Sure, you go ahead and persuade all the individual contributors to switch the license on their code. I'll wait. I mean, nobody in the world actually supports the GPL for its own sake, right? I'm sure you won't have any problems.
Only if the transformation from folklore to movie was something that could have been done purely mechanically. Disney puts a great deal of creativity into their interpretations of legend and folklore, and as a result, the final product is very definitely copyrightable. A straight typographical transposition of Moby Dick into Elvish would require no creativity whatsoever, and would thus not be copyrightable.
A translation is a more borderline case. Generally, a good translation requires some creative reinterpretation, for idiomatic language and the like. A translation could be copyright to the extent that it displays originality and creativity, but a blind machine translation (even if performed by a human) probably wouldn't.
Except that it sets international preceidence, allowing it to be citing in US courts.
The word you're looking for is "precedent", and no, it doesn't set one. It could be cited in a US case, but only on the basis of the arguments raised, not as a precedent. In fact, the judge has already asked both parties to brief him on the relevance of the case.
Actually, he can't put the cart before the horse like this. It's a mistrial- and VERY appealable.
I'm so glad you decided to share your vast legal expertise. If only Google's lawyers had been as knowledgable about the law as you, they could have moved for a mistrial long ago, instead of waiting till they had a specific issue (no judgement on fair use).
Neither the judge nor Google's lawyers are as stupid as you seem to believe.
the college has no vested interest in holding your transcripts.
They certainly have an interest. Not a direct interest, but less repayment can mean less funds available for the next batch of students, which can mean that less students can afford the fees, which can mean less money for the college.
Of course, helping the students to get jobs so they can repay their loans would seem like a more sensible strategy. I'm not going to try to defend the strategy, but the colleges do have an interest in the matter.
Who has? Innovation is overrated. By the standards you seem to be trying to set, the industry has hardly seen any innovation since the days of Dan Brinklin and Xerox PARC. Even the world-wide-web was no more than an incremental improvement over ideas that have been around since the nineteen-sixties, adapted to work with new networking technologies.
The one area one can give a credit to them is refining the implementation of active online web pages. Their work on Ajax and things like google gears made the browser more of an app backed by a huge database.
Wow, your ignorance of useful Google technologies is truly amazing. Let's just ignore all their work in large scale, high-availability, distributed systems, to start. If it doesn't run on your desktop, it doesn't exist, right?
There is a certain irony to this move to more active web page portals however. They become unsearchable and unlinkable.
Google didn't invent Ajax (though they did do quite a bit to improve Ajax technologies), and now, somehow, the side-effects of Ajax are all Google's fault? If anything, Google's work on Ajax has helped it maintain searchability, which is logical, since search is their bread-and-butter.
Now, I'm not saying Google is wonderful or perfect or anything. No company is absolutely good or absolutely evil. Microsoft helped free us from the tyranny of hardware vendors, and we should remember to thank them for it. Now Google seems to be trying to free us from the tyranny of software vendors, and, whatever else they may end up doing, I'm going to thank them for that. I'm also going to keep a careful eye on them. But so far, they seem to fall far short of the standards for predatory behavior set by MS, who managed to top even IBM, and came close to AT&T levels of evil.
Google has admitted to copying a subset of the API
More like, "has never denied". "Admitted" makes it sound like they were forced to reveal it; on the contrary, they copied it openly, publicly, and were praised by Sun for doing so. Until Sun got bought and the new owners decided they wanted to retroactively change the rules (shades of SCO).
Certainly anyone invested in java in any way wins.
How? Is this like those "gay marriages hurt my marriage" arguments? I don't see any way that Java programmers are affected by Android, aside from the fact that their expertise and knowledge is applicable to Android programming, should they have an interest.
Certainly there's no issue with fragmentation. Sun already fragmented the market when they created JavaME and JavaEE. And WORA isn't affected, since Android isn't binary compatible with Java. You might as well claim that C++ or Ruby hurts Java as Android. Android isn't Java! It just uses a compatible language as source.
