For all of the people who are splitting hairs over whether code was copied or they just created compatible APIs, you're missing the point.
Sun invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating the Java platform and marketing it. In doing so, it became well known to software developers who created a large ecosystem of server-side and mobile applications for it (not to mention having a ton of experience with it). Andy Rubin and company come along with Android and realize that they need a good software development environment for it. As stated in an email exchange between Tim Lindholm and Andy Rubin, they understood well that the only option was Java, but they simply didn't want to pay a licensing fee for it. So they effectively cloned and owned Java by taking advantage of open-source projects at the time which had special licensing terms for Java. Thus gaining the benefit of the money invested in Java by Sun in a commercial product (which went on to help Google make a lot of money), but not paying a dime for it.
If you work in the software industry and somehow think it's cool that they found this loophole and exploited it, then I sincerely hope someone does the same to any products you happen to work on. It's not right and I refuse to use Android because of it.
And if you think that simply because Oracle bought Sun, it gives them a pass, it doesn't.
And if you think Larry Ellison's Oracle suffered any loss because Google didn't pay a license fee to the previous owner... He didn't. And he doesn't.
He still has his Lotto ticket and might end up paying nothing at all for Sun, even after destroying Java.
I could care less about Larry Ellison. This is about knowingly and willfully exploiting a technology which had a lot of great work put into it. It's about the mindset and actions of Rubin and company, and how others in the industry will see how they got away with it and try to follow in their footsteps. It's the dirty side of the tech industry.
For all of the people who are splitting hairs over whether code was copied or they just created compatible APIs, you're missing the point.
Sun invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating the Java platform and marketing it. In doing so, it became well known to software developers who created a large ecosystem of server-side and mobile applications for it (not to mention having a ton of experience with it). Andy Rubin and company come along with Android and realize that they need a good software development environment for it. As stated in an email exchange between Tim Lindholm and Andy Rubin, they understood well that the only option was Java, but they simply didn't want to pay a licensing fee for it. So they effectively cloned and owned Java by taking advantage of open-source projects at the time which had special licensing terms for Java. Thus gaining the benefit of the money invested in Java by Sun in a commercial product (which went on to help Google make a lot of money), but not paying a dime for it.
If you work in the software industry and somehow think it's cool that they found this loophole and exploited it, then I sincerely hope someone does the same to any products you happen to work on. It's not right and I refuse to use Android because of it.
And if you think that simply because Oracle bought Sun, it gives them a pass, it doesn't.
And if you think Larry Ellison's Oracle suffered any loss because Google didn't pay a license fee to the previous owner... He didn't. And he doesn't.
He still has his Lotto ticket and might end up paying nothing at all for Sun, even after destroying Java.
I could care less about Larry Ellison. This is about knowingly and willfully exploiting a technology which had a lot of great work put into it. It's about the mindset and actions of Rubin and company, and how others in the industry will see how they got away with it and try to follow in their footsteps. It's the dirty side of the tech industry.
They all see a good idea or necessary element for their products, proceed to "knowingly and willfully exploit a technology which had a lot of work put into it" and steal it for themselves by coding around it order to technically make it unique, and no big tech player is an exception. Sometimes they're successful (or lucky) and sometimes they get nailed for infringement, which increasingly calls for very deep pockets in order to prove it. Google just wasn't careful enough with the bypass surgery and there's deep pockets on the table.
I wonder what people think of Florian Mueller right now? Lots of hate thrown his way over the years and it turns out he was right. Not right like someone flipping a coin and claiming they had some kind of insight, but right in giving very detailed reasons why. And now this court decision aligns pretty closely to what Florian predicted.
On the flip side we have Groklaw, shut down years ago in a cowardly manner, being proven wrong in Oracle vs Google.
On a side note, I see the naysayers out with their typical doom & gloom saying stupid things like:
- So I can now sue anyone who uses a=b(x)? - This is going to make everything more expensive for consumers as we’ll have countless lawsuits demanding licensing fees from developers. - Developers are screwed as any API they use will see big companies swoop in and bury them in lawsuits. - This will destroy open source.
For all of the people who are splitting hairs over whether code was copied or they just created compatible APIs, you're missing the point.
Sun invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating the Java platform and marketing it. In doing so, it became well known to software developers who created a large ecosystem of server-side and mobile applications for it (not to mention having a ton of experience with it). Andy Rubin and company come along with Android and realize that they need a good software development environment for it. As stated in an email exchange between Tim Lindholm and Andy Rubin, they understood well that the only option was Java, but they simply didn't want to pay a licensing fee for it. So they effectively cloned and owned Java by taking advantage of open-source projects at the time which had special licensing terms for Java. Thus gaining the benefit of the money invested in Java by Sun in a commercial product (which went on to help Google make a lot of money), but not paying a dime for it.
