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Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw)
In a follow-up to yesterday's coverage of the Oracle v. Google ruling on the copyrightability of APIs, Groklaw has a summary of the reactions from various parties in and around the lawsuit, including interpretations on the case's broader impact. "The ruling totally wipes away the earlier partial ruling by the jury on the API question. Or as lawyers would say, it's now moot. There is no question of fair use for code that can't be copyrighted. You can't infringe something that isn't covered by copyright law, and so you don't need a defense like fair use."
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Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 2, 2012 16:55 UTC (Sat) by imgx64 (guest, #78590) [Link]
What I'd like to know is how will this affect Mono. Does this ruling mean that Microsoft can't sue people who use Mono either? Will we stop hearing from well-meaning FOSS people warning that if you use Mono, Microsoft could sue you any time?
I have a feeling it's not that simple.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 2, 2012 17:01 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
This ruling (which can be overturned in an appeal) only covers applicability of copyright of the Java API under these specific circumstances (ie) interoperability considerations. It is a deliberately narrow ruling. From the conclusion
"This order does not hold that Java API packages are free for all to use without license. It does not hold that the structure, sequence and organization of all computer programs may be stolen. Rather, it holds on the specific facts of this case, the particular elements replicated by Google were free for all to use under the Copyright Act."
In particular, patent considerations are not the same in this case and with Mono.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 2, 2012 18:58 UTC (Sat) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
It seems that exactly the same legal interpretation can apply to Mono (or Wine for that matter). The judge deliberately did not make a sweeping statement about all APIs, but the same legal reasoning stands for them nevertheless. After reading the ruling, I see nothing that makes the .NET or Win32 APIs any different.
Of course patents and other legal threads are unaffected by this, but I think it is safe to assume that similar APIs are covered by this precedent (while it still stands).
Of course, IANAL and proud of it! :-)
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 2, 2012 23:09 UTC (Sat) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link]
Unfortunately, it's not much more precedent than the European Court of Justice pronouncement. Any other trial judge with strong opinions on the matter is free to disregard Judge Alsup's analysis. Hopefully they won't do that, but let's not count the chickens before they hatch.
And even if the 9th Cir. Court of Appeals affirms, there are other circuits, like the 2nd, with a history of going their own way on copyright matters, California and New York being the primary jurisdictions for copyright cases.
Frankly, I don't understand why people feel so self-righteous right now. There's collective amnesia about the innumerable number of train wrecks that have come out of the appeals courts. Here we have a single decision, not even appealed yet, and people are absolutely confident that somehow this ship has sailed and can't turn around. People are acting like the appeals system has magically become infallible. Many of these people are absolutely oblivious to the irony when they post, elsewhere, comments about Citizens United or hosts of other cases which were adversely reversed on appeal.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 2, 2012 23:20 UTC (Sat) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
Are you saying that it would have been better if the judge ruled the other way, or that we should wait three more years before celebrating?
Certainly this was the best possible outcome for now and it certainly increases the likelihood that a similar outcome would be reached if there are other similar trials. Which part of this do you disagree with?
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 2, 2012 19:11 UTC (Sat) by mrjk (subscriber, #48482) [Link]
You (and many other I noticed) are slightly taking the narrowness quote out of context. Barring changes from appeal this ruling is broad and will be applicable in many cases. This is not just about this particular interface.
The part you quote narrows the ruling down, but it narrows it down to the interface itself, not from a general ruling about copyrighting interfaces.
Also quoting from the ruling:
"Contrary to Oracle, copyright law does not confer ownership over any and all ways to implement a function or specification, no matter how creative the copyrighted implementation or specification may be. The Act confers ownership only over the specific way in which the author wrote out his version. Others are free to write their own implementation to accomplish the identical function, for, importantly, ideas, concepts and functions cannot be monopolized by copyright."
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 2, 2012 21:06 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
One simplistic way to look at it is, in terms of software:
Copyrights cover a particular implementation. The fact that somebody duplicates the functionality of your software is irrelevant.. it's outside the scope of copyright. They actually have to literally copy your software.
Patents cover all implementations of a particular functionality. Whether or not you actually wrote a program or produce a product is irrelevant. If somebody else implements the patented functionality you have the legal right to sue them... whether they realize your patent exists or not.
All in all it's pretty obvious.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 4, 2012 10:44 UTC (Mon) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
>Copyrights cover a particular implementation. The fact that somebody duplicates the functionality of your software is irrelevant.. it's outside the scope of copyright. They actually have to literally copy your software.
