Oracle wins on appeal and we start all over again
I'll start this by saying that while I agree with today's outcome... I think, I want just as much as anyone for this stupid thing to end.
The one article I read was literally 100% full of people yelling at Oracle and siding with Google.
And I honestly don't get it. I use a lot of Google products and support them in a lot of ways. But, this whole fiasco is not an area where I support them.
Let's start with, at no point has Google ever even tried defend whether or not their actions were ethical. In this matter, they stole, knowingly in violation of Sun's license agreement (it wasn't Oracle in the beginning folks) code and API's. The reason was malicious and specific.
Google needed an established programming language to attract developers. Java was the obvious answer. But Java would not give them a license to do the things they wanted to on terms Google was willing to accept. Their own engineers sent numerous emails lettings those at all sorts of levels of power within Google know that they would be violating the licenses and rolled ahead regardless. The end result was Google produced a run time based on, but incompatible with JVM which lowered Java's market value and diverted their talent towards Android.
The argument from Google was NEVER that they didn't do these things. The argument was always "well sure we did it, but is it technically illegal and enforceable?".
The biggest piece of the argument was whether or not APIs were eligible for copyright protection.
The argument that they are purely functional and that form follows function is bonkers.
The Judge ruling in favor of Google originally on this choose obtusely simplistic examples and failed to point out that virtually EVERY SINGLE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE represent even such simplistic functions differently. They don't all take the same parameters. They don't all show up in the same order. They aren't all named the same. They aren't all organized together. They don't even necessarily exist in the same capacity in all programming languages.
I hate to break it to you, but API are creative. And how an API is constructed also has a huge bearing on success of a language.
But, as I've said before. If APIs weren't valuable constructs... why would Google have bothered LITERALLY copying, verbatim, such a large portion of Java APIs? Because it was precisely the structure and naming conventions which had the necessary value to Google. They couldn't have simply named them similarly. Or stolen another languages APIs. They needed to attract Java developers. So they NEEDED the EXACT APIs copied.
If all APIs are simply functionality and form follows function then all APIs would look the same or similar. But they don't. And Google could have easily avoided any threat of legal action by simply not copying them in the first place. It would have served as a smoke screen to hide the code they literally copied directly as well.
Anyone who thinks this is a scary case doesn't understand copyright law. Period.
The one article I read was literally 100% full of people yelling at Oracle and siding with Google.
And I honestly don't get it. I use a lot of Google products and support them in a lot of ways. But, this whole fiasco is not an area where I support them.
Let's start with, at no point has Google ever even tried defend whether or not their actions were ethical. In this matter, they stole, knowingly in violation of Sun's license agreement (it wasn't Oracle in the beginning folks) code and API's. The reason was malicious and specific.
Google needed an established programming language to attract developers. Java was the obvious answer. But Java would not give them a license to do the things they wanted to on terms Google was willing to accept. Their own engineers sent numerous emails lettings those at all sorts of levels of power within Google know that they would be violating the licenses and rolled ahead regardless. The end result was Google produced a run time based on, but incompatible with JVM which lowered Java's market value and diverted their talent towards Android.
The argument from Google was NEVER that they didn't do these things. The argument was always "well sure we did it, but is it technically illegal and enforceable?".
The biggest piece of the argument was whether or not APIs were eligible for copyright protection.
The argument that they are purely functional and that form follows function is bonkers.
The Judge ruling in favor of Google originally on this choose obtusely simplistic examples and failed to point out that virtually EVERY SINGLE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE represent even such simplistic functions differently. They don't all take the same parameters. They don't all show up in the same order. They aren't all named the same. They aren't all organized together. They don't even necessarily exist in the same capacity in all programming languages.
I hate to break it to you, but API are creative. And how an API is constructed also has a huge bearing on success of a language.
But, as I've said before. If APIs weren't valuable constructs... why would Google have bothered LITERALLY copying, verbatim, such a large portion of Java APIs? Because it was precisely the structure and naming conventions which had the necessary value to Google. They couldn't have simply named them similarly. Or stolen another languages APIs. They needed to attract Java developers. So they NEEDED the EXACT APIs copied.
If all APIs are simply functionality and form follows function then all APIs would look the same or similar. But they don't. And Google could have easily avoided any threat of legal action by simply not copying them in the first place. It would have served as a smoke screen to hide the code they literally copied directly as well.
Anyone who thinks this is a scary case doesn't understand copyright law. Period.
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