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Profile of William H. Alsup, a Judge Who Codes and Decides Tech's Biggest Cases (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the longreads dept.

Sarah Jeong at The Verge has an interesting profile of William H. Alsup, the judge in Oracle v. Google case, who to many's surprise was able to comment on the technical issues that Oracle and Google were fighting about. Alsup admits that he learned the Java programming language only so that he could better understand the substance of the case. Here's an excerpt from the interview: On May 18th, 2012, attorneys for Oracle and Google were battling over nine lines of code in a hearing before Judge William H. Alsup of the northern district of California. The first jury trial in Oracle v. Google, the fight over whether Google had hijacked code from Oracle for its Android system, was wrapping up. The argument centered on a function called rangeCheck. Of all the lines of code that Oracle had tested -- 15 million in total -- these were the only ones that were "literally" copied. Every keystroke, a perfect duplicate. It was in Oracle's interest to play up the significance of rangeCheck as much as possible, and David Boies, Oracle's lawyer, began to argue that Google had copied rangeCheck so that it could take Android to market more quickly. Judge Alsup was not buying it. "I couldn't have told you the first thing about Java before this trial," said the judge. "But, I have done and still do a lot of programming myself in other languages. I have written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times or more. I could do it. You could do it. It is so simple." It was an offhand comment that would snowball out of control, much to Alsup's chagrin. It was first repeated among lawyers and legal wonks, then by tech publications. With every repetition, Alsup's skill grew, until eventually he became "the judge who learned Java" -- Alsup the programmer, the black-robed nerd hero, the 10x judge, the "master of the court and of Java."

49 comments

  1. Interesting TFA... by Anonymous+Cashews · · Score: 5, Funny

    For the first time in 20 years of Slashdot, I've actually read TFA.

    1. Re:Interesting TFA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And looked at the pictures (of his Dell running his ham radio application program, and so on) Is it April Fool's day yet?

    2. Re:Interesting TFA... by Anonymous+Cashews · · Score: 3, Funny

      And looked at the pictures (of his Dell running his ham radio application program, and so on) Is it April Fool's day yet?

      Give the judge a break. He's been programming in Quick BASIC for 30 years. It's miracle he haven't gone insane from the goto statements.

    3. Re: Interesting TFA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Welp, I think that's it for me. It's been a fun 20+ years Slashdot, but these comments are the majority nowadays. I'm out for good.

    4. Re:Interesting TFA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      "It's [sic] miracle he haven't gone insane "

      It's A miracle he hasn't...

      Chris, work on your grammar. And don't you have a 500+ page volume of your haikus to edit for the 1st of November? How come you have time to sign up dozens of variations of Cashew user names (you should thank me for suggesting Anonymous Cashews, BTW) and writing mangled English on Slash?

    5. Re:Interesting TFA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      How is your post not also spam, Chris? All your accounts have been nuked to terrible karma, you are the definition of an unwanted message...

      You are like a puncture in the hull of a submarine, Chris. Very much unwelcome.

    6. Re:Interesting TFA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Quickbasic didn't require goto statements (FOR,NEXT loops and DO,LOOP (while) loops):

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    7. Re:Interesting TFA... by kalieaire · · Score: 1

      it took a while, but i read the entire thing too.

  2. Not in America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    It is un-American for a judge or lawyer to descend to know anything of the subject matter of the cases they try. The American way is to argue technical points of obscure laws, to pander to baser instincts of juries. There is no justice here. This is not ignorant and supercilious enough to be Justice. This is a sad day for Justice.

    1. Re:Not in America by sconeu · · Score: 2

      I think that AC was using sarcasm...

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    2. Re:Not in America by Dorianny · · Score: 1

      Congress is supposed to write clear and concise laws for the justice system to follow. Congress has purposely skirted its responsibility leaving it up to judges and lawyers to try and settle disputes using laws that never envisioned the type of scenarios they are being confronted with. They have no choice but to argue technical points of obscure law that might be the closest thing they can find in the books relevant to the dispute

    3. Re:Not in America by nomadic · · Score: 1

      That is not really how it works.