If that were true than "non literal" copying would always be legal, but it isn't. What he's saying is that if I implement something that duplicates the functionality of something you wrote and I do it *in the same way* AND that "same way" is necessary to obtain the same function, then that is not copyrightable. If I do it the "same way" and that is NOT necessary to obtain the same function it's still non-literal copying and still infringement.
What he's making clear here is that for software, for API compatibility, it may be necessary to make an implementation that is substantially identical in form and function and, when that happens, it's not infringement... and that's what happened in this case.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 4, 2012 16:34 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Yes. Rules for 'needed for functionality' overrule copyright restrictions.
It's a very arbitrary distinction since all software is nothing but provide functionality. So if you want something to behave the same as Java you essentially have to re-write the entire thing exactly.
It just goes to show that none of this IP stuff has any fundamental nature of correctness and wasn't really thought out that well.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 8, 2012 5:57 UTC (Fri) by dirtyepic (subscriber, #30178) [Link]
One simplistic way to look at it in terms of fine literature:
If you write a book about some guy in a cape saving the world, I can also write a book about some guy in a cape saving the world without infringing your copyright. Of course, if my book is suspiciously similar to yours in plot, setting, structure, etc. then you might have a case.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 0:17 UTC (Sun) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link] I'd just like to point out that Microsoft is hosting the next Mono hackathon, as mentioned in LWN's own announcement page for a while, so any lawsuit by Microsoft would involve several more legal defenses like estoppel than were available here. At no point did Sun invite Google hackers into their offices to collaborate with them on Dalvik, and yet Google won.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 18:32 UTC (Sun) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
It's not Microsoft you have to be worried about. It's the third parties that they could resell the patents to, who could then sue you (and anyone else Microsoft doesn't like.) The Microsoft Patent Pledge includes language specifically to make this possible.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 23:49 UTC (Sun) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Some related reading on the topic of plausible deniability (also known as "It isn't us, they're a different company!"): http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/rockstar/all/1
Disastrous Posted Jun 4, 2012 10:59 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] What a mess... This article should be enough reason to shut down the patent system altogether. On the other hand, politicians reading the article will probably think "We cannot shut down a multi-billion dollar industry", so the train wreck has to be massively escalated before anything good is done about it.
Disastrous Posted Jun 4, 2012 17:34 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
It should come as no surprise as almost all Politicians in the USA are/were practicing lawyers. You can look back at their history and see that many of them made a immense amount of money doing very questionable lawsuits. While the patent system may be a vampiric drag on the economy and progress and the only people that benefit from most of it are lawyers... there is certainly professional courtesy to think about.
After all if you put your friends out of business then there is little chance they will invite you to the cool parties later on.
Disastrous Posted Jun 4, 2012 17:37 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] But then when the big cases come to court, most of the decisions fall on "our" side (i.e. on the side of common sense and good business). According to your argument judges must be pariahs outside their courtrooms... Just wondering aloud.
Disastrous Posted Jun 4, 2012 22:49 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Judges have their own circles, plus Lawyers need to kiss Judge's asses in order to get what they want. So if a Judge, especially a appointed district Judge, pisses of the Lawyers it's not going to matter because the Lawyers will still need to behave in a obsequious manner towards them.
They are, effectively, a higher level legal lifeform.
To put it into perspective: The district court judges are effectively appointed for life and they are not only completely isolated from the consequences of their decisions they are immune against any sort of prosecution. They can pretty much do whatever they want. They could steal your car, drive it drunk down the road and kill 3 or 4 people and they would not face any immediate consequences. They couldn't be charged with a crime, I am not even sure they can be arrested. It literally takes a act of congress to impeach a federal district judge.. so the only people that can do anything about a badly behaving Judge is Congress, and the Judge would have to be behaving VERY badly. To put it in 'mafia' terms. The Judges, once appointed, are 'Made men'. They can do what ever they like to you, but if they think you are looking at them the wrong way they can throw you into jail upwards to months.
In terms of court decisions the _ONLY_ thing restraining them and controlling their decisions is the opinions of their peers. Which are other district court Judges.
Now the only chance for a lawyer to get a one-up on a Judge is if they manage to get elected to office and end up on some committee that reviews a Judge appointment.
> But then when the big cases come to court, most of the decisions fall on "our" side
I think that is a exaggeration.
They got Google pouring millions of dollars into a huge waste of time. They were able to play the FUD card for months on end. Oracle, Apple, and friends forced Google to pay 20 billion dollars for what amounts to a stack of worthless patents. (If the patents were so good then the company that made them wouldn't be a failure).
