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

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.

Comments

Re:SFLC's brief explains parts of this well

[phantomfive]

What I gather is the linked article at Slate seems more ominous than this sounds.

The Slate article is sensationalistic, like most news these days, designed to make people feel outrage.

From the brief, I understand that Google took code and changed it (which may or may not be against the terms) and then redistributed it (via the SDK? the Android OS?) for developers to use.

Java was designed with the intention of every implementation to be 100% compatible.....the same APIs, the same runtime, etc. When Google made Android, they used an incompatible version of Java (mainly changing UI code, but also the runtime and some other things). They used Java to make things easier for developers.

So now the question is whether it is allowed for Google to do that, or if Oracle has the right to stop them. This isn't about whether you are violating copyright if you use a language, and that's one area the Slate article seems confused.

It is also not about whether you can use an API for interoperability purposes. That is covered by fair use, and will still be covered by fair use, no matter how this case is decided. But interoperability not why Android used Java.......Android used Java to make it easier for developers to write programs for their system.