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Oracle Refuses To Accept Android's 'Fair Use' Verdict, Files Appeal (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Wall Street Journal:
The seven-year legal battle between tech giants Google and Oracle just got new life. Oracle on Friday filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that seeks to overturn a federal jury's decision last year... The case has now gone through two federal trials and bounced around at appeals courts, including a brief stop at the U.S. Supreme Court. Oracle has sought as much as $9 billion in the case.
In the trial last year in San Francisco, the jury ruled Google's use of 11,000 lines of Java code was allowed under "fair use" provisions in federal copyright law. In Oracle's 155-page appeal on Friday, it called Google's "copying...classic unfair use" and said "Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters."
Oracle's brief also argues that "When a plagiarist takes the most recognizable portions of a novel and adapts them into a film, the plagiarist commits the 'classic' unfair use."
In the trial last year in San Francisco, the jury ruled Google's use of 11,000 lines of Java code was allowed under "fair use" provisions in federal copyright law. In Oracle's 155-page appeal on Friday, it called Google's "copying...classic unfair use" and said "Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters."
Oracle's brief also argues that "When a plagiarist takes the most recognizable portions of a novel and adapts them into a film, the plagiarist commits the 'classic' unfair use."
Boycott the fuckers! Do not use Java.
And take studious notes.
Use some other language. There are better languages out there.
Sun, which developed Java, made it freely available so that it would get popular. That's why people chose it -- that's why it got the traction and support to evolve to where it is today. Ultimately though, people were only willing to pay what it was worth.
Ever use Oracle for anything. Ever
All that goes out the window when the novel's author openly tells everyone to use the novel without charge, which they do. Then the author dies and the person who buys the rights to the author's estate unilaterally decides it can undo what the author did in the past and tries to charge back-royalties for past use.
A more fitting description here would be "bait and switch."
by EditorDavid
well, if interfaces aren't fair use, the entire software industry is screwed.
The story at the time was that Oracle only paid so much for Sun because it thought that by hammering on Google for Android with Java licensing claims it could force Google into a patent cross-licensing deal for its distributed database patents, which Oracle needed to scale.
Does this mean, then, that Oracle is still having trouble scaling? It suggests to me that Oracle would be a bad choice at this point for web-scale development. I honestly would have predicted that they would have their own solutions in place by now.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Wasn't Java open source at some point? And besides why is anybody using it now? (Here's looking at you Libre/OpenOffice) Rewrite Android in C, or better, Assembly, and the problem is solved.
Wikipedia's entry, has this to say as intro:
OpenJDK (Open Java Development Kit) is a free and open source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE).[1] It is the result of an effort Sun Microsystems began in 2006. The implementation is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) version 2 with a linking exception. Were it not for the GPL linking exception, components that linked to the Java class library would be subject to the terms of the GPL license. OpenJDK is the official reference implementation of Java SE since version 7
There is a post here on StackOverflow on this: http://stackoverflow.com/quest...
My cynical side feels whatever the reality is, this is Oracle and well lets just say that I haven't ever felt Oracle to be a community player, unless that involves providing consults at cost.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
They can file an appeal.
Unless they have a new argument or case law to refer to, the court will simply tell them no and could possibly impose sanctions.
SCOTUS has already told Oracle no so there is nothing to be gained there.
As was seen in the film, A Few Good Men, "I vigorously protest!" is treated as contempt of the court. Granted, it's just a movie.
Better yet IBM are set to rack it in to the tune of many more billions if Oracle can get this ruling to stick. Think of all those lost DB2 sales from that SQL server copying IBM's language.
Oracle should be careful what they wish for.
Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters.
What Oracle Java business? Or do they mean the one about trying to extort money from others using public APIs?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In Oracle's 155-page appeal on Friday, it [...] said "Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters."
It seems to me that it was Oracle that left Sun's Java business in tatters.
Interfaces aren"t fair use. If you're making the interfaces claim you're making an industrial design claim. Fair use only applies to copyrighted materials. The interfaces argument would say that the code is industrial design it is not copyrighted.
If it was licensed under GPL, you can't restrict the platform you use it on, or port it to.
In many ways this case bears some remarkable similarities with the case brought by "The SCO Group" [a successor-in-interest, *not* the original Santa Cruz Operation company] against IBM, claiming not only that IBM had violated "TSG"-owned copyright, but that because in their view TSG owned the rights to code that IBM were alleged to have copied into Linux, somehow this gave TSG the right to charge every Linux user a "license fee" for the use of this unspecified code.