If you work in the software industry and somehow think it's cool that they found this loophole and exploited it, then I sincerely hope someone does the same to any products you happen to work on. It's not right and I refuse to use Android because of it.
And if you think that simply because Oracle bought Sun, it gives them a pass, it doesn't.
And if you think Larry Ellison's Oracle suffered any loss because Google didn't pay a license fee to the previous owner... He didn't. And he doesn't.
He still has his Lotto ticket and might end up paying nothing at all for Sun, even after destroying Java.
I could care less about Larry Ellison. This is about knowingly and willfully exploiting a technology which had a lot of great work put into it. It's about the mindset and actions of Rubin and company, and how others in the industry will see how they got away with it and try to follow in their footsteps. It's the dirty side of the tech industry.
They all see a good idea or necessary element and then proceed to "steal it" by coding around it to make it unique, and no big tech is an exception. Sometimes they're successful (or lucky) and sometimes they get nailed for infringement. Google just wasn't careful enough with the bypass surgery.
Nope, not how the companies I choose to work for do things. Yes, we certainly build our products on top of existing technologies. But we make sure to follow the licensing agreements for every piece of technology we use. If there's something we don't want to/can't pay for, then we build something entirely new. Instead of trying to just code around the licensing agreement.
If they're on the hook for anything financial, it would be the standard licensing fee that they avoided paying initially. I can't see the 9B profit argument holding up in court.
To get 9B, Oracle would have prove that they’d lost a significant chunk of revenue due to theft. Whether this is the case or not depends on how Java is licensed. If it’s a flat fee then no problem. If the charge as a percentage of the product that uses it, then yes, it could run into billions. The only problem is how does one quantify that. Android is free. What percentage of user data sales are attributed to it? What about Android searches? You can’t count those if they went through the Google search engine.
I dont think you can really put a figure on this because the user data extraction, the massaging and the selling on – none of that is done by Java. That’s all Google’s code. So while I think they’re as guilty as hell, I think $9B is stretching it.
For all of the people who are splitting hairs over whether code was copied or they just created compatible APIs, you're missing the point.
Sun invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating the Java platform and marketing it. In doing so, it became well known to software developers who created a large ecosystem of server-side and mobile applications for it (not to mention having a ton of experience with it). Andy Rubin and company come along with Android and realize that they need a good software development environment for it. As stated in an email exchange between Tim Lindholm and Andy Rubin, they understood well that the only option was Java, but they simply didn't want to pay a licensing fee for it. So they effectively cloned and owned Java by taking advantage of open-source projects at the time which had special licensing terms for Java. Thus gaining the benefit of the money invested in Java by Sun in a commercial product (which went on to help Google make a lot of money), but not paying a dime for it.
If you work in the software industry and somehow think it's cool that they found this loophole and exploited it, then I sincerely hope someone does the same to any products you happen to work on. It's not right and I refuse to use Android because of it.
And if you think that simply because Oracle bought Sun, it gives them a pass, it doesn't.
And if you think Larry Ellison's Oracle suffered any loss because Google didn't pay a license fee to the previous owner... He didn't. And he doesn't.
He still has his Lotto ticket and might end up paying nothing at all for Sun, even after destroying Java.
I could care less about Larry Ellison. This is about knowingly and willfully exploiting a technology which had a lot of great work put into it. It's about the mindset and actions of Rubin and company, and how others in the industry will see how they got away with it and try to follow in their footsteps. It's the dirty side of the tech industry.
They all see a good idea or necessary element and then proceed to "steal it" by coding around it to make it unique, and no big tech is an exception. Sometimes they're successful (or lucky) and sometimes they get nailed for infringement. Google just wasn't careful enough with the bypass surgery.
Nope, not how the companies I choose to work for do things. Yes, we certainly build our products on top of existing technologies. But we make sure to follow the licensing agreements for every piece of technology we use. If there's something we don't want to/can't pay for, then we build something entirely new. Instead of trying to just code around the licensing agreement.
Of course you wouldn't want to code around the agreement. You'd code around the patented part of the technology to try and avoid infringing if you don't want to pay the inventor, and I'm sure that's what you've done before if you've been at it very long. No matter how you get there you're building on someone else's hard work while refusing the originator profit for it.
