Oracle Says Trial Wasn't Fair, It Should Have Known About Google Play For Chrome (arstechnica.com)

Two and a half months after a federal jury concluded that Google's Android operating system does not infringe Oracle-owned copyrights because its re-implementation of 37 Java APIs is protected by "fair use," Oracle's attorney says her client missed a crucial detail in the trial, adding that this detail could change everything. ArsTechnica reports: Oracle lawyers argued in federal court today that their copyright trial loss against Google should be thrown out because they were denied key evidence in discovery. Oracle attorney Annette Hurst said that the launch of Google Play on Chrome OS, which happened in the middle of the trial, showed that Google was trying to break into the market for Java SE on desktops. In her view, that move dramatically changes the amount of market harm that Oracle experienced, and the evidence should have been shared with the jury. "This is a game-changer," Hurst told U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who oversaw the trial. "The whole foundation for their case is gone. [Android] isn't 'transformative'; it's on desktops and laptops." Google argued that its use of Java APIs was "fair use" for several reasons, including the fact that Android, which was built for smartphones, didn't compete with Java SE, which is used on desktops and laptops. During the post-trial hearing today, Hurst argued that it's clear that Google intends to use Android smartphones as a "leading wedge" and has plans to "suck in the entire Java SE market. [...] Android is doing this using Java code," said Hurst. "That's outrageous, under copyright law. This verdict is tainted by the jury's inability to hear this evidence. Viewing the smartphone in isolation is a Google-gerrymandered story."In the meanwhile, Google attorney said Oracle was aware of Google's intentions of porting Android to laptops and desktops, and that if Oracle wanted to use this piece of information, it could have.

Comments

No tears

[Anonymous Coward]

No tears for Oracle

Re:No tears

[Big Hairy Ian]

Imagine if Oracle wrote a mobile phone operating system! I can only imagine the trailer you'd need to carry it around in and if you think current mobile operaters are expensive wait until you see an Oracle Mobile Phone Licensing agreement.

Re:No tears

[LifesABeach]

Dumb Ass lawyers couldn't present it as evidence? Amazing. But the one thing that amazes me most of all is the suing for using an API?! That is indeed a slippery slope, Oracle.

$23

[Austerity Empowers]

Here is the smallest violin I could find on short notice. Hopefully if enough of us play, it will drown out Oracle's wailing.

Re:$23

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ESgWlzQQag Playing a Sad Tune on World's Smallest Violin

Re:$23

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Oracle sound a lot like SCO? Only with deep pockets, not that has helped them.

"I have this extremely tenuous legal argument. You touched something of mine, now give me all your money and pay a tithe on all future work you do. It's all mine."
"I lost because you cheated. Now give me everything I want. It's all mine."

I can't see any of this getting any traction but then again I am not a lawyer.

Re:$23

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooo.... Free shipping...

Re:$23

[Dwedit]

You need THIS one...

Re:$23

[BarbaraHudson]

Pretty stupid because Android phones don't run any version of Java, and even if they were going after Java ME's market, there's nothing wrong with going after someone else's market. Agreements not to do so are illegal because they are anti-trust violations. Besides, Java ME was not for the desktop market, that was Java SE.

Now if you want to run Java on, say, a Chromebook, you have to actually install Java, as described here, and it will run Java for linux.

This is just lawyers running the meter.

Re:$23

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

even if they were going after Java ME's market, there's nothing wrong with going after someone else's market.

Oh My God, how dare you suggest such an un-American, anti-competitive thing like going after someone else's market! Is nothing sacred?

Some big company needs to sue you ASAP for such blasphemy!!

Re:$23

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

This one is smaller, and a few bucks cheaper:

Odoria 1:12 Violin

Approx.Size: 0.78"(L) x0.5"(W) x2.7"(H)

Re:$23

[phantomfive]

It was a beautiful day in court if you like courtroom drama. Some of the dialogue:

[Oracle attorney]Hurst throws her hands up. "It’s a fraud on the jury! It’s a mockery of the system!"

Google attorney responded by saying that Oracle already tried to bring ARC and other products into it, and that the court struck testimony about these products, because this limited retrial was frozen in time, looking at what was available in 2012.

Judge ALSUP to Google: "Do you concede that Oracle is entitled to bring a new lawsuit against any new product that was not in the first trial?"

Google: "YES"

ORACLE: "We certainly can sue, but that’s not why this verdict should be set aside."

later

(Flashback: key argument in the case was that Android did not compete with Java SE because it was not for desktop.)
Hurst throws up arms again and starts shouting, "This is outrageous! They’re lying to the jury!" (because Android on Chromebooks)

Judge ALSUP [trolling]: "We already said we’re going to have another trial on all of those other products."

Judge ALSUP: "Do you know how many Social Security claimants I can't rule on right now because you're arguing over a cost bill?"

source

Re:$23

[rtb61]

Android phones?, I certainly hope that Oracle's silly lawyers are not going to claim these a pocket devices https://www.sony.com.au/bravia..., unless they can show proof of giants with big enough pockets and Android TVs have been around for a while and most definitely are all in one desktop computers. For the majority of the consumer market, the combination of big screen all in one computer and tablet will replace the desktop computer (so technically Linux, Android is a Linux distribution, will beat out M$ on the desktop by replacing the desktop for consumers with the big screen tablet combination plus android notebooks or chrome books or good ole Ubuntu et al for schoolwork the major driver for most consumer desktop purchases).

Re:$23

[DrXym]

Oracle is just throwing money at this because it knows if some sticks it might get a huge payout and sink its claws into Android. Cynics might even think that the only reason they bought Sun in the first place was to acquire Java and sue Google for this opportunity.

Sadly for them it seems Google have been very careful about what they did, and Oracle are basically scraping the bottom of the barrel. The whole nonsense with SCO demonstrates that it could take a while yet before they give up.

Re:$23

[TheRaven64]

Pretty stupid because Android phones don't run any version of Java

I think that's a big part of their complaint. Sun and Oracle have given a patent and copyright grant for all of their Java-related IP to all fully conforming Java implementations. Android provides a non-conforming Java implementation (for example, attempting to install a SecurityManager on Android throws an exception, so you can't do fine-grained privilege separation in Google's version). This significantly decreases the value of the Java platform, because now you have to target Java and Google-Java as separate platforms. This is precisely the same complaint that Sun had against Microsoft, who produced an almost-compatible Java implementation.

