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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."

12 of 49 comments (clear)

  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+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.

  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.
  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 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.

    2. 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. 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 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.

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

  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.