How many times have you seen some good, inventive and hopefully profitable 3rd party feature "copied" in essence by Apple or whoever and integrated into their own software while the person/company with the original idea withers away on the vine? All quite legal as long as the surgery is good.
On a side note, I see the naysayers out with their typical doom & gloom saying stupid things like:
- So I can now sue anyone who uses a=b(x)? - This is going to make everything more expensive for consumers as we’ll have countless lawsuits demanding licensing fees from developers. - Developers are screwed as any API they use will see big companies swoop in and bury them in lawsuits. - This will destroy open source.
And so on.
All said out of self-interest and not any rationality. Software developers (including myself) will continue to contribute to open source for the same reasons they always have.
It sucks that an obvious case of licensing loophole exploitation for profit has to come down to incidental details like API/code copying in the lawsuit. But regardless, anyone who understands the details about what happened and has an ounce of rationality, can clearly see that what they did is wrong and sets a bad precedent for the tech industry if they get away with it.
For all of the people who are splitting hairs over whether code was copied or they just created compatible APIs, you're missing the point.
Sun invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating the Java platform and marketing it. In doing so, it became well known to software developers who created a large ecosystem of server-side and mobile applications for it (not to mention having a ton of experience with it). Andy Rubin and company come along with Android and realize that they need a good software development environment for it. As stated in an email exchange between Tim Lindholm and Andy Rubin, they understood well that the only option was Java, but they simply didn't want to pay a licensing fee for it. So they effectively cloned and owned Java by taking advantage of open-source projects at the time which had special licensing terms for Java. Thus gaining the benefit of the money invested in Java by Sun in a commercial product (which went on to help Google make a lot of money), but not paying a dime for it.
If you work in the software industry and somehow think it's cool that they found this loophole and exploited it, then I sincerely hope someone does the same to any products you happen to work on. It's not right and I refuse to use Android because of it.
And if you think that simply because Oracle bought Sun, it gives them a pass, it doesn't.
And if you think Larry Ellison's Oracle suffered any loss because Google didn't pay a license fee to the previous owner... He didn't. And he doesn't.
He still has his Lotto ticket and might end up paying nothing at all for Sun, even after destroying Java.
I could care less about Larry Ellison. This is about knowingly and willfully exploiting a technology which had a lot of great work put into it. It's about the mindset and actions of Rubin and company, and how others in the industry will see how they got away with it and try to follow in their footsteps. It's the dirty side of the tech industry.
They all see a good idea or necessary element and then proceed to "steal it" by coding around it to make it unique, and no big tech is an exception. Sometimes they're successful (or lucky) and sometimes they get nailed for infringement. Google just wasn't careful enough with the bypass surgery.
Nope, not how the companies I choose to work for do things. Yes, we certainly build our products on top of existing technologies. But we make sure to follow the licensing agreements for every piece of technology we use. If there's something we don't want to/can't pay for, then we build something entirely new. Instead of trying to just code around the licensing agreement.
Of course you wouldn't want to code around the agreement. You'd code around the patented part of the technology to try and avoid infringing if you don't want to pay the inventor, and I'm sure that's what you've done before if you've been at it very long. No matter how you get there you're building on someone else's hard work while refusing the originator profit for it.
How many times have you seen some good, inventive and hopefully profitable 3rd party feature "copied" in essence by Apple or whoever and integrated into their own software while the person/company with the original idea withers away on the vine? All quite legal as long as the surgery is good.
If only what they did was as small as a copying a feature. Android gained the benefit of getting a large app ecosystem and a large community of experienced software developers via Java. Thus allowing them to gain a huge competitive advantage with Android with minimal investment. The amount of money and time it would have cost them to build and foster that type of app development ecosystem from scratch is massive.
For all of the people who are splitting hairs over whether code was copied or they just created compatible APIs, you're missing the point.
Sun invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating the Java platform and marketing it. In doing so, it became well known to software developers who created a large ecosystem of server-side and mobile applications for it (not to mention having a ton of experience with it). Andy Rubin and company come along with Android and realize that they need a good software development environment for it. As stated in an email exchange between Tim Lindholm and Andy Rubin, they understood well that the only option was Java, but they simply didn't want to pay a licensing fee for it. So they effectively cloned and owned Java by taking advantage of open-source projects at the time which had special licensing terms for Java. Thus gaining the benefit of the money invested in Java by Sun in a commercial product (which went on to help Google make a lot of money), but not paying a dime for it.
If you work in the software industry and somehow think it's cool that they found this loophole and exploited it, then I sincerely hope someone does the same to any products you happen to work on. It's not right and I refuse to use Android because of it.