Re:$23

[jabuzz]

The difference is that Microsoft took the Sun Java implementation and modified which broke the terms of the license they had from Sun for access to the source code.

Google just looked at the specification for the Java language, wrote their own compiler which produced a completely different bytecode (its register based as opposed to the stack based byte code of Java) and then wrote a virtual machine for that bytecode. Later they ditched the virtual machine and now compile the byetcode to native machine code when you install the application.

Re:$23

[silentcoder]

But, SUN lost their case - just as Oracle effectively lost this one.
They were however a victim in a separate, criminal case by the DOJ - but that was for a totally unrelated crime (antitrust violations).

  Now the question becomes - is google perhaps guilty of antitrust violations ? That's actually trickier - since that law is not so straightforward, the exact same behaviour in one context could violate it and in another comply with it. It's only an antitrust violation if the actions decrease competition in the market, in this instance google's actions actually INCREASE competition in the market over-all by any reasonable measure.
Chromebooks added a new type of competitor to the PC market, android broke Iphone's near monopoly over the phone market (and made smartphones cheap) etc. etc.

There are plenty of sectors where one could try to bring an antitrust case against google (advertising for one) but java isn't one of them.

Antitrust law isn't copyright law and even though in that instance it involved the same players around the same behaviour it had very different outcomes because these are different laws. You can't sue for antitrust violation - it's a purely criminal law and cases have to be brought by the US government.

Re:$23

[Big Hairy Ian]

Here is the smallest violin I could find on short notice. Hopefully if enough of us play, it will drown out Oracle's wailing.

That's for display purposes you can't play it. Here's the smallest functioning one I could find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:$23

[drinkypoo]

I think that's a big part of their complaint. Sun and Oracle have given a patent and copyright grant for all of their Java-related IP to all fully conforming Java implementations.

Google isn't using Oracle's IP. They reimplemented the APIs. Now Oracle is claiming that the APIs are protected, and we've just seen that they aren't.

Re:$23

[Anonymous Coward]

> Doesn't Oracle sound a lot like SCO?

So does Apple, and Red Hat.

Apple might be the worst patent troll of the lot. Red Hat is trying to monopolize Linux, just like scox tried to do.

Re:$23

[beastofburdon]

I'm very tempted to buy that now.

Re:$23

[TheRaven64]

Google isn't using Oracle's IP

This is repeated a lot in this thread, yet Google's own testimony indicates that they copied around 11,000 lines of code from Sun, that they knew that they needed a license, and attempted to negotiate one. The ruling was in their favour because the judge asked the jury to rule on whether their copyright infringement was fair use and the jury ruled that it was.

The previous ruling already establishes that Google did use Sun/Oracle's IP, but that this use specifically in the context of smartphones constitutes fair use.

Re:$23

[Anonymous Coward]

You're begging the question of whether those 11,000 lines are "IP", that is to say, works protected by copyright. This is exactly what Google is refuting.

Re:$23

[TheRaven64]

No, that those lines are covered by copyright owned by Oracle was admitted by Google. They claimed that their use was covered by Fair Use (which does not invalidate copyright, it is an affirmative defence against copyright infringement), which is what Oracle is now challenging because Fair Use is situation dependent.

Re:$23

[Anonymous Coward]

CEO Larry Page defends Google on the stand: “Declaring code is not code”

Get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad, Oracle, you lost. Time to move on. Don't be another SCO.

Google launching some service might mean a lot to you competitively, but the jury likely wouldn't give a damn.

Re:Get over it

[MightyMartian]

Not only that, but so the fuck what? Wow! Google Play for Chrome, which has about as much to do with Oracle as running Netflix on Chrome.

Re:Get over it

[Archangel Michael]

Google Play for Chrome, is about porting Android Apps to run as apps under Chrome (think Chromebooks).

IMHO the wheres and the whatfors don't really change anything. Either Google can use their re-engineered APIs or they can't. The court ruled ... they can.

Re:Get over it

[sjames]

Sure, but since the court ruled that Android isn't infringing, what does the potential profit have to do with it?

Re:Get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

The API argument has been through the courts many times. The was wrangling over alternate BIOS implementations when clones of the original IBM PC appeared. API based, clean room developed BIOSs are fully accepted now. The not so distant SCO / Unix lawsuit went through similar arguments and got nowhere trying to claim header copyrights. Oracle's complaint, from the limited amount I have read, seems awfully twisted and warped, or maybe technical would be a better description. From a distance it seems like bullshit and up close the smell does not get any better.

Oracle's legal team must be aware of the dismal prospects for success so what is really driving this? Crazy Oracle CEO? Overreaching law firm salivating over more billable time? Were they all hoping to luck out with an idiot jury or ignorant judges?

I wonder how long it will take to kill this case completely.

Re:Get over it

[swd99999999]

God sees everything as his.

Re:Get over it

[vux984]

IMHO the wheres and the whatfors don't really change anything. Either Google can use their re-engineered APIs or they can't. The court ruled ... they can.

I'm not siding with Oracle, but...

Just from reading the summary, it sounds like google made a fair-use defense.

And in a fair use defense the 'where and whatfors' you raise in your justfication for why its fair use absolutely matter.

Either Google can use their re-engineered APIs or they can't. The court ruled ... they can.

Lets say you format shifted your own personal cassette tapes to CD, for your own personal use. Then the music industry freaks out and comes after you... you make a fair use defense...

  you are only doing it for music you already own
  to convert it to a format you prefer to use
  yada yada yada.
  and you win the case

Then after the case ends, the music industry discovers that half way through the trial you started selling 'format shifting services' commercially...

This really is a whole other thing. You can't say "Either you can format shift, or you can't. The court ruled you can". The court ruled you can do it with music you own for your own use. They didn't rule you could do it as a commercial service for other people... that's potentially a whole new trial.

Similarly google, *as part of its defense*, claimed that it's implementation didn't compete with Oracle on the desktop. Then it launched a version that does run on the desktop.

Google should still win (IMO). But Oracle has a valid argument that that piece of the defense is no longer valid, and theoretically could change the outcome.

Re:Get over it

[farble1670]

And in a fair use defense the 'where and whatfors' you raise in your justfication for why its fair use absolutely matter.

So a billion Android devices is fair use, but add in 500k Chromebooks, and oh no, it's a different matter all together?

Re:Get over it

[jrumney]

Then after the case ends, the music industry discovers that half way through the trial you started selling 'format shifting services' commercially...