And Google (and others) are only going to choose to defend themselves when it's a pretty obvious slam dunk like this one. I am sure that in 90% of cases they just roll over and throw money at the problem because it's cheaper to pay up then fight it.
Android phone makers roll right over and pay Microsoft, Apple, and others for the right to sell their own hardware running open source software, for example.
Disastrous Posted Jun 4, 2012 23:25 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
umm, no Judges are not above the law. If they commit a crime they can be tried, convicted, and sent to jail just like anyone else.
what you can't do is sue a judge for what they did in a particular case. You can make a case that they have become incompetent and need to be removed, but to do so you need to convince a panel of the Judge's superiors (and it probably requires showing a pattern where a Judge is being reversed on Appeal on a regular basis)
This is a deliberate move to make it so that Judges are not swayed by short-term political thinking, and is why people dig so much into the background of any Judge that's being appointed. The time of appointment is just about the last point where a Judge is examined to see how ethical they are.
Also, remember that every individual Judge can have their ruling appealed, so any horrible decisions that they make can be reversed. This makes it so that it's not just a matter of one person's whim, it requires that the Judges that the Appeal goes to must also agree with the ruling.
Or to put it more precisely, any interpretation of the Law can be evaluated by the Judges that hear the Appeal, and only if they agree with it does it stand.
Disastrous Posted Jun 5, 2012 18:47 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> umm, no Judges are not above the law. If they commit a crime they can be tried, convicted, and sent to jail just like anyone else
Well, more or less. I remembered.
What I was referring to was that no matter what they do the district Judge is always going to remain a district judge, even if convicted of a felony.
Disastrous Posted Jun 5, 2012 18:50 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> I remembered.
a typo. Meant to say 'I misremembered'.
Disastrous Posted Jun 5, 2012 23:30 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
except that the other judges (at least the next layer up) can remove a judge, and would probably do so for a felony conviction (I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is language mandating this, you can't serve on a jury, vote, etc with a felony conviction)
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 5, 2012 19:58 UTC (Tue) by dashesy (subscriber, #74652) [Link]
Wow that article is very scary! A company made of lawyers and few engineers to leech of the productive companies that do innovate! It seems the patent cold war has gone to a whole new level with warheads of this scale and destructibility. There should be an organization to stop proliferation of software patents, they are the most illogical.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 5, 2012 23:01 UTC (Tue) by dashesy (subscriber, #74652) [Link]
I meant *destructivity* but auto correct thinks it is not acceptable.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 6, 2012 17:39 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] A company made of lawyers and few engineersThat's not actually true, you know.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 6, 2012 20:34 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
Rockstar Consortium? How many engineers and how many lawyers does it have?
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 11, 2012 13:23 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
It's a company made of consultants. More consultants than engineers, more engineers than lawyers. Installation consulting and the like is very profitable (AIUI, speaking only for myself, blah blah).
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 20:29 UTC (Sun) by jmalcolm (guest, #8876) [Link]
Mono has been safer than Java for years.
Microsoft themselves use Mono all over the place and tell others to use it. For example, they both use it (including Moonlight) at tryfsharp.org and explicitly tell you to download and use it. Microsoft uses the commercial version of Mono (Xamarin) to publish iPhone apps.
When Microsoft starting accepting outside contributors to ASP.NET MVC (it is Open Source you see), they invited Mono Project and Xamarin founder Miguel de Icaza to be the first contributor. Mono ships with mountains of Microsoft authored code, including ASP.NET MVC, MEF, the DLR, F#, IronRuby, IronPython, and Silverlight controls.
Mono detractors will never stop warning against using Mono. They already dismiss the ECMA and ISO C# and runtime standards, the Community Promise, the Apache patent grants, and the history of estoppel as meaningless. A few more legal precedents will not persuade them.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 21:42 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
You might debate whether Mono is safer than Android, but to compare it against Java is meaningless. Oracle/Sun hasn't sued anybody for using Java; they sued Google for re-implementing it. Thus to say that using Java is less safe than using Mono is ridiculous. Further, Java itself is available under GPL (unlike .Net), so there exist a wide field of possibilities for safe GPL re-implementations based on it.
Further, correct me if I am wrong, but Microsoft's community promise extends only to open source software and Novell customers. That doesn't strike me as safe at all.