And if you think that simply because Oracle bought Sun, it gives them a pass, it doesn't.
And if you think Larry Ellison's Oracle suffered any loss because Google didn't pay a license fee to the previous owner... He didn't. And he doesn't.
He still has his Lotto ticket and might end up paying nothing at all for Sun, even after destroying Java.
I could care less about Larry Ellison. This is about knowingly and willfully exploiting a technology which had a lot of great work put into it. It's about the mindset and actions of Rubin and company, and how others in the industry will see how they got away with it and try to follow in their footsteps. It's the dirty side of the tech industry.
They all see a good idea or necessary element and then proceed to "steal it" by coding around it to make it unique, and no big tech is an exception. Sometimes they're successful (or lucky) and sometimes they get nailed for infringement. Google just wasn't careful enough with the bypass surgery.
Nope, not how the companies I choose to work for do things. Yes, we certainly build our products on top of existing technologies. But we make sure to follow the licensing agreements for every piece of technology we use. If there's something we don't want to/can't pay for, then we build something entirely new. Instead of trying to just code around the licensing agreement.
Of course you wouldn't want to code around the agreement. You'd code around the patented part of the technology to try and avoid infringing if you don't want to pay the inventor, and I'm sure that's what you've done before if you've been at it very long. No matter how you get there you're building on someone else's hard work while refusing the originator profit for it.
How many times have you seen some good, inventive and hopefully profitable 3rd party feature "copied" in essence by Apple or whoever and integrated into their own software while the person/company with the original idea withers away on the vine? All quite legal as long as the surgery is good.
If only what they did was as small as a copying a feature. Android gained the benefit of getting a large app ecosystem and a large community of experienced software developers via Java. Thus allowing them to gain a huge competitive advantage with Android with minimal investment. The amount of money and time it would have cost them to build and foster that type of app development ecosystem from scratch is massive.
Oh I agree with you. Google took a shortcut and now might have to pay for it, but only because they got caught by some deep pockets with a vendetta.
It's still something that every tech does, which is why they have teams of lawyers whose only job is to avoid as much cost as possible when potentially caught out borrowing too much. Small guys are simply ignored and expected to go away. Only deep pockets get attention.
In effect stealing is only stealing when a court says you have to pay for it.
On a side note, I see the naysayers out with their typical doom & gloom saying stupid things like:
- So I can now sue anyone who uses a=b(x)? - This is going to make everything more expensive for consumers as we’ll have countless lawsuits demanding licensing fees from developers. - Developers are screwed as any API they use will see big companies swoop in and bury them in lawsuits. - This will destroy open source.
And so on.
All said out of self-interest and not any rationality. Software developers (including myself) will continue to contribute to open source for the same reasons they always have.
It sucks that an obvious case of licensing loophole exploitation for profit has to come down to incidental details like API/code copying in the lawsuit. But regardless, anyone who understands the details about what happened and has an ounce of rationality, can clearly see that what they did is wrong and sets a bad precedent for the tech industry if they get away with it.
Absolutely. Which is why I laugh when I see so many posts online like: "I'm a developer and this is the worst day in history. There's no way anyone can claim to be a developer and agree with this decision."
For all of the people who are splitting hairs over whether code was copied or they just created compatible APIs, you're missing the point.
Sun invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating the Java platform and marketing it. In doing so, it became well known to software developers who created a large ecosystem of server-side and mobile applications for it (not to mention having a ton of experience with it). Andy Rubin and company come along with Android and realize that they need a good software development environment for it. As stated in an email exchange between Tim Lindholm and Andy Rubin, they understood well that the only option was Java, but they simply didn't want to pay a licensing fee for it. So they effectively cloned and owned Java by taking advantage of open-source projects at the time which had special licensing terms for Java. Thus gaining the benefit of the money invested in Java by Sun in a commercial product (which went on to help Google make a lot of money), but not paying a dime for it.
If you work in the software industry and somehow think it's cool that they found this loophole and exploited it, then I sincerely hope someone does the same to any products you happen to work on. It's not right and I refuse to use Android because of it.
And if you think that simply because Oracle bought Sun, it gives them a pass, it doesn't.
And if you think Larry Ellison's Oracle suffered any loss because Google didn't pay a license fee to the previous owner... He didn't. And he doesn't.
He still has his Lotto ticket and might end up paying nothing at all for Sun, even after destroying Java.
I could care less about Larry Ellison. This is about knowingly and willfully exploiting a technology which had a lot of great work put into it. It's about the mindset and actions of Rubin and company, and how others in the industry will see how they got away with it and try to follow in their footsteps. It's the dirty side of the tech industry.