Bad analogy. The case here is more like "the music industry discovers that half way through the trial you started format shifting to vinyl as well as CD".

The court ruled that your format shifting from cassette to CD was fair use, and it being vinyl now doesn't really change the fair use aspect of that.

Re:Get over it

[Dragonslicer]

So a billion Android devices is fair use, but add in 500k Chromebooks, and oh no, it's a different matter all together?

Oracle's argument is that a billion devices in a market that Oracle isn't in may be fair use, but 500k devices in a market that Oracle is in makes it a different matter. It will be up to a judge and/or jury to decide.

Re:Get over it

[vux984]

So a billion Android devices is fair use, but add in 500k Chromebooks, and oh no, it's a different matter all together?

Its qualitative not quantitative.

Listen to AC/DC in your living room a billion times with a billion different friends is fair use. Start paying your brother to DJ the odd party or rent a hall, and throw the party there, and its a different matter altogether.

Re:Get over it

[vux984]

The case here is more like "the music industry discovers that half way through the trial you started format shifting to vinyl as well as CD".

My analogy wasn't perfect, but this is not really any better.

Oracles main argument is that Google went from "not being in its market space" to "being in its market space". Therefor it went from not harming it to harming it. And that's more than just "vinyl vs cassette vs CD".

To try a better analogy -- it would be like Apple suing me for trademark infringement for my Apple brand bbq cover business; and me winning in part because our markets don't overlap... but midway through the trial Apple discovers I started selling covers for phones and laptops...

*IF* google won its fair used defense because it "wasn't competing on the desktop" then it matters. IF that was entire superfluous and google would win regardless then it doesn't. In my opinion it doesn't matter. Nevertheless google did raise the point as part of its defense, so oracle has a legitimate nit to pick.

Re:Get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, "fair use" is the argument that Google used because it stands up against the claims made by Oracle. If this "porting Play" had been introduced in the trial Google had plenty to blow the argument up.

Ample precedent exists for commercial use of public APIs. It seems to boil down to whether certain APIs fell under the "public" banner and the court decided that Google's assumptions about what they could use were fair and supported by the law.

The "Google Play Store" angle is weird because it has nothing to do with the core arguments. Further, the lawyer says their client (Oracle) failed to consider it as a factor. Trying to introduce a new argument in an appeal is usually hard to do, especially when it is based on knowledge that is widely known (ie: it ain't new evidence). As far as I know, appeals aren't a do-over court. Oracle's lawyers would have to argue that the judge made an error.

eh, maybe Oracle is successful and get another crack at it. The "porting Play" argument is as thin or thinner than their original claims. Don't see it making any difference in the outcome unless an idiot jury is selected in a new trial. Oracle playing jury roulette?

I think Oracle's lawyers are making out like bandits. Who wouldn't love a client with lots of money and who likes to tilt at windmills?

Re:Get over it

[jrumney]

Or to use a real example, like Apple Records suing Apple Computers for trademark infringement, and coming to a settlement that involves both sides agreeing that they will stay out of each others markets (except this agreement didn't happen in Oracle vs Google, the court ruled instead that it was fair use), then at a later stage Apple Computers completely owning the Music business, and ... the court ruled in Apple Computer's favor.

Trademark is not copyright though, and it isn't really right to use a trademark analogy for a copyright dispute.

Re: Get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything at Oracle is twisted and warped

Re:Get over it

[sjames]

Market space would be relevant to trademarks, but not to a fair use of an API. Since it was legal to re-implement the API, it is legal wherever that re-implementation might be used.

Re:Get over it

[vux984]

Since it was legal to re-implement the API, it is legal wherever that re-implementation might be used.

Legal to reimplement yes. But perhaps not legal to USE it.

Just as its perfectly legal to record yourself reading a book, but where and how you can use that recording is a whole other question.

Re: Get over it

[p91paul]

A previous court ruled Google was indeed infringing copyright; the latest trial did not overturn that, but did rule it was fair use; now if the rationale behind the decision was that Google did not use Oracle code to compete with Oracle because of different platform (phones vs computer), then Oracle's point might be considered valid. The fact that the Android runtime is built to run Android apps but not arbitrary Java code still invalidates it in my opinion, but that is up to Google lawyers to demonstrate.

Re: Get over it

[drakaan]

If it's fair use, then we're talking about re-implementing the API being fair use, not how it's used after the fact. How that re-implemented API is used is not part of the discussion of whether re-implementing the API is fair use. The copyrighted elements were solely the API method signatures, and not any source code. If this had been a court case over patents (which is a whole other level of ridiculous, when talking about software, so thankfully it wasn't), then how the APIs were used and what they did would be at issue. The fact that Chrome has the ability to execute android application bytecode doesn't impact that argument.

Re:Get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

yes and oracle being pedantic in a way that we all know makes no difference only makes them look like an even bigger load of dicks

Re:Get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but the point is that the 1 billion Androids issue should remain settled, while the 500k Chromebook issue can get tried separately.

I do like how the Google lawyer didn't even try to claim that Chromebooks didn't infringe, just said, "Yup, that is a new thing that they could sue us over."

Re:Get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like if "Joe Smith" wrote a book that was superficially like Lord of the Rings, sold ten million copies, and was sued for copyright violation. The court determines Joe Smith didn't violate copyright. Joe Smith, in the middle of the trial, releases a new book. This new book, whether or not it violates the Tolkien Estate's copyrights, doesn't affect the trial of the earlier story and can't be grounds for appeal.

Re:Get over it

[david_thornley]

The commercial use of copyrighted APIs is usually based on interoperability. Copyright (at least in the US) is not intended to stop people from doing things, but to stop them from doing things in the same form. If I'm writing software that lives on one side or the other of an API, I have to implement the API, so that's OK. I don't get the right to copy code that I can rewrite my own way.

The problem with this from Google's point of view is that Android Java wasn't designed to be interoperable with Oracle's Java, in the sense that people don't usually write Java programs with the intention that they'll run on the JVM and on Dalvik without change. Oracle argued that Google was copying the APIs in order to give programmers a more familiar environment, rather than allowing interoperability, and this means that Google's fair use argument is weaker than usual.

I'd be reasonably happy with a ruling that APIs are copyrightable, and that they may be copied freely for interoperability. That would allow us to use them as we normally do. That would also leave Google in trouble. The only downside is that it would help Oracle.

SCO had a better case

[Anonymous Coward]

And was more gracious to IBM

Unbreakable

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when Oracle was a software vendor rather than an IP troll?