The judge declined to decide in advance whether the APIs are copyrightable at all, but has reserved that decision to himself. In the interest of judicial economy, in the face of an almost certain appeal--no matter which side wins--the judge decided to instruct the jury to assume the worst case: that the APIs are copyrightable, and can be infringed. That way, if the appeal overturns a point of law, the issues of fact won't need to be retried. No need for a new jury. Unfortunately, this may have given the jury the idea that Google was definitely guilty of something.
Note that all existing precedent is against the notion that APIs are copyrightable. And that even before the recent EU decision (which the judge has asked the parties to brief him on). Oracle's argument for why their/em API should be considered special basically boils down to "it was hard!" But the SCOTUS recently reaffirmed that "sweat of the brow" is not a valid argument for copyrightability.
Association Football is not called by the English word "football" alone anywhere outside of the Anglosphere. Pretty much by definition. And within the Anglosphere, it's only called that in the UK, Jamaica, and (I admit I was being snarky about this part originally) India.
"The rest of the world" is completely irrelevant to what I said. So calling me "wrong" because I (deliberately) ignored the rest of the world is, quite simply, wrong.
I am entirely aware of your argument, but not one word I said contradicted anything you said! If you are unfamiliar with nuanced argument, I recommend you buy a good book on semantics or basic logic.
But most of all, you're utterly wrong because you completely ignored my primary point that Canada, Australia and Ireland have their own games called "football", meaning that complaints about nomenclature are not just criticisms of the US. If you can't understand that point, we have no hope of communicating.
It's not. The jury is going to decide whether the copying of the API alone could be defended as fair use or de minimus. The judge is going to decide whether an API can be copyrighted in the first place. If it's fair use or de minimus, Google wins. If the API isn't copyrightable, Google wins. If judge decides the API is copyrightable (which goes against strong precedent), we all lose.
Actually, it potentially avoids a waste of time. Whoever wins, the decision is certain to be appealed. With a jury verdict available, the appeals court can focus on matters of law without forcing a new trial of fact.
For what it's worth, I'd be inclined to say that yes... Google copied the Java API.
That question is not in dispute. Google, like Apache and the FSF and countless others, openly and publically copied the Java API, and has never pretended otherwise.
Technically, it's an anti-US/Canada/Australia/Ireland sentiment. All four countries have their own local games called "football" that involve carrying and throwing the ball (as well as kicking it).
In fact, there's really only one major English-speaking country that uses the term "football" to refer, unambiguously, to Association Football, and that's the UK. Jamaica's not a major country, and its proximity to America means the term is probably somewhat ambiguous there. And India--which is only an English-speaking country in the sense that Canada is a French-speaking country--simply doesn't care, since nobody there follows any form of football. It's not cricket.:)
Not me. Before Netflix streaming, I got most of my movies via...Netflix! In fact, I kind of curse Netflx streaming, because I find I'm wasting a lot more time watching movies and shows than I used to, and less time reading and working on my hobbies.
It's not illegal plain and simple, but if I got you right, your argument was that there wasn't a cell service in the area until recently, so what's the deal? Correct me if I am wrong.
It wasn't an argument, it was an observation. Another observation I can make is that the overwhelming majority of BART track is above ground, where cell service works fine.
You can draw what conclusions you want--in fact, you can conclude that because people were accustomed to the lack of underground phone service (and the fact that service was still available on most of BART), that the rioters were less likely to be affected than normal riders, so BART's actions did more harm than good. But I wasn't posting to draw conclusions; I was posting to help promote informed debate. Something that's all too rare on slashdot.
So in other words, you want the devs to treat you like a paying customer, even though you're not. You want them to prioritize your needs, even though you're not even a user, let alone a potential contributor. Why should they pay more attention to your needs than to the needs of their existing users?
You don't even seem to have any idea how hard it might be to implement these features you want. You just want them to do it so you can save a few bucks. You're a self-centered ass.