They all see a good idea or necessary element and then proceed to "steal it" by coding around it to make it unique, and no big tech is an exception. Sometimes they're successful (or lucky) and sometimes they get nailed for infringement. Google just wasn't careful enough with the bypass surgery.
Nope, not how the companies I choose to work for do things. Yes, we certainly build our products on top of existing technologies. But we make sure to follow the licensing agreements for every piece of technology we use. If there's something we don't want to/can't pay for, then we build something entirely new. Instead of trying to just code around the licensing agreement.
Of course you wouldn't want to code around the agreement. You'd code around the patented part of the technology to try and avoid infringing if you don't want to pay the inventor, and I'm sure that's what you've done before if you've been at it very long. No matter how you get there you're building on someone else's hard work while refusing the originator profit for it.
How many times have you seen some good, inventive and hopefully profitable 3rd party feature "copied" in essence by Apple or whoever and integrated into their own software while the person/company with the original idea withers away on the vine? All quite legal as long as the surgery is good.
If only what they did was as small as a copying a feature. Android gained the benefit of getting a large app ecosystem and a large community of experienced software developers via Java. Thus allowing them to gain a huge competitive advantage with Android with minimal investment. The amount of money and time it would have cost them to build and foster that type of app development ecosystem from scratch is massive.
Oh I agree with you. Google took a shortcut and now might have to pay for it, but only because they got caught by some deep pockets with a vendetta.
It's still something that every tech does, which is why they have teams of lawyers whose only job is to avoid as much cost as possible when potentially caught out borrowing too much. Small guys are simply ignored and expected to go away. Only deep pockets get attention.
In effect stealing is only stealing when a court says you have to pay for it.
And that's why it's called Capitalism. The game is what it is, but regardless of that, some of us did gain a sense of what's right and wrong growing up. Perhaps I won't get a high score in the game of Capitalism by following that sense, but at least I'll be able to look back on my life and be proud of my actions.
For all of the people who are splitting hairs over whether code was copied or they just created compatible APIs, you're missing the point.
Sun invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating the Java platform and marketing it. In doing so, it became well known to software developers who created a large ecosystem of server-side and mobile applications for it (not to mention having a ton of experience with it). Andy Rubin and company come along with Android and realize that they need a good software development environment for it. As stated in an email exchange between Tim Lindholm and Andy Rubin, they understood well that the only option was Java, but they simply didn't want to pay a licensing fee for it. So they effectively cloned and owned Java by taking advantage of open-source projects at the time which had special licensing terms for Java. Thus gaining the benefit of the money invested in Java by Sun in a commercial product (which went on to help Google make a lot of money), but not paying a dime for it.
If you work in the software industry and somehow think it's cool that they found this loophole and exploited it, then I sincerely hope someone does the same to any products you happen to work on. It's not right and I refuse to use Android because of it.
And if you think that simply because Oracle bought Sun, it gives them a pass, it doesn't.
And if you think Larry Ellison's Oracle suffered any loss because Google didn't pay a license fee to the previous owner... He didn't. And he doesn't.
He still has his Lotto ticket and might end up paying nothing at all for Sun, even after destroying Java.
I could care less about Larry Ellison. This is about knowingly and willfully exploiting a technology which had a lot of great work put into it. It's about the mindset and actions of Rubin and company, and how others in the industry will see how they got away with it and try to follow in their footsteps. It's the dirty side of the tech industry.
They all see a good idea or necessary element and then proceed to "steal it" by coding around it to make it unique, and no big tech is an exception. Sometimes they're successful (or lucky) and sometimes they get nailed for infringement. Google just wasn't careful enough with the bypass surgery.
Nope, not how the companies I choose to work for do things. Yes, we certainly build our products on top of existing technologies. But we make sure to follow the licensing agreements for every piece of technology we use. If there's something we don't want to/can't pay for, then we build something entirely new. Instead of trying to just code around the licensing agreement.
Man walks into a literary agent's office and slams a fresh manuscript on the desk. "Just written this," the man says. "It's a masterpiece." The agent picks up the script and reads the cover: "To kill a Mockingbird." "That's right," the man says. "It's about a murder in--" "I know what it's about," says the agent. "This is the same novel written by Harper Lee." "Not the same story at all," the man says, tapping the side of his nose. "I used a different typewriter."
For all of the people who are splitting hairs over whether code was copied or they just created compatible APIs, you're missing the point.