Re:Unbreakable

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Re:Unbreakable

[arth1]

Remember when Oracle was a software vendor rather than an IP troll?

Um, no? Was that back when they were RSI?

From the start, Oracle's model appears to have been centered on IP trolling their own customers, making them pay for strange things like potential users and counting data collection devices as users (along with any human who ever touches said devices).

Re: Unbreakable

[Luthair]

I thought they were a software licencing troll.

Re:Unbreakable

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when /b/ was good?

Re: Unbreakable

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they were a software licencing troll.

^^^ THIS!!!!

Re: Unbreakable

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off.

Re:Unbreakable

[Maritz]

Was wondering why there was a spike in dumbass racism around here.

Re: Unbreakable

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the guy that's profiling.

Newsflash: Lawyer intentionally misrepresents...

[BenJeremy]

...facts in a case.

Fair use is fair use. It has nothing to do with competing. The lawyer is confusing that with trademark law, and probably should be disbarred for being either completely obtuse and ignorant of the law she claims to know, or disbarred for being a majorly disingenuous douchebag and outright lying.

Nah

[Njorthbiatr]

You should be paying Google for keeping Java alive and interest in it high. If anything they make you money. A lot of it.

So go fuck yourself Oracle. You and your dying platform.

Re:Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Fuck Oracle.

Re:Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, Oracle has done far more to harm Java over the last few years than Google, their behaviour towards the Java development community has been actively driving developers to other platforms.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2016/07/oracle-killing-java-ee/

Re:Nah

[aralin]

I don't think you quite understand this case. Oracle is trying to utterly and thoroughly to lose this case, but to litigate it in every single possible angle. They are trying to do the same thing Google did to them to Amazon in the Cloud and they want to make sure that there is an ironclad precedent. Oracle even hired a team of former Amazon people to do a reimplementation of AWS API for them.

This case is not about Java at all. In fact it is going to hugely benefit both Oracle and Google. But oh well, keep your emotions high if you like.

Re:Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

That does sound like the real reason to me ! Well spotted !

Re:Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more about Oracle doing everything in its power to stab what's left of Sun's corpse into oblivion.

They've beaten this dead horse for many trials, and as they've been no stranger to the "well Sun's dead, we own it now" style of re-licensing, I can't say that I care what Oracle's end-game is. But what I can say is their meddling is like every other big corporation tossing lawyers into the Thunderdome. WE lose.

Re:Nah

[Shortguy881]

That could be a permanent mod option. I'd use it daily.

Boo Fucking Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oracle" another government created monstrosity out to screw the people no matter what! See also: Monsanto

Captcha: deficit

Re:Boo Fucking Hoo

[Tablizer]

"Oracle" another government created monstrosity out to screw the people no matter what!

Government-created? No. Private org.

If you mean many of their customers are gov't entities, you are correct.

Oracle's RDBMS was actually revolutionary when it came out. Before that you had difficult-to-use DB's such as IMS and CODASYL's pasta-like children.

SQL is not perfect, but it was a big step up. SQL was invented/defined by IBM, but they dragged their feet on in it, fearing it would hurt their IMS cash cow. Oracle released the first commercial RDBMS, and it was a hit because the alternatives sucked.

You have to give them credit for that, even though they are slimy with regard to lawyers and sales gimmicks.

Re:Boo Fucking Hoo

[denis-The-menace]

IOW: Oracle use some of the SQL query language from IBM and created an entire company around it.

Good thing Oracle lost. IBM could have sued them into oblivion!

Re:Boo Fucking Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Oracle" another government created monstrosity out to screw the people no matter what!

I think the OP meant that the weird legal framework around IP - enforced by govt, of course - is what created Oracle.

Oracle wasn't created by govt, and its software is genuinely useful and many of their products are broadly admired. But their sales and legal practices, as you say, are prety grim, and they became a monstrosity because they work hard to bend the law that should be protecting us to their advantage. This whole API case is an example, though thankfully they seem to have lost it.

Google obviously could have made Android..

[JMZero]

..without Java, easily, and I'm sure now they wish they had. They've learned their lesson, and everyone should learn the same lesson from this case: "avoid Oracle, avoid Java".

Oracle is a snake that will bite you as soon as it feels hungry or threatened in any way. Java is no longer a free standard with tools that'll bootstrap your project and help you inter-operate, now it's a Trojan horse that could spill open and burn your business, or at very least can be yanked out from under you at any time (if you aren't willing to pay up or hire good lawyers).

Re: Google obviously could have made Android..

[Anonymous Coward]

Google bought Android, they didn't build it.

Re:Google obviously could have made Android..

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Oracle did not own Java when Google made android. Oracle bought Java later.

Old owner of Java - Sun - had no problem with google.

So problems are with proprietary software. New owners - new rules - new problems.

Re:Google obviously could have made Android..

[Dan East]

This is very much the case, given the fact that all Android devices run on the same family of processor. One of the key points of Java, the VM, is binary executable portability, which isn't even an issue for Android at all. Google could have just created a standard compiler for Java (the language) to produce ARM assembly if they were so in love with that particular language. Or pulled an Apple and used some obscure (at the time) language like Objective-C. Or they could have just used... gasp... C++. Or pulled another Apple and created a new language like Swift.

Re:Google obviously could have made Android..

[Dragonslicer]

I had a similar thought: did Google decide to use Java as the programming language for Android, or did AOSP make that decision before Google was involved?

Re:Google obviously could have made Android..

[Anonymous Coward]

> given the fact that all Android devices run on the same family of processor.

Android runs on ARM 32, ARM 64, x86, x86-64, and MIPS. How are these 'one family' ?

> Google could have just created a standard compiler for Java (the language) to produce ARM assembly

Even within ARM there are different instruction sets: v6, v7, v8.

Please learn stuff before pontificating.

Re:Google obviously could have made Android..

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this is the real reason Google is working on Fuchsia OS? And switching to Dart?

Re:Google obviously could have made Android..

[Mathinker]

> binary executable portability, which isn't even an issue for Android at all

On the contrary, the AC which replied to you has shown that, as expected, the hardware on which Android runs is evolving quite quickly. If you were to install Linux would you choose to install a 32-bit version compiled for a Pentium processor?

> Google could have just created a standard compiler for Java (the language) to produce ARM assembly if they were so in love with that particular language

They would then be dependent on Oracle for any extensions they would want to add, or anyway be in the same boat they are today, more or less. The fact that the patent side of the case was thrown out very early in the proceedings means that Google's judgement was quite good (surprisingly so, since all cases, once they get to court, have a large element of luck).

Java is not just a "particular language", it was and still is one of the most widely used languages in the world, especially in the segment of devices like smartphones. You have to put Google's decision in context, when they made this decision Android had exactly 0% market share. Your argument is clouded by Android's subsequent success.

Re:Google obviously could have made Android..

[phantomfive]

The reason they didn't was because they felt they were on a timer......they had to beat Microsoft to market with a reasonable system. I think they would have been fine with a C based system, but a lot of people disagree.

Re:Google obviously could have made Android..

[Dog-Cow]

Google created AOSP. I think you meant to ask if the original creator of Android chose Java before Google was involved.

Re:Google obviously could have made Android..

[Anonymous Coward]

Google chose Java, they started the Dalvik project after they bought Android in 2005.

If you ask me, choosing Java was the single biggest mistake they made with Android. You want phone software (especially in 2005!) to be lean and fast. I would have no qualms if they simply supported Java, but putting all their eggs in that basket was dumb.

Just stop using Java

[Anonymous Coward]

In other related news, the lawyer quoted in tfa was reported to have said "people should just stop using fucking java"

However, this could easily be attributed to the geek sitting behind her at macd's so this has not been reported as fact.

Almost Comical at this Point

[nateman1352]

Trying to argue that Chrome isn't trans-formative when compared to Java SE is so ridiculous its almost funny. You can only run litigious business like Oracle based on making everyone else pay a protection racket for so long.

News to me

[MrLint]

TIL that there is a "entire Java SE market"

Re:News to me

[Anonymous Coward]

And not just any "Java SE market", either!

No! It's a "Java SE market *for desktops*"!!

I mean, Who knew???

So sick of Patent Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

So sick of litigious big companies. Patent abuse is an election non-issue. Why haven't we been able to shake Congress up into fixing this mess?

Re: So sick of Patent Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're only supposed to care about terrorism, immigrants, and the possibility of losing your job if you complain too loudly.

Shut up and get back to work, citizen.

Re:So sick of Patent Trolls

[Quarters]

Your statement has no relevance to this story or the trial whatsoever. Oracle v. Google dealt with copyright and fair use. Patent abuse/trolling is an entirely different issue.

As for 'shaking up' Congress to fix the not-relevant-to-this issue, would you care to elaborate on what you've done in that regard?

Re:So sick of Patent Trolls

[hucker75]

Both issues are the same crap. It's mine, I did it first. FFS, share people....

Re:So sick of Patent Trolls

[Rakarra]

Your statement has no relevance to this story or the trial whatsoever. Oracle v. Google dealt with copyright and fair use. Patent abuse/trolling is an entirely different issue.

This entire lawsuit has been an enormous trolling and power grab by Oracle.

While I despise this crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is sure getting their monies worth out of their lawyers.

JavaSE supports ChromeOS?

[sanosuke001]

I didn't know JavaSE supported the ChromeOS platform. You learn something new every day /sarcasm

Re:JavaSE supports ChromeOS?

[BarbaraHudson]

It doesn't, but you can make it work with linux, which is really the underlying OS. ChromeOS is more of a shell or desktop environment.

Re: Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I came here to specifically say this and saw it was covered, not sure why it was down modded.

Translation for our sports fans

[Opportunist]

"Our running back fumbled, and he really wasn't supposed to, could we repeat the down?"

Re:Translation for our sports fans

[Anonymous Coward]

funny. I think it's even closer, American sport ball

  "hey ref, I fumbled the ball even tho no one laid a hand on me. The ball was recovered by the other team who ran it in for a touchdown. I'm gonna be benched by the coach. Can we get a do over?, throw the review flag ? *something* ?"

Re:Translation for our sports fans

[Anonymous Coward]

This is /.

We user car analogies, not sports analogies, you insensitive clod.

Re:Translation for our sports fans

[Opportunist]

Fine.

Imagine VW saying "Hey, you know, those emission limits... it ain't fair to be fined, we didn't know you could actually find out about it!"

The Midas Touch

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr Ellison is kind of like King Midas. History books will one day document King Ellison as the man with the magic touch. Except everything he touches turns brown and smells foul.

Re:The Midas Touch

[Anonymous Coward]

He is without a doubt the real-life Lex Luthor.

Incompetent counsel

[tomhath]

Oracle is claiming their lawyer was so incompetent that the wrong verdict was reached.

So now the judge is supposed to believe that same lawyer when she suggests that Oracle should have a new trial.

Sure.

Re:Incompetent counsel

[hey!]

Oh, their argument is nowhere so coherent.

Re:Incompetent counsel

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Oracle is claiming their lawyer was so incompetent that the wrong verdict was reached.

So now the judge is supposed to believe that same lawyer when she suggests that Oracle should have a new trial.

Sure.

Not exactly, but you're kind of close. Oracle is claiming that Google failed to give them critical information in discovery and that this information would have led to a completely different verdict. There may or may not be a subtle implication that their own lawyer was at fault for not figuring this out sooner or they may be saying that Google simply hid stuff from them. I don't care enough to read the docs to try to figure it out as best I can as a non-lawyer. Sometimes legal documents use negative language or say things the opposite of how normal people would say it and if you haven't been trained in that stuff, you can come to the wrong conclusion. My best friend is a lawyer and he's taught me a lot about how the law really works over the years, but I'm just an informed amateur.

You might note that in the past it was known in death penalty cases for the accused to defend themselves so that if they got convicted, they could then claim on appeal that they had incompetent legal representation (themselves). The courts don't allow those kind of appeals any more, which is why when the accused want to defend themselves, some judges won't allow it. Even though appellate courts probably (NOTHING is 100% sure in the legal world) won't allow people who represented themselves to appeal on the basis of having incompetent legal help, lower courts almost always make some PD attend the trial as an adviser just in case. While this is not a death penalty case, I can't say that there's no chance that someone in court wouldn't indeed argue basically "Yes, when we went to trial my lawyer was incompetent and missed something but now you need to listen to him/her because they're got their act together". If normal people knew what really goes on in the US legal system, they would be appalled. For example, it's not unheard of for the DA's office to drop charges for real crimes where they know the accused is guilty simply because the accused hired a lawyer and the DA's office can't be bothered to show up in court and actually prosecute the case. I'm not saying this happens in murder cases and I'm not saying it happens most of the time, but it definitely happens.

Give them an award!