The exact same greed lies behind the Oracle case against Google. No matter how ludicrous the case might seem to us as technologists, the plaintiff in this case [Oracle], with their dying business model, is asking a court to allow them to charge a "tax" on every Android device in the same way that The SCO Group sought to tax every user of the Linux kernel.
To be fair, there are some important distinctions between the two cases. In TSG vs. IBM, the plaintiff flat-out refused to identify [let alone with the specificity requested by IBM] the actual code they were alleged to have copied. In their hope of getting in front of a jury and having their star lawyer [David Boies] pull some fast talking, TSG refused to specifying, saying basically, "The infringing code is in the Linux Kernel. Go look for yourselves..." With Oracle vs. Google, the "code" is precisely identified.
However, *unlike* the TSG case, Oracle are taking exception to Android's use of the "language structure" of JAVA, which of course Google did to ensure compatibility with existing applications. This is interesting because of the potential legal repercussions of this case and not just because this is two of the biggest names in US Technology duking it out in a court of law. Oracle are trying to argue that the structure of JAVA can be subject to copyright. To put that in context, that is like saying that a publisher could copyright a book structure that comprised of:-
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
and so on... Lay the issue out in such a simple form and it seems a bit absurd, but we would do well to remember that "the law may upset reason, but reason may not upset the law..." (Ieyasu Tokugawa, the Shogun of Japan). This is both important and scary for us as technologists, because it means that if someone can convince a jury that they "own" a data model or data structure that might be self-evident to us, they might get the right to ask for damages sufficient to bring down not just companies, but entire industries.
The funny-if-you-can-look-at-it-that-way observation to make is that Oracle are not the only company gunning for Android. Microsoft have already threatened multiple smart-phone manufacturers with patent infringements, claiming that some portion or other of Android violates some of their intellectual property. Unfortunately, deals struck in those cases always include a confidentiality clause, so we don't yet know what Microsoft have been using to extract their pound of flesh. But it does seem remarkable to me that Microsoft appear to have been more successful by attacking the hardware developers than attempting to go after Google, while Oracle have tried that and now lost multiple times.
Let's hope that Oracle and not permitted get away with what looks for all the world like a shake-down...
Do you live behind the moon or are you just an idiot?
Android is a Linux kernel. It is already written in C.
Rewriting it in Assembly would make it unportable to other platforms, there is no point.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yet.
MySQL spawned several forks and somehow hasn't been destroyed by Oracle (don't ask me how).
Solaris has been getting more and more useless since SUN ceased to exist. Now it's officially scheduled for execution.
SPARC (SBus) architecture still exists, but only a crazy man would stake his professional reputation on recommending its use in the enterprise.
JAVA started out as a noble idea - it wasn't really intended to be fast, or even for general purpose programming. It was intended to usher in the IoT.
Oracle was a database. It still is - and despite the massive publicity, not always the best one for the job.
I came prepared.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
In about 80 years of programming languages, there have been a few examples of companies which have managed to turn programming languages and runtimes into something which turned a profit, but generally not many and not for long.
COBOL - Microfocus and a few other have turned a buck on COBOL but mainly because no one really wanted to bother implementing and supporting a competitor. In reality, COBOL support is what is turning a profit, not the language itself. Oh and Microfocus never tried to own the language or runtime.
Powerbase - Same genre of languages as COBOL and again focused on business coding. This one turned a profit until other tools because easier to use and more supported.
DBase, FoxPro, etc... - They did well until we moved on. Aston Tate somehow managed to make a huge business out of selling a business programming language. But all good things come to an end... especially when the competition released something better...like for example and Oracle SQL server... which is actually what killed DBase.
I can go on for a while, but to be fair, Oracle failed something horrible if the business geeks didn't do their jobs and thought a programming language could count as something profitable. They simply aren't. Even now, most users of Java aren't using Java but the platform and while Android is implementing a subset of the Java APIs, they don't implement the platform. Most users are now using language like Closure which offer a Java compatible experience but without the Java. The sad part is, since Oracle isn't adopting those other technologies, they will be responsible for destroying the Java market.
I think probably the thing that really ruined Java is that they named the Language, the byte code and the runtime all the same thing. As such, Oracle doesn't properly support their platform.
MySQL spawned several forks and somehow hasn't been destroyed by Oracle (don't ask me how).
I think because Oracle charges a lot of money for MySQL.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
SCO also refused to accept they had a lost case.