Sun invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating the Java platform and marketing it. In doing so, it became well known to software developers who created a large ecosystem of server-side and mobile applications for it (not to mention having a ton of experience with it). Andy Rubin and company come along with Android and realize that they need a good software development environment for it. As stated in an email exchange between Tim Lindholm and Andy Rubin, they understood well that the only option was Java, but they simply didn't want to pay a licensing fee for it. So they effectively cloned and owned Java by taking advantage of open-source projects at the time which had special licensing terms for Java. Thus gaining the benefit of the money invested in Java by Sun in a commercial product (which went on to help Google make a lot of money), but not paying a dime for it.
If you work in the software industry and somehow think it's cool that they found this loophole and exploited it, then I sincerely hope someone does the same to any products you happen to work on. It's not right and I refuse to use Android because of it.
And if you think that simply because Oracle bought Sun, it gives them a pass, it doesn't.
And if you think Larry Ellison's Oracle suffered any loss because Google didn't pay a license fee to the previous owner... He didn't. And he doesn't.
He still has his Lotto ticket and might end up paying nothing at all for Sun, even after destroying Java.
I could care less about Larry Ellison. This is about knowingly and willfully exploiting a technology which had a lot of great work put into it. It's about the mindset and actions of Rubin and company, and how others in the industry will see how they got away with it and try to follow in their footsteps. It's the dirty side of the tech industry.
They all see a good idea or necessary element and then proceed to "steal it" by coding around it to make it unique, and no big tech is an exception. Sometimes they're successful (or lucky) and sometimes they get nailed for infringement. Google just wasn't careful enough with the bypass surgery.
Nope, not how the companies I choose to work for do things. Yes, we certainly build our products on top of existing technologies. But we make sure to follow the licensing agreements for every piece of technology we use. If there's something we don't want to/can't pay for, then we build something entirely new. Instead of trying to just code around the licensing agreement.
Man walks into a literary agent's office and slams a fresh manuscript on the desk. "Just written this," the man says. "It's a masterpiece." The agent picks up the script and reads the cover: "To kill a Mockingbird." "That's right," the man says. "It's about a murder in--" "I know what it's about," says the agent. "This is the same novel written by Harper Lee." "Not the same story at all," the man says, tapping the side of his nose. "I used a different typewriter."
API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).
Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word. The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP. Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base. As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use. Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.
The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc. An API is not much different than the software equivalent.
Actually, Google did copy code from Java. That's how the case first got started, but that's not really the point. The Java license permits this as fair use, and many of us have made a good living from Java and have given back by helping out on other projects and with occasional bug fixes. If fork a new version of Java, however, and then make a commercial product based around this fork then you are expected to buy a license. IBM did, and so did Microsoft.
Please provide some backup for this statement - I have read quite a few articles and the code that was "copied" was always the API (outline) i.e. java.util.BigDecimal.<method> - no implementation code.
Implementation code is mostly trivial. The API is the plot and organization of the entire work, and it truly sets the tone for how the system is adopted by the industry.
Many people erroneously look at a single function and think: “memcpy() is the entire API”. It isn’t. It is just one word in a larger body of work.
If they're on the hook for anything financial, it would be the standard licensing fee that they avoided paying initially. I can't see the 9B profit argument holding up in court.
To get 9B, Oracle would have prove that they’d lost a significant chunk of revenue due to theft. Whether this is the case or not depends on how Java is licensed. If it’s a flat fee then no problem. If the charge as a percentage of the product that uses it, then yes, it could run into billions. The only problem is how does one quantify that. Android is free. What percentage of user data sales are attributed to it? What about Android searches? You can’t count those if they went through the Google search engine.
I dont think you can really put a figure on this because the user data extraction, the massaging and the selling on – none of that is done by Java. That’s all Google’s code. So while I think they’re as guilty as hell, I think $9B is stretching it.
I think it's irrelevant if the data extraction is done by Java. A significant chunk of their data comes from Android devices, which one could argue wouldn't exist at all in their current form without Java. Would Android have even taken off if they didn't have a user base of developers already familiar with Java to make it easy for them to start coding for Android?
If Android devices are responsible for 10% of the data Google gets for their targeted ad business, then I think the value is easy to determine (Android contributes 10% of their ad revenue). I don't think Oracle is entitled to ALL of this, just a percentage. So if Oracle is awarded 5% of Android revenue, then they get 0.5% of Googles entire ad revenue. Which would have been a few billion over the last 8 years, but less than the $9 billion suggested in this article.
I still believe Andy was let go over all this since Google realize they would eventually loose this case and Andy put the company at huge risk since he knowingly used it and knew it would cause problems.
On a side note, I see the naysayers out with their typical doom & gloom saying stupid things like:
- So I can now sue anyone who uses a=b(x)? - This is going to make everything more expensive for consumers as we’ll have countless lawsuits demanding licensing fees from developers. - Developers are screwed as any API they use will see big companies swoop in and bury them in lawsuits. - This will destroy open source.
And so on.
All said out of self-interest and not any rationality. Software developers (including myself) will continue to contribute to open source for the same reasons they always have.
It sucks that an obvious case of licensing loophole exploitation for profit has to come down to incidental details like API/code copying in the lawsuit. But regardless, anyone who understands the details about what happened and has an ounce of rationality, can clearly see that what they did is wrong and sets a bad precedent for the tech industry if they get away with it.
This ruling seems bad to me and I think that I have at least an ounce of rationality ;-)
There are a whole lot of copied APIs that built our industry. For example, Columbia Data Products reverse engineering of the IBM PC's BIOS lead to the PC boom. It also allows emulations, such as Boot Camp, to exist without IBM's permission. AFAIK, no one licensed Netscape's extensions to HTML during the browser wars. And no one licensed Microsoft's XMLHttpRequest API.
But a lot of people seem to think that the ruling that APIs being copyrightable is a good idea so I'm happy to hear the counter-argument.
API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).
Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word. The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP. Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base. As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use. Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.
The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc. An API is not much different than the software equivalent.
API is not just the interface, it is everything. You can build some library this way or that way, what distinguishes your IP protected work is how you design your libraries. You are not obligated to replicate the exact libraries Oracle has built; write your own functions and collect them in your own libraries to build your unique IP protected API. That is the whole point of the lawsuit. Oracle is right.
If the API is protectable then there is a whole lot of stuff that is suddenly a violation of IP. All sorts of emulators, Wine for Linux (which is used in other projects), any applications that translate language and APIs into C or C++ etc. A language and the standard library API are inseparable. Maybe I date too far back, but as far as I am concerned this change is really really bad. One project I know of started with a huge code base in VB and started its life as language translation from VB into Java - this ruling would make the writing of that language translator illegal since the code would be implementing the parsing of protected API and language IP.
the bolded part is far from true. I have worked on 4,000,000+ line code bases in C without a single linkage to the standard C library. Likewise, there was no “main()” function. This is a reason the senior engineers are on the software architecture side and junior engineers are on the implementation side. Software architecture (AKA:API) is far more neuanced than implementation and goes far beyond just chapter titles.
Java is very different than C in that Java defines its APIs as part of the language. C does not.
On a side note, I see the naysayers out with their typical doom & gloom saying stupid things like:
- So I can now sue anyone who uses a=b(x)? - This is going to make everything more expensive for consumers as we’ll have countless lawsuits demanding licensing fees from developers. - Developers are screwed as any API they use will see big companies swoop in and bury them in lawsuits. - This will destroy open source.
And so on.
All said out of self-interest and not any rationality. Software developers (including myself) will continue to contribute to open source for the same reasons they always have.
It sucks that an obvious case of licensing loophole exploitation for profit has to come down to incidental details like API/code copying in the lawsuit. But regardless, anyone who understands the details about what happened and has an ounce of rationality, can clearly see that what they did is wrong and sets a bad precedent for the tech industry if they get away with it.
This ruling seems bad to me and I think that I have at least an ounce of rationality ;-)
There are a whole lot of copied APIs that built our industry. For example, Columbia Data Products reverse engineering of the IBM PC's BIOS lead to the PC boom. It also allows emulations, such as Boot Camp, to exist without IBM's permission. AFAIK, no one licensed Netscape's extensions to HTML during the browser wars. And no one licensed Microsoft's XMLHttpRequest API.
But a lot of people seem to think that the ruling that APIs being copyrightable is a good idea so I'm happy to hear the counter-argument.
To quote my previous post:
It sucks that an obvious case of licensing loophole exploitation for profit has to come down to incidental details like API/code copying in the lawsuit.
I absolutely don't like the fact that this case has to come down a technical detail like APIs being copyrightable. The problem is that the law needs hard measurements like that to come to a decision. And those measurements are about 100 years behind the times. Hopefully this case helps people to see how poor those measurements are when applied to technology.
But regardless of that, I would hope that anyone who works in the tech industry can see that what Andy Rubin and company did with Java deserves to be punished because, if allowed, it sets a very bad precedent in the tech industry. I won't restate the reasons why as I've done that many times in my previous posts. But suffice to say that there's a much bigger picture than just APIs.
Comments
I wonder what people think of Florian Mueller right now? Lots of hate thrown his way over the years and it turns out he was right. Not right like someone flipping a coin and claiming they had some kind of insight, but right in giving very detailed reasons why. And now this court decision aligns pretty closely to what Florian predicted.
On the flip side we have Groklaw, shut down years ago in a cowardly manner, being proven wrong in Oracle vs Google.
On a side note, I see the naysayers out with their typical doom & gloom saying stupid things like:
- So I can now sue anyone who uses a=b(x)?
- This is going to make everything more expensive for consumers as we’ll have countless lawsuits demanding licensing fees from developers.
- Developers are screwed as any API they use will see big companies swoop in and bury them in lawsuits.
- This will destroy open source.
And so on.
To get 9B, Oracle would have prove that they’d lost a significant chunk of revenue due to theft. Whether this is the case or not depends on how Java is licensed. If it’s a flat fee then no problem. If the charge as a percentage of the product that uses it, then yes, it could run into billions. The only problem is how does one quantify that. Android is free. What percentage of user data sales are attributed to it? What about Android searches? You can’t count those if they went through the Google search engine.
I dont think you can really put a figure on this because the user data extraction, the massaging and the selling on – none of that is done by Java. That’s all Google’s code. So while I think they’re as guilty as hell, I think $9B is stretching it.
How many times have you seen some good, inventive and hopefully profitable 3rd party feature "copied" in essence by Apple or whoever and integrated into their own software while the person/company with the original idea withers away on the vine? All quite legal as long as the surgery is good.
It sucks that an obvious case of licensing loophole exploitation for profit has to come down to incidental details like API/code copying in the lawsuit. But regardless, anyone who understands the details about what happened and has an ounce of rationality, can clearly see that what they did is wrong and sets a bad precedent for the tech industry if they get away with it.
It's still something that every tech does, which is why they have teams of lawyers whose only job is to avoid as much cost as possible when potentially caught out borrowing too much. Small guys are simply ignored and expected to go away. Only deep pockets get attention.
In effect stealing is only stealing when a court says you have to pay for it.
Absolutely. Which is why I laugh when I see so many posts online like: "I'm a developer and this is the worst day in history. There's no way anyone can claim to be a developer and agree with this decision."
"Just written this," the man says. "It's a masterpiece."
The agent picks up the script and reads the cover: "To kill a Mockingbird."
"That's right," the man says. "It's about a murder in--"
"I know what it's about," says the agent. "This is the same novel written by Harper Lee."
"Not the same story at all," the man says, tapping the side of his nose. "I used a different typewriter."
Many people erroneously look at a single function and think: “memcpy() is the entire API”. It isn’t. It is just one word in a larger body of work.
I think it's irrelevant if the data extraction is done by Java. A significant chunk of their data comes from Android devices, which one could argue wouldn't exist at all in their current form without Java. Would Android have even taken off if they didn't have a user base of developers already familiar with Java to make it easy for them to start coding for Android?
If Android devices are responsible for 10% of the data Google gets for their targeted ad business, then I think the value is easy to determine (Android contributes 10% of their ad revenue). I don't think Oracle is entitled to ALL of this, just a percentage. So if Oracle is awarded 5% of Android revenue, then they get 0.5% of Googles entire ad revenue. Which would have been a few billion over the last 8 years, but less than the $9 billion suggested in this article.
There are a whole lot of copied APIs that built our industry. For example, Columbia Data Products reverse engineering of the IBM PC's BIOS lead to the PC boom. It also allows emulations, such as Boot Camp, to exist without IBM's permission. AFAIK, no one licensed Netscape's extensions to HTML during the browser wars. And no one licensed Microsoft's XMLHttpRequest API.
But a lot of people seem to think that the ruling that APIs being copyrightable is a good idea so I'm happy to hear the counter-argument.
Java is very different than C in that Java defines its APIs as part of the language. C does not.
I absolutely don't like the fact that this case has to come down a technical detail like APIs being copyrightable. The problem is that the law needs hard measurements like that to come to a decision. And those measurements are about 100 years behind the times. Hopefully this case helps people to see how poor those measurements are when applied to technology.
But regardless of that, I would hope that anyone who works in the tech industry can see that what Andy Rubin and company did with Java deserves to be punished because, if allowed, it sets a very bad precedent in the tech industry. I won't restate the reasons why as I've done that many times in my previous posts. But suffice to say that there's a much bigger picture than just APIs.