  3. Waymo vs. Uber by ytene · · Score: 2

    And for those who didn't make the connection - and the OP doesn't mention explicitly - Judge Alsup is currently presiding over the Waymo vs. Uber case, which is due in court in December.

    1. Re: Waymo vs. Uber by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      stands to reason then, that he'll be an expert on driverless cars by Nov 30th

    2. Re:Waymo vs. Uber by xevioso · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The sad thing is that the judge realizes that each of these companies will try to get non-technical people to be jurors, throwing out anyone with a technical background. The judge even admonished the press to report on this.

    3. Re:Waymo vs. Uber by ytene · · Score: 2

      I wasn't aware of that, but it does strike me as something that a legal counsel might want to do if they were in doubt as to the strength of their case. The last thing the weaker side needs is someone on the jury with technical acumen when it comes to deliberation time - the less-technical jurors can easily be swayed by someone sounding as if they know what they are talking about.

      Far better to push for an all technical jury and try and win on the merits of your case.

      In fact, I think your comment is remarkably revealing - if we could only know the outcome of juror selection of this trial - and the challenges made by the two legal teams - then we'd have a pretty good idea of what *they* think of their chances.

  4. Where's the oral argument? by bogaboga · · Score: 1

    Anyone can point me to the [audio] oral argument for this Oracle v. Google Android case?

    I will be most grateful.

    1. Re:Where's the oral argument? by sconeu · · Score: 1

      I believe that Groklaw has the transcripts.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    2. Re:Where's the oral argument? by reg · · Score: 1

      Check the Groklaw archives for all of the transcripts. Highly doubt there is actual audio available.

    3. Re: Where's the oral argument? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OP was a millennial and needs transcript in audio, or preferably YouTube video, because of his generation's defective attention span.

    4. Re: Where's the oral argument? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or maybe they recognize that verbal speech carries more semantic bandwidth and wants to hear it the same way people in the court room did.

      Take your generational hate and shove it up your crusty ass.

    5. Re: Where's the oral argument? by BoogieChile · · Score: 2

      You must be one of those slow readers, given that watching a video or listening to audio takes the rest of us way longer than reading the transcript.

  5. We need more judges like this by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Insightful

    judges who are willing to get to understand and appreciate what their case is all about. How would you feel if you were being tried for murder and the judge did not really understand the concepts of life & death ?

    1. Re:We need more judges like this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's great that these cases are going to a judge who actually is too knowledgeable for the lawyers involved to snow.
      But what needs to happen is that congress needs to fix patent law to explicitly make software exempt from patents. Yeah I know, what's the chance of congress actually doing anything?

    2. Re:We need more judges like this by omnichad · · Score: 2

      This is a copyright case. Blocking software patents is like blocking patents on items that involve a hammer. The problems with software patents are with obviousness, not with the ability to make patentable, novel things. If you can patent x, you can't patent x but on a computer. The fact that y uses a computer should not make it ineligible.

    3. Re:We need more judges like this by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      show me a case where some one being of life support got some off in a murder case.

    4. Re:We need more judges like this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Patents should apply to inventions that have mass and take up space, not to an XOR operation that can occur 2^17 times in one program.

    5. Re:We need more judges like this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      This is a copyright case. Blocking software patents is like blocking patents on items that involve a hammer. The problems with software patents are with obviousness, not with the ability to make patentable, novel things. If you can patent x, you can't patent x but on a computer. The fact that y uses a computer should not make it ineligible.

      Sorry, but you're so wrong that I feel compelled to teach you something you obviously don't already know. The problem with software patents is that software is math, so software patents allow you to patent numbers and numerical formulas.

      Bonus: Here's a function that violates not only every software patent in existence but also every software patent that will ever exist, because it tries a little bit of every program that can theoretically exist.

    6. Re:We need more judges like this by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      And how Oracle was desperately hoping the judge wouldn't understand these 9 lines of trivial code and that would help the case in their favor... disgusting.

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    7. Re:We need more judges like this by hene · · Score: 1

      How would you feel if you were being tried for murder and the judge did not really understand the concepts of life & death ?

      I believe that it would play to my advantage.