[Anonymous Coward]

We should enforce this with triple damages over the final award. So let's see... Three times naught is ... Naught. Ok Oracle here's your zero dollars award for being extra special and not understanding fair use.

If I under fair use copy the first few bars of a song it doesn't matter if I distribute a thousand, millions or billions of copies of my work ... It's still fair use.

Personally the appeals court and original court, in my opinion, made an incorrect ruling. I feel APIs are not copyright-able. It leads to bizarre copyright issues. Like int foo(float a); being under the copyright of int foo(int a); as a derived work. It already is simpler and a model to copy for recipes. The interface api should be analogous to the ingredient list, not subject to copyright, and the description of the process to manipulate the ingredients like the implementation of the API should be copyright-able.

Re:Newsflash: Lawyer intentionally misrepresents..

[Dutch Gun]

or disbarred for being a majorly disingenuous douchebag and outright lying.

So, she should be disbarred for being a lawyer?

Sue, sue, sue..

[h8sg8s]

Larry would rather sue for imagined damages than compete in the market. Lawyers are better bang/buck than engineers, at least in his thinking.

Re:Sue, sue, sue..

[Strider-]

He needs to finance his next America's Cup yacht somehow...

Re:Sue, sue, sue..

[Myria]

Larry would rather sue for imagined damages than compete in the market. Lawyers are better bang/buck than engineers, at least in his thinking.

That's the thing...they usually are.

Re:Sue, sue, sue..

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when that shit used to be televised? An aerial shot of two boats in the ocean, side by side for three hours. It was literally as exciting as watching paint dry.

Oracle's fishing for a reason to appeal

[frank_adrian314159]

Oracle needs grounds for an appeal. I'm happy they're having to stretch this far to find some. Pity that they could find any...

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's best to support companies that blatantly steal IP.

Annette must have been on a % of the award

[billrp]

And she got nothing but sour grapes

Re:Newsflash: Lawyer intentionally misrepresents..

[BenJeremy]

It's not a bad reason.

In this case, however, for being too much of a lawyer.

Kick Oracle right in their cash-cow

[Tablizer]

Google should purchase the PostgreSql organization, improve the database's compatibility with Oracle, improve the documentation, and stick links to it everywhere. If anybody googles with "Oracle" in the search phrase, include a link to PostgreSql in their ads.

Re:Kick Oracle right in their cash-cow

[Anonymous Coward]

They could dogfood by using it to run their Fiber business.

Re:Kick Oracle right in their cash-cow

[johannesg]

For the love of God, please don't. That way we would end up with ads in our query results, and three years down the line it gets discontinued without warning.

Besides, they could simply translate 'oracle' into 'postgresql' in all web searches without messing PostgreSQL up. May be hard on the people trying to learn about the PostgreSQL of Delphi, but for the rest I don't see much of a problem.

Re:Kick Oracle right in their cash-cow

[aralin]

EnterpriseDB already makes compatibility layer for Oracle over PostgreSQL. Paradoxically it helps Oracle, because as soon as EnterpriseDB stops scaling, it is easily replaced by Oracle Cluster.

Re:Kick Oracle right in their cash-cow

[Anonymous Coward]

improve the documentation,

How the hell can they do that? Postgres's documentation is one of the best around already.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[johanw]

Imaginary property can't be stolen, only copied. If they stole it, somehow Oracle would not be able to use Java anymore, which I doubt very much.

Re:Newsflash: Lawyer intentionally misrepresents..

[Dragonslicer]

Fair use is fair use. It has nothing to do with competing.

This page and this page seem to disagree.

The lawyer is confusing that with trademark law, and probably should be disbarred for being either completely obtuse and ignorant of the law she claims to know, or disbarred for being a majorly disingenuous douchebag and outright lying.

Somebody is confused, but I don't think it's that lawyer.

Seems familiar somehow

[Anonymous Coward]

During the next decade of this lawsuit's resurrections, make sure to pay your $699 Java licensing fee you cock-smoking teabaggers.

Re:Newsflash: Lawyer intentionally misrepresents..

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't blame the lawyer in this case, it's more of a case of company culture...

Oracle is known to be highly litigious and they are known to leverage these legal tools even when it's disingenuous if it might improve the bottom line. I have no doubt they are even rewarding this behaviour to encourage it further.

Isn't it about the Android API's?

[Anonymous Coward]

If so what would it matter other than that?

Wait, I know the difference...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison...

Re:Wait, I know the difference...

[UnknownSoldier]

... sadly Larry Ellison thinks he's God.

Re: Wait, I know the difference...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that was rather clearly implied in the previous post.

Re: Wait, I know the difference...

[binarylarry]

Yes but I think that's what the original post was saying.

Here's what most people don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

When people sue each other (or another corporation), the laws give a certain amount of leeway because they're not lawyers, and people don't have the resources to understand the details of contracts or law.

But large multi-billion dollar corporations don't get that "courtesy". They spend millions on lawyers to understand what they want to present to the judge and/or jury, and if they forgot something, tough luck.

Oracle is failing. Nobody buys Oracle anymore unless they must, not because it's best. Relational databases are a commodity, and people are moving away from RDBMS, and Oracle hasn't found anything else to generate revenue.

They're so screwed right now. And they earned it.

Re:Here's what most people don't understand

[firewrought]

The Judge should've jailed all their C-level executives under the ancient English common law principal that there is no crime more heinous than unleashing really crappy installers and flaky database drivers upon an innocent world.

Re:Here's what most people don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

That law would fit well with Game of Codes.

Oracleowned copyrights on Java

[khz6955]

"Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems (JAVA), met me for breakfast at an unassuming little restaurant in a strip mall tucked into the woods a few minutes’ drive from his house. We discussed one of his recent passions: applying technology’s open-source model to education. Sun was an early proponent of open source, giving the concept a huge boost when it opened up its Java software. And McNealy funded and helped promote a project called Curriki to create open-source textbooks that will ultimately be free, via the Internet. ref

Re: Newsflash: Lawyer intentionally misrepresents.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell no. We are experts in all subjects here. Why, I passed the bar three times today!

Google made Java popular on the mobile market!

[grumpy-cowboy]

Oracle must thanks Google for that !!

Re:Google made Java popular on the mobile market!

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have to. They already had over a billion Java ME based phones in service with paid licenses.

Re:Google made Java popular on the mobile market!

[drinkypoo]

They don't have to. They already had over a billion Java ME based phones in service with paid licenses.

Upon which most users never bothered to tun a Java MIDlet, which is truly write once and debug everywhere. Publishers had to go so far as to publish multiple versions of their MIDlets for different phones sold by the same manufacturer at the same time because a MIDlet for one device would rarely run on another. This was in large part because Sun permitted phone makers to support as much or as little of the API as they wanted. Even devices with hardware support for some feature would often be denied it simply as part of the market positioning of the device.

If you compare the percentage of users with phones which could run MIDlets who actually did so with the percentage of users with smartphones who download apps for it, you'll see that Java ME was an also-ran. It may have been supported everywhere, but it was hardly used anywhere. Phones overwhelmingly did NOT ship with any of their basic functionality cooked into MIDlets, because Java ME was so garbage. It was used almost exclusively for games, and cellphone games were horrible back then.

Copyright troll company

[XSportSeeker]

Are we to expect whinning everytime Google uses Android for something good now?

And are you really complaining that Android for Chrome OS of all things is trying to compete with Java SE? HA! Man, what a joke.

Your famously insecure platform that you kept spending money to falsely advertise as secure, while not patching it as you should, to the point you had to be sued by the FTC to come clean about it?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

Fuck you Oracle. Even if your case had any hint of truth to it, you have no right to complain.
There is nothing better for the public than competition to a company as irresponsible as yours.

I wanna see they going back to the courts to get owned once again... pretty clear that there are some delusional people in charge of the legal team there.

Lol, wut

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Oracle's attorney says her client missed a crucial detail in the trial, adding that this detail could change everything. ArsTechnica reports"

Yeah, well, unless I'm misreading this whole thing, that sounds like a screwup by Oracle or their attorneys and not something Google can be held accountable for.

"Your Honor, we fucked up, so errr, we need a do-over, yeah, that's the ticket!"

Re:Lol, wut

[phantomfive]

Yeah, well, unless I'm misreading this whole thing, that sounds like a screwup by Oracle or their attorneys and not something Google can be held accountable for.

Their argument is that Google should have given that info to them during discovery.

Re:Lol, wut

[drinkypoo]

Their argument is that Google should have given that info to them during discovery.

The counter-argument is that Oracle was fully aware of their actions, and that they are not required to tell them that air contains oxygen or that water is wet, either.

Re:Lol, wut

[phantomfive]

The counter-argument is that Oracle was fully aware of their actions, and that they are not required to tell them that air contains oxygen or that water is wet, either.

That's not the counter-argument, that's some BS you just made up. There was a counter-argument, and it's rather entertaining.

Re: Newsflash: Lawyer intentionally misrepresents

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't you just go in?

Java on the desktop?

[Rexdude]

Google was trying to break into the market for Java SE on desktops

What 'market for Java SE on the desktop'? Applets were dead in the water after Flash was launched...some 18-20 years ago. Java has only ever been used to run application servers since then, there is no killer app for the desktop that had people wilfully downloading the JRE in droves. Alternately, I'd love for Oracle to point me to the humungous list of Java based desktop applications that Android is supposedly taking over.

Re:Java on the desktop?

[Jesus_666]

Well, there was a few years ago: Minecraft. Dunno what Minecraft runs on these days but back then is was a bog-standard Java app.

Re:Java on the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I run Minecraft these days, it's just cd ~/.minecraft; java -jar Minecraft.jar, so still standard Java AFAICS. That's on an Ubuntu desktop. I created an icon to do that for the kids.

Re:Java on the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been a few popular applications over the years. Though whether you want to call them "killers" or not may depend on your perspective.. However, apart from Minecraft which might be the most widely spread java program there is also for instance Eclipse and Azure which certainly had/have a fair number of users.

Re:Java on the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really bog-standard...it uses OpenGL via JNI. Pretty close though.

Re:Java on the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still bog standard Java.

It taught me how to install a 64-bit Java engine through a 32-bit browser, which Oracle makes annoyingly difficult.

Re:Java on the desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

And here we are, 18-20 years later, rapidly approaching the post Flash world, and it can't come soon enough.

I don't have anything to add to this conversation other than to add a "fuck Adobe" to all the "fuck Oracle" posts here.

CHROME IS FOR FBI ONLY, GOOGLE IS SPY 100%

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder it is on Slashdot the FBI choice for social engineering of late.

Use no Chrome. Chrome still don't get you home.

Hard Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

"her client missed a crucial detail in the trial, adding that this detail could change everything."

Life Sucks , Karma Baby!

N

Surely Some Mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

The case was always about the mobile Java, with its different license terms from the Java SE. Arguing that the desktop use case as infringing is ... a great way of ridding the whole computing ecosystem from the pain that is Java!! :))

Good !

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing like watching two unpleasant companies burning money in a protracted court case. It's one of those where you'd really like both sides to lose - shame they can't bring Microsoft and Facebook to the party as well.

I know that many will resent the lawyers making rich pickings - but at least they're milking two companies who can both afford and deserve it and while they're busy there they aren't harassing 'ordinary' people.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Maritz]

Yea. Oracle wanted to throw the entire software industry into huge uncertainty just so they could rent-seek on others' work. They're cunts, end of. It's extremely gratifying that they lost and I'm enjoying their current whinging.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Maritz]

All the code was written from scratch, dickhead. Enjoy your tears, I certainly am.

The Tech Lawyer Zombie Apocalypse is upon us! Run!

[John Allsup]

First SCO, the Lawsuit-That-Never-Dies, and now this: Oracle trying to turn Oracle vs Google into another one. The disease is spreading, infecting the minds of greedy businessmen and tech lawyers. The number of people susceptible is that large, and they have masses of resources at their disposal to accelerate the spread of the ObsessiveCompulsiveLaunchATechZombieLawsuitThatNeverDies disease. Run for your lives! Were all doomed! Doomed, I tell you! Doomed!

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

All the code was written from scratch

Not the APIs. The class/field/method signatures, their documentation/specifications were stolen for all thousands of APIs. Stop yammering about the implementation 37 APIs. We are talking about API specifications, not implementation. Enjoy supporting thieves like Google.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Shortguy881]

That's a joke, right? Imagine a world where every company required their own type of wall outlet (Apple would love this.. just saying). API's are the software world's equivalent of a standard. The real magic happens behind the scenes.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

>> All the code was written from scratch

> Not the APIs.

He did say "code."

Google maintains that descriptions of interfaces to code are not code, and I agree.

Waaah!