Professional graphic artists have to be the least interesting audience for the Gimp devs, because they're the least likely to be able to contribute. No matter how lame you may think the "write some code" come-back is, it's really the bottom line, and pretending it's not just exposes you as the self-serving ass you are.
You need to meet a minimum bar of creativity to qualify for copyright. For each keyword. Furthermore, something that's purely functional won't cut it either. So, the keywords in the language would have each be about sentence length, at a minimum (and that's pushing it), and not exactly describe what they do. At which point, yes, you might be able to copyright those "words", but you still wouldn't be able to copyright the language, and you'd have a language that nobody would want to use, let alone copy. Yay you.:)
I think you'll be unsurprised to discover that you could not claim copyright in such a language. Nevertheless, the individual elements of such a language could still violate the original authors' copyrights--but that has nothing to do with whether the language itself is copyrightable.
I think plaintiffs have a strong case, and I hope they win, but the debate isn't enhanced by hysterical claims about how this is "illegal, plain and simple" by people whose grasp of the law is little better than a herring's, or by flawed analogies, or by comparisons to various mid-twentieth-century dictators. Let's maintain some perspective and a basic grasp of common sense, folks!
I'd be willing to do this just as soon as I develop a new set of friends that I don't care about, so I don't have to lose the friends I actually like!:)
If you want a vendor that's never been hacked, I think you're going to need to look on another planet. Even OpenBSD has a less-than-perfect record, and they're about as close to never-been-hacked as you're likely to find. As to what the ~800 developers in the Debian project spend their time on, well, that includes all sorts of things, including your precious KDE suite. So if Debian involvement scares you, it's time to give up on KDE.
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Sure, you go ahead and persuade all the individual contributors to switch the license on their code. I'll wait. I mean, nobody in the world actually supports the GPL for its own sake, right? I'm sure you won't have any problems.
Yup, I guessed the same. If you looked at the jury questions, it really seemed like the only open question among the first three.
Only if the transformation from folklore to movie was something that could have been done purely mechanically. Disney puts a great deal of creativity into their interpretations of legend and folklore, and as a result, the final product is very definitely copyrightable. A straight typographical transposition of Moby Dick into Elvish would require no creativity whatsoever, and would thus not be copyrightable.
A translation is a more borderline case. Generally, a good translation requires some creative reinterpretation, for idiomatic language and the like. A translation could be copyright to the extent that it displays originality and creativity, but a blind machine translation (even if performed by a human) probably wouldn't.
Except that it sets international preceidence, allowing it to be citing in US courts.
The word you're looking for is "precedent", and no, it doesn't set one. It could be cited in a US case, but only on the basis of the arguments raised, not as a precedent. In fact, the judge has already asked both parties to brief him on the relevance of the case.
Actually, he can't put the cart before the horse like this. It's a mistrial- and VERY appealable.
I'm so glad you decided to share your vast legal expertise. If only Google's lawyers had been as knowledgable about the law as you, they could have moved for a mistrial long ago, instead of waiting till they had a specific issue (no judgement on fair use).
Neither the judge nor Google's lawyers are as stupid as you seem to believe.
(No comment on Oracle's lawyers.) :)
the college has no vested interest in holding your transcripts.
They certainly have an interest. Not a direct interest, but less repayment can mean less funds available for the next batch of students, which can mean that less students can afford the fees, which can mean less money for the college.
Of course, helping the students to get jobs so they can repay their loans would seem like a more sensible strategy. I'm not going to try to defend the strategy, but the colleges do have an interest in the matter.
Google has not innovated.
Who has? Innovation is overrated. By the standards you seem to be trying to set, the industry has hardly seen any innovation since the days of Dan Brinklin and Xerox PARC. Even the world-wide-web was no more than an incremental improvement over ideas that have been around since the nineteen-sixties, adapted to work with new networking technologies.
The one area one can give a credit to them is refining the implementation of active online web pages. Their work on Ajax and things like google gears made the browser more of an app backed by a huge database.
Wow, your ignorance of useful Google technologies is truly amazing. Let's just ignore all their work in large scale, high-availability, distributed systems, to start. If it doesn't run on your desktop, it doesn't exist, right?
There is a certain irony to this move to more active web page portals however. They become unsearchable and unlinkable.
Google didn't invent Ajax (though they did do quite a bit to improve Ajax technologies), and now, somehow, the side-effects of Ajax are all Google's fault? If anything, Google's work on Ajax has helped it maintain searchability, which is logical, since search is their bread-and-butter.
Now, I'm not saying Google is wonderful or perfect or anything. No company is absolutely good or absolutely evil. Microsoft helped free us from the tyranny of hardware vendors, and we should remember to thank them for it. Now Google seems to be trying to free us from the tyranny of software vendors, and, whatever else they may end up doing, I'm going to thank them for that. I'm also going to keep a careful eye on them. But so far, they seem to fall far short of the standards for predatory behavior set by MS, who managed to top even IBM, and came close to AT&T levels of evil.
Google has admitted to copying a subset of the API
More like, "has never denied". "Admitted" makes it sound like they were forced to reveal it; on the contrary, they copied it openly, publicly, and were praised by Sun for doing so. Until Sun got bought and the new owners decided they wanted to retroactively change the rules (shades of SCO).
Certainly anyone invested in java in any way wins.
How? Is this like those "gay marriages hurt my marriage" arguments? I don't see any way that Java programmers are affected by Android, aside from the fact that their expertise and knowledge is applicable to Android programming, should they have an interest.
Certainly there's no issue with fragmentation. Sun already fragmented the market when they created JavaME and JavaEE. And WORA isn't affected, since Android isn't binary compatible with Java. You might as well claim that C++ or Ruby hurts Java as Android. Android isn't Java! It just uses a compatible language as source.
The judge declined to decide in advance whether the APIs are copyrightable at all, but has reserved that decision to himself. In the interest of judicial economy, in the face of an almost certain appeal--no matter which side wins--the judge decided to instruct the jury to assume the worst case: that the APIs are copyrightable, and can be infringed. That way, if the appeal overturns a point of law, the issues of fact won't need to be retried. No need for a new jury. Unfortunately, this may have given the jury the idea that Google was definitely guilty of something.
Note that all existing precedent is against the notion that APIs are copyrightable. And that even before the recent EU decision (which the judge has asked the parties to brief him on). Oracle's argument for why their/em API should be considered special basically boils down to "it was hard!" But the SCOTUS recently reaffirmed that "sweat of the brow" is not a valid argument for copyrightability.
You're so wrong, it's almost comical.
Association Football is not called by the English word "football" alone anywhere outside of the Anglosphere. Pretty much by definition. And within the Anglosphere, it's only called that in the UK, Jamaica, and (I admit I was being snarky about this part originally) India.
"The rest of the world" is completely irrelevant to what I said. So calling me "wrong" because I (deliberately) ignored the rest of the world is, quite simply, wrong.
I am entirely aware of your argument, but not one word I said contradicted anything you said! If you are unfamiliar with nuanced argument, I recommend you buy a good book on semantics or basic logic.
But most of all, you're utterly wrong because you completely ignored my primary point that Canada, Australia and Ireland have their own games called "football", meaning that complaints about nomenclature are not just criticisms of the US. If you can't understand that point, we have no hope of communicating.
It's not. The jury is going to decide whether the copying of the API alone could be defended as fair use or de minimus. The judge is going to decide whether an API can be copyrighted in the first place. If it's fair use or de minimus, Google wins. If the API isn't copyrightable, Google wins. If judge decides the API is copyrightable (which goes against strong precedent), we all lose.
Actually, it potentially avoids a waste of time. Whoever wins, the decision is certain to be appealed. With a jury verdict available, the appeals court can focus on matters of law without forcing a new trial of fact.
For what it's worth, I'd be inclined to say that yes... Google copied the Java API.
That question is not in dispute. Google, like Apache and the FSF and countless others, openly and publically copied the Java API, and has never pretended otherwise.