    8. Re:We need more judges like this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, but you see, everything is math or at least anything technical is represented in mathematical terms, because patents describe abstract representations (which is exactly why we have maths) of classes of physical objects, so basically we could argue that most patents are patenting numbers and numerical formulas. Therefore, with very same argumentation we use against software patents, we would be obliged to abolish all patents. I am not trying to pull an reductio ad absurdum argument here, I really think that idea of patents in particular and intellectual property in general is founded on very shaky ground and is ill-conceived.

    9. Re:We need more judges like this by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 2

      I'd feel much more comfortable if I was being tried for murder by a judge who was himself an experienced murderer :)

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    10. Re:We need more judges like this by Talderas · · Score: 1

      Let's consider that the basis of patent law is to allow an inventor to profit from what he created. In order to profit from your creation you need to secure funding to start producing the invention and well as bring it to market. An individual who creates an invention is going to have a harder time performing those tasks than a large corporation like GE. Without patents, GE could see the inventor's invention, copy it, bring it to market, and apply their current knowledge and efficiency to reduce the costs to below what the inventor could reasonable sell.

      Are the following good ideas? I don't know but they sound good to me.

      1. A functioning prototype of the invention.
      2. A statement of revenue. Lower revenues mean longer patent durations and the dropoff for durations needs to be steep as income rises.
      3. Companies can only license and purchase patents. They cannot sell them.
      4. Individuals may license, purchase, and sell patents.
      5. Sell a patent causes its duration is shortened based on the income of the purchasing entity. Example, if an individual can hold a patent for 10 years and the purchasing entity can only hold a patent for 2 years, then the patent's expiration will drop 8 years. This can cause patents to expire by being purchased.

      The big problem you need to catch is companies spinning off subsidiaries to own a patent. This could probably manifest in one of two ways, either low to zero cost licensing for the parent company or the subsidiary not seeking legal action against the parent. To address that I think the following should be done.

      1. Patent licensing cost is universal and must be done through the PTO. The licensing cost is publically available along with all the current entities licensing the patent.
      2. The PTO collects all licensing fees and then distributes the funds to the owner of the patent or puts the funds into the general fund and provides the patent owner with a tax credit.
      3. Any entity currently licensing a patent is permitted to bring forth suit against any entity producing a patented object without licensing.

      --
      "Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
  6. Next on his docket... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Appeal of Hulk Hogan vs Gawker sex tape case. You won't believe how he prepares for this one!

  7. Hearsay by ByteSlicer · · Score: 1

    I've been told the judge once created a GUI in Visual Basic to track down a killer's IP address.

  8. Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For someone to work through all of that information, timelessly, is an astounding feat. The way to say something or what it actually does.

  9. Oracle v. Google is a Big Deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oracle has established that APIs are copyrightable - you are not allowed to reverse engineer them. The decision says the name of java.lang.Math.max is an artistic work, not a functional one, because someone making a competitor to Java could name the function something else. Arguments about compatibility were thrown out. An appeal was denied.

  10. But he still has not completed a running program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just gotta fix that one last bug...

  11. his middle name is Haskell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    His middle name is Haskell... he was born for this.

  12. QuickBASIC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The judge sat me down on the sofa and walked me through his programs on a 2011 court-issued Dell laptop. He couldn’t run the same programs on his desktop computer, he said with some irritation, so the Dell was here to stay. “It’s the last one that will support QuickBASIC, which is kind of a shame, because it’s the only language I really know.”

    I wonder if the judge has tried an open source clone of QuickBASIC, such as this one.

    1. Re:QuickBASIC by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Maybe by saying "because it’s the only language I really know" the judge means he's not interested in programming anymore.

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  13. Figures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You know it's a decent article when the number of comments is low and the tone of which fluffy-snarky.

    (Of course, now I'll have jinxed it.)

    Interesting read!

  14. Are you using a penis pump in court? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    judge Donald Thompson did, swell guy. durring murder court over death of a young child. Would that compare with your average software copyright judge resting a beer or gavel on a floppy disk while court is incession?

  15. Coding only a fraction of software biz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe at an early stage software startup coding will be up to 50% of the work hours. But it can fall to below 20% at a mature software company. Maintenance, sales, service, management fill the remainder.

    I suppose some coding undestanding is better than nothing.