[haapi]

Some things age well, such as this: http://ars.userfriendly.org/ca...

Management applications

[phorm]

Most of where I've seen java on desktop was for certain management applications that needed cross-OS compatibility, but even that small niche still pales compared to the in-browser stuff (which means you have to enable browser Java applets, which is not a good idea security wise).

What used to drive me nuts is apps that were written in Java and *could* have been nicely cross-platform *IF* the developers had actually taken 5 seconds to allow variable paths instead of hardcoding windows drives and paths (C:, D:, etc) in there. Lots of interesting software, but implementation was always a huge fail.

Re:Management applications

[Rexdude]

Applets get a bad rap, their later Java Web Start was meant to create regular desktop apps with the flexible deployment of a web app, but again it didn't catch on. By 2000-2001, JSP had started becoming popular as a rival to ASP from Microsoft.

Re:Management applications

[phorm]

Given the number of security issues with Java, it's probably good it didn't catch on. It's been hard enough ditching flash, but at least Java-web is used rarely enough I can disable or uninstall it on most browsers.

Skip Oracle

[phorm]

Last time I tried it, Minecraft ran nicely on OpenJDK. This is especially helpful if you're a non-windows person (Linux, BSD, etc) as OpenJDK is often included in the package management system whereas the Oracle version is not.

Re:Skip Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second this. In fact, I haven't encountered anything in many years that hasn't run flawlessly on OpenJDK.

If your Java app doesn't work on OpenJDK, it's because you are a shit programmer.

Show me that it competes with Java SE

[Anonymous Coward]

So it runs on a desktop, whoopie friken do. Can you run apps that require Java SE with it? I don't think so. If it is self contained it doesn't matter that it runs on a desktop.

If There's One Thing I've Learned

[Anonymous Coward]

It is that the lawyer(s) on the losing side need a reason for the loss. Thus any of the following can and will be invoked:

- The judge misdirected the jury;
- facts brought to trial were disallowed and that was wrong;
- new evidence has been discovered;
- the judge was unfair and biased and should have recused themselves;
- the jury was unfair;
- the wrong charges were litigated;
- their own client was unreasonable, the lawyer knew it all along, but the lawyer "had" to fight the case the client wanted;
- the verdict was sound but the punishment was wrong;
- etc.

I've never heard a lawyer admit that they lost the case due to actions they took or did not take. I've never heard a lawyer admit that a losing verdict was just. Lawyers sometimes even seem to imply they weren't present for crucial rulings, through no fault of their own and they are as bewildered as anyone!

Re:Newsflash: Lawyer intentionally misrepresents..

[Anonymous Coward]

First page doesn't disrupt the OP's claim.

The API is not of itself valuable, since it contains nothing other than an insistence on how things should interoperate. Indeed, interoperability INCREASES the value of a work.

The second page doesn't either, since it talks about how fair use CAN be asserted and pass muster. Nothing there to disrupt the quoted claim.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Google maintains that descriptions of interfaces to code are not code, and I agree.

So the compiler tosses out API declarations like it tosses comments? No? Then it's (source) code.

You and Google agree it's not code, so you can steal...

Your doing it WRONG!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle shouldn't suing anyone over Java.
In fact, it would be Oracles best interest in helping Google, and others in using Java.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a world where every company required their own type of wall outlet (Apple would love this.. just saying).

That's retarded. Imagine a world where Ford was required to build cars such that its engines could be replaced with Honda engines. Hint: no such requirement exists. Google stole the APIs instead of redesigning them because their APIs would've sucked.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Code does something. All an API does is tell you how to talk to the code that does something.

The compiler doesn't give a shit about APIs, it just looks at external references and tries to resolve them. Or rather, the linker does that. That alone should be a clue that they're not code, any more than a street address is a building.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

The compiler doesn't give a shit about APIs, it just looks at external references and tries to resolve them...That alone should be a clue that they're not code, any more than a street address is a building.

So when does Google plan to release all its "non-code" software like APIs, comments, header declarations, etc. for their core products: Google search, gmail, etc.? After all, that stuff is not copyrighted, according to you and Larry Page, and is therefore public domain. I should be able to access all the function declarations created by google search.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[david_thornley]

Doesn't matter. Making good APIs is a creative act, and therefore they can be copyrighted. The copyright had better not prevent people from copying the APIs to write software that communicates by the API, or we're in real real trouble, but everybody just assumed that that sort of copying was legal and nobody argued about it. (There was an argument about API copyrightability, and I think it reached a reasonable conclusion.) Oracle argued that Google wasn't copying the APIs to write software that used or implemented the functionality, since the idea was not to have normal Java programs run on Dalvik or Android Java programs run on the JVM, and therefore that Google needs to provide a more conventional fair use defense.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because something isn't copyrightable (as the last decision stands, APIs are copyrightable, but I still don't think they're code) doesn't mean anyone has an obligation to publish or distribute it.

Do you think the phone company just gave away directories, filled with public domain information? No.

Re:The Tech Lawyer Zombie Apocalypse is upon us! R

[ebvwfbw]

And they wonder why people grow to despise lawyers. She should be taken out back and hit by a clue-by-four. Because she hasn't a clue.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

> Doesn't matter. Making good APIs is a creative act, and therefore they can be copyrighted.

Not really. Making the framework or library is a creative act, the API is just a specification of how to connect to it, i.e. a collection of facts about a creative work.

An API without the actual implementation is pretty useless. There would be no point in designing an API and not implementing it.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[david_thornley]

An API can be designed in different ways to expose the same functionality, and some of these ways are better than others. This means that designing one is a creative act, and since it can be fixed in a static form it's copyrightable. As for the point, there's a fair number of copyrighted works I don't see the point of, but they're still copyrightable. I've worked on APIs with no immediate plans for implementation, just to try to write something with the API calls to see if I had it right yet.

Re:Fuck Oracle

[Zxern]

Well seeing as how the engine isn't permanently fixed to the frame or body, you could replace a ford engine with a honda engine if you really wanted to.

I for one applaud Oracle...

[Pherdnut]

for trying their damnedest to give people even more reasons to never use Java.

smother flash card in scare tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

the computer/tech consultants say that the judge knows that person x is a lure. ask the judge and the consultants. for example, ask them, do you deny that person x is a lure? flash question1: what is 1+1?
tab
the computer/tech consultants say that the judge knows that person x is a lure. ask the judge and the consultants. for example, ask them, do you deny that person x is a lure? flash answer1: 2.