Technically, it's an anti-US/Canada/Australia/Ireland sentiment. All four countries have their own local games called "football" that involve carrying and throwing the ball (as well as kicking it).
In fact, there's really only one major English-speaking country that uses the term "football" to refer, unambiguously, to Association Football, and that's the UK. Jamaica's not a major country, and its proximity to America means the term is probably somewhat ambiguous there. And India--which is only an English-speaking country in the sense that Canada is a French-speaking country--simply doesn't care, since nobody there follows any form of football. It's not cricket. :)
Not me. Before Netflix streaming, I got most of my movies via...Netflix! In fact, I kind of curse Netflx streaming, because I find I'm wasting a lot more time watching movies and shows than I used to, and less time reading and working on my hobbies.
It's not illegal plain and simple, but if I got you right, your argument was that there wasn't a cell service in the area until recently, so what's the deal? Correct me if I am wrong.
It wasn't an argument, it was an observation. Another observation I can make is that the overwhelming majority of BART track is above ground, where cell service works fine.
You can draw what conclusions you want--in fact, you can conclude that because people were accustomed to the lack of underground phone service (and the fact that service was still available on most of BART), that the rioters were less likely to be affected than normal riders, so BART's actions did more harm than good. But I wasn't posting to draw conclusions; I was posting to help promote informed debate. Something that's all too rare on slashdot.
CMYK is built into GEGL.
So in other words, you want the devs to treat you like a paying customer, even though you're not. You want them to prioritize your needs, even though you're not even a user, let alone a potential contributor. Why should they pay more attention to your needs than to the needs of their existing users?
You don't even seem to have any idea how hard it might be to implement these features you want. You just want them to do it so you can save a few bucks. You're a self-centered ass.
Professional graphic artists have to be the least interesting audience for the Gimp devs, because they're the least likely to be able to contribute. No matter how lame you may think the "write some code" come-back is, it's really the bottom line, and pretending it's not just exposes you as the self-serving ass you are.
You need to meet a minimum bar of creativity to qualify for copyright. For each keyword. Furthermore, something that's purely functional won't cut it either. So, the keywords in the language would have each be about sentence length, at a minimum (and that's pushing it), and not exactly describe what they do. At which point, yes, you might be able to copyright those "words", but you still wouldn't be able to copyright the language, and you'd have a language that nobody would want to use, let alone copy. Yay you. :)
I think you'll be unsurprised to discover that you could not claim copyright in such a language. Nevertheless, the individual elements of such a language could still violate the original authors' copyrights--but that has nothing to do with whether the language itself is copyrightable.
What logic? I stated a fact. But as long as we're talking about logic, I invite you to read about sweeping generalization, hasty generalization, weak analogy, appeal to consequences, and slippery slope before you lecture anyone about the topic.
I think plaintiffs have a strong case, and I hope they win, but the debate isn't enhanced by hysterical claims about how this is "illegal, plain and simple" by people whose grasp of the law is little better than a herring's, or by flawed analogies, or by comparisons to various mid-twentieth-century dictators. Let's maintain some perspective and a basic grasp of common sense, folks!
We use Google Apps at our school and while I love the mail, contacts, calendar, and free storage part, migrating Office docs is very poor.
Man discovers that his data is being held hostage. Blames participants in failed rescue attempt; praises kidnappers.
Heck, BART didn't even have cell phone service in many parts of their system up until a couple of years ago. Especially in the East Bay.
I'd be willing to do this just as soon as I develop a new set of friends that I don't care about, so I don't have to lose the friends I actually like! :)
http://500memes.com/plog-content/images/meme/futurama-fry/not-sure-if-trolling-or-just-stupid.jpg
If you want a vendor that's never been hacked, I think you're going to need to look on another planet. Even OpenBSD has a less-than-perfect record, and they're about as close to never-been-hacked as you're likely to find. As to what the ~800 developers in the Debian project spend their time on, well, that includes all sorts of things, including your precious KDE suite. So if Debian involvement scares you, it's time to give up on KDE.