Oracle screwed big time, no question about it, but let's not lose sight of the objective reality.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 21:57 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
Oracle did sue claiming that they owned the APIs of JAVA and could therefor control everything done with them.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 22:39 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
No, they did not. Actually the judge specifically spelled that detail out in his ruling. They claim they own the SSO, which has no bearing on how you use the API. This is copyright law, so it is sufficiently clear on this - it prohibits copying, not using. Calling a function is not copying anything.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 22:46 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
no, they did claim that they owned the API, the Judge ruled that they couldn't own it for many different reasons. some of this was in the final ruleing, but much of it was during the trial. You have to go back through the trial documents to see this, so if you are just looking at this last ruleing I understand why you would think that they didn't claim this.
It makes no sense to any tech people, but they were claiming that 'copying' the function definition was something that they could control. That's not just done when writing a replacement library, it's done when you use a function as well.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 23:08 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
In order for your Java app to run, it needs a runtime, which falls under copyright. In order to copy the runtime (so you can use it) you certainly need a license. That's a given. They could release all future Java versions under a very expensive commercial license, and that is certainly their right. No different from .net.
However they don't have copyright over sources which use their API because using an API doesn't involve copying. So, you might have no practical way to run your Java app, but it is still entirely yours :-)
The critical difference from .net is that fortunately they cannot revoke the GPL from the existing OpenJDK, so as far as I can tell legally Java software is completely safe.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 4, 2012 14:28 UTC (Mon) by klbrun (subscriber, #45083) [Link]
Oracle complained that with Dalvik, Google was fragmenting Java. This is reminiscent of the case between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, in which Sun successfully sued to keep control of the definition of Java (which is why Microsoft calls their version C#). Of course, Sun designed Java to be a Microsoft killer, and Microsoft was trying to turn that back onto Sun.
So, Oracle gets to define the Java language, but the judge essentially said that Oracle can't limit Java source code to the JVM.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 4, 2012 14:33 UTC (Mon) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
IIRC Microsoft produced their Java implementation under licence from Sun, so there may well have been contract terms that they violated when they attempted to extend & embrace the language.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 4, 2012 23:14 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
exactly, to use the name (and trademarks for) "Java" you must be compatible. This is why Google doesn't use that name for it's runtime implementation.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 6, 2012 22:09 UTC (Wed) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]
MS violated those contract terms by extending the JVM, but also by removed part of the Sun Java sandbox to improve performance (which lead to several exploits that harmed Java's "secure" reputation).
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 3, 2012 21:49 UTC (Sun) by gioele (subscriber, #61675) [Link]
> Mono detractors will never stop warning against using Mono. They already dismiss the ECMA and ISO C# and runtime standards, the Community Promise, the Apache patent grants, and the history of estoppel as meaningless. A few more legal precedents will not persuade them.
It is hard to be persuaded when you realise that Microsoft hasn't jet published or updated the ECMA/ISO specs for C# 3.0 and C# 4.0 (released in 2007 and 2010). [1] Please note that the community promise is limited to the ECMA C# specs. [2, 3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_%28programming_lang...
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 7, 2012 2:27 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
* The patent promise only applies between you and Microsoft. It specifically excludes third parties and estoppel. That means Microsoft will just shop the patents to a third party if and when they decide they need to start suing developers for using Mono.
* Just having a runtime doesn't magically make C# usable on Linux. All of the important C# libraries are Windows-only. Do you think that Microsoft is going to change this situation? Here's a hint: the current CEO once described Linux as "a cancer."
* The fact that Mono is mostly funded by Microsoft is a bad thing, not a good thing. It means that when Microsoft inevitably moves on to the next shiny thing, Mono will be left to wither on the vine. This has already happened with Moonlight.
* A cross-platform version of Mono already exists. It is called Java.
* All of this has been pointed out many, many times before but apparently some people just don't read replies.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 7, 2012 16:23 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> * Just having a runtime doesn't magically make C# usable on Linux. All of the important C# libraries are Windows-only
So I guess there is no problem then if there is no Linux libraries usable with C# and obviously no C# programs running on Mono under Linux. 8-P
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 4, 2012 11:09 UTC (Mon) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]
Nothing can stop Oracle and Microsoft to sue people because they do not need a case, only money, and they have plenty to waste, as exemplified by this trial.
Ah! The Morning After... (Groklaw) Posted Jun 5, 2012 20:59 UTC (Tue) by rdale (guest, #70788) [Link] Nothing can stop Oracle and Microsoft to sue people because they do not need a case, only money, and they have plenty to waste, as exemplified by this trial. Yes, I agree. But looking on the bright side they won't sue you unless you've got lots of money too. And there is very little money in anything to do with Mono, compared with Android.
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