs to be heard.

  3. Affects more than "entire nerd world" by walterbyrd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Article makes it sound like this is some silly squabble among nerds. Like an argument over a StarTrek episode.

    I suspect a lot of non-nerd people may be surprised about the far-reaching implications of this decision.