Let's see how they accept the bill at the end.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
They tried to put a lot of poison pills in Java 8 (9?) with multiple inheritance and such. And, as a result, most people stopped updating from Java 7 and some of the largest projects switched to OpenJDK (which targets JDK 7 compatibility). Now that they have decided to completely dismantle all the IP they bought from Sun (effectively end of lifing Solaris by removing future versions from roadmap and such), I guess they decided it's time to write off what they can and try to extort someone else for the losses. They haven't been a leader in anything in a very, very, very long time (effectively since they won the market mindshare against Sybase). Their only strategy is leveraged buy outs and jacking up the price. So it's going to be only Microsoft Server standing in the end, after all. The king is dead. Long live the King.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Here is the text of the appeal, in case anyone wants to read it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Honestly, I thought they bought SUN to destroy MySQL. Who knew it was to monetize Java and turn SPARC into a database appliance architecture?
:
Throughout six months of discovery on remand, Google produced 200,000 pages of documents. Not a single page mentioned ARC++. Then in the final week, after it became impossible to use them in depositions, Google dumped 350,000 pages on Oracle
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If interfaces AREN'T industrial design, then contract-first development is dead, which means enterprise Agile is dead. If Oracle are seen to be the organisation that killed agile, Oracle are dead.
Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters.
Oracle did this all by themselves.
No IBM would wait till Ellison got the ruling he needed from the SCOTUS, then pounce. If copying the Java language is not allowed without paying fees then copying the SQL language without paying the appropriate fees is also not allowed.
IBM would just claim that they thought like most of the rest of the industry that languages where not protected like that which is why they are only bringing the case now.
The only mention I can find of industrial design in IP is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which says it protects the visual appearance (interfaces don't have them) of something that's not purely utilitarian (which an interface is pretty much supposed to be). I don't see how it applies.
"When a plagiarist takes the most recognizable portions of a novel and adapts them into a film..." ... then you know Disney is around. Most of their famous cartoons are based on stories that were out of copyright. They made movies out of them and have been getting the government to keep extending copyright so their products never lose it. Therefore I'm not able to create anything based on the original stories in which they based their movies on or else they'll sue my ass off saying I took my idea from their movies.
Oracle has long-since given up competing on performance, innovation or even on price. They no sue their competitors, customers and innocent bystanders anytime Uncle Larry needs to buy a new island. If there was ever a case for the public to censure a company for its actions by actively refusing to use it's products, surely Oracle has earned that. To those companies still in the Oracle camp, you lie down with dogs, don't complain about fleas.
There are no "users" in Oracle, it's a sign-in to a schema. That's right, every 'user' is their own database. To connect to something else requires explicit permissions from the owner. Multiple users working on a project will probably just use a shared username/password instead of the headache to open things up (at least, that's what we end up doing).
The SQL optimizer, which normally does a good job, has it's own stupid quirk. It ingests the "WHERE" clause first, potentially breaking stuff in the "SELECT" statement. Example:
will fail miserably with an "undefined identifier" error. There are two options to fix, call the function twice, or wrap it in a "SELECT *". What kind of hair-brained idea is that?
I agree, but I don't think that's Oracle's argument. If I were writing a JVM, I'd have to use the interface to talk to everybody else's Java programs. If I were writing a Java program, I'd have to use the interface to talk to JVMs. This is generally considered (including by the judicial system) fair use, and we'd be in big trouble if that changed.
However, an interface is a creative product fixed in a tangible form, and hence can be copyrighted. Since Oracle doesn't want to open it, it's only generally available under fair use. Programming in Java, or creating a JVM, is fair use. Writing about it is fair use. There are applications that wouldn't be.
Oracle claims that Google is not using the Java interface for reasons of interoperability. Oracle claims that standard Java and Android Java are different things, that in general there's no value in being able to use standard Java on Dalvik or Android Java on the JVM, and therefore that Google's specific use isn't fair use. For most software purposes, it really doesn't matter who wins, because everybody (including Oracle, Google, and the courts) acknowledges that using interfaces in the way we need to be able to use them is fair use.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The legal system is recognized to be imperfect, and so it's possible to appeal a decision on the grounds that you think the judge(s) misapplied the law, which is what Oracle seems to be doing here. In some legal systems, a court case's effect is on the parties involved and ends there. In the US, court decisions become part of the law, so it's more important to get it right.
There's obvious disadvantages to allowing precedents to be law, but lacking it we'd either have vague and fuzzy laws (which help no one), or we'd have to get our legislators to write clear laws.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes