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Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google (bloomberg.com)
Google could owe Oracle billions of dollars after an appeals court said it didn't have the right to use the Oracle-owned Java programming code in its Android operating system on mobile devices. From a report: Google's use of Java shortcuts to develop Android went too far and was a violation of Oracle's copyrights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled. The case was remanded to a federal court in California to determine how much the Alphabet unit should pay.
The dispute is over pre-written directions known as application program interfaces, or APIs, which can work across different types of devices and provide the instructions for things like connecting to the internet or accessing certain types of files. By using the APIs, programmers don't have to write new code from scratch to implement every function in their software or change it for every type of device. The case has divided Silicon Valley for years, testing the boundaries between the rights of those who develop interface code and those who rely on it to develop software programs.
The dispute is over pre-written directions known as application program interfaces, or APIs, which can work across different types of devices and provide the instructions for things like connecting to the internet or accessing certain types of files. By using the APIs, programmers don't have to write new code from scratch to implement every function in their software or change it for every type of device. The case has divided Silicon Valley for years, testing the boundaries between the rights of those who develop interface code and those who rely on it to develop software programs.
No, the world won't. The amount of infrastructure built on top of Java is pretty staggering, and much of the world will continue to use Java.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Because any sane knowledgeable human knows interoperability must be a right and consequently, copyright on API is ridiculous.
Meaning you are either insane or an idiot.
IANAL but I think this decision is pretty binary - Alsop originally ruled that APIs could not be copyright. Oracle forced him to change that ruling to API could be copyright but cloning them is fair use. But now Oracle is trying to reverse the fair use ruling by the jury.
If that happens all APIs will be under copyright and the only way to clone them will be with a license. And since those copyrights are going to get constructed retroactively since the dawn of computers the only possible outcome is total legal chaos.
And the amount of server-side legacy code being replaced by Java is staggering. Legacy code is considered obsolete, and is being replaced just about everywhere it exists. I don't work in the cable industry. The amount of code that's being refactored towards Java is in, and of itself, mind blowing.
But that value of an API is created not by the company that created the APIs but by the companies that invest their time and money in using the APIs.
In the case of Sun/Oracle, there are three additional factors to consider: (1) Sun achieved rapid and widespread adoption of Java's APIs by falsely claiming that they would make those APIs an open standard; that is, Java APIs would not have succeeded in the market if Sun had been clear from the beginning that they would not allow compatible third party implementations; (2) large parts of the Java APIs were not even developed by Sun or were copied from other APIs; (3) Sun/Oracle has a long history of building their products on other people's APIs.
Sun and later Oracle were so fixated on the nonfunctional J2ME stack that they didn't see Google coming. Sun had the skeleton of what later became Android with the SavaJe acquisition but didn't have the funds or desire to make it happen. They (and later Oracle) failed to adequately invest in mobile and now Google has. Larry is simply pissed that someone other than himself is making money on something he neglected to capitalize on. To Lawsuit Larry, that's a crime - to anyone else, it's called business.
Organization? You must be joking..
For one, I would have just gone with a .NET implementation, because CIL and CLR are open standards. Yep.
Also, as per the Bill of Rights I wrote, people have a right to their own cultural heritage. I intend to pass a copyright act which limits copyright terms to 7 years, plus 7 more on renewal at $1,000 (inflation-adjusted), then an annual renewal at the 14 year mark each priced at double the prior. At 25 years, that renewal costs $1 billion.
To file for the first copyright renewal, you must supply usable original source material of the copyrighted body. That means any custom pre-compilation tools or a definition of those tools allowing reproduction of said tools. It means master tracks of multimedia works, if you have them. It means that Windows XP is either no longer under copyright 7 years in, or its copyright extends to at least 14 years so long as the original source code (without all those bugfix patches) is held in escrow for release at expiration.
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Oracle has its panties in a bunch because Google has deep pockets.
What about OpenJDK?
That's NOT created/supported by Oracle... yet you don't see Oracle suing the pants off of whomever shares does maintain OpenJDK. IANAL, but if an OSS implementation of the Java Spec (e.g. API) can exist in the form of OpenJDK, then there shouldn't be an issue with another group making their own implementation of Java.
Microsoft isn't suing the pants off of the WINE developers, nor are they targeting ReactOS. Both are OSS versions of the Windows API.