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Should Oracle win this case, I predict that Free Software licenses will emerge as the clear market choice. Licenses that enshrine interoperability along with th
by doesnotexist 6y ago
Should Oracle win this case, I predict that Free Software licenses will emerge as the clear market choice. Licenses that enshrine interoperability along with the freedom to modify or reimplement in part or wholesale will suddenly provide significantly more value over non-Free software which will be a proprietary minefield and the value will not be for technical but purely from legal liability. Anyone setting out to do something new would be wise to build on top of software they are at least assured will not be used against them in court should they find success building ontop of it.
- jrm4 6y agoGlad to see this take, it was in line with what I was thinking. Namely, that APIs have always been an extremely poor excuse for true openness, more or less a way to get that half-freedom of "letting other people do your work for you" without always being required to give back.
- DubiousPusher 6y agoI look forward to all the unnecessary type casting we will get to do so public interfaces don't infringe. System.Out.Println(byte []) is my new favorite function on Android.
- riantogo 6y agoOr proprietary software could just publish their interoperable APIs under free license.
- marcosdumay 6y agoMaybe after the dust settles. But you can bet lots of people will reenact the SCO saga, and now they won't have to lie on every claim.
- jmalicki 6y agoI would love to see IBM try to sue Oracle for the entirety of its history of database revenues over its use of their SQL API...
- Jtsummers 6y agoSQL is an ISO standard. IBM would only have grounds if any part of Oracle's implementation implemented a proprietary portion of an IBM database implementation. This is the positive thing about standards, it removes ambiguity around what people can/should implement and present to users of the systems.
- jmalicki 6y agoThe IBM implementation of SQL far predates the ISO standard. Does something being standardized somehow relinquish the copyright? The idea of APIs being copyrightable is new, has IBM somehow relinquished its copyright claims for SQL to ISO? This article discusses the possibility at length https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/before-it-sued-google-for-copying-from-java-oracle-got-rich-copying-ibms-sql/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/before-it-sued-g...
- nindalf 6y agoAWS licenses it's client library as under the Apache License. (https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java/blob/master/LICENSE.txt) Doesn't that mean anyone can build an interoperable service? I can then benefit from other cloud providers implementing the same API. I don't need access to AWS' source code, I wasn't going to deploy a private cloud anyway. All I want is robust competition.
- returningfory2 6y agoYeah, I think this is what Digital Ocean does? I believe the AWS S3 Python library works out of the box for DO.
- jacobr1 6y agoThis has already happened to an extent. For example, there are bunch of API compatible implementations of s3, both oss and proprietary and most of them suggest you use the AWS sdk as a client.
- marksomnian 6y agoIncluding, amusingly enough, Oracle: https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Object/Tasks/s3compatibleapi.htm https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Object/Task...
- arh68 6y agoWow, that's wild to read. In comparison (and complete lack of contrast) to: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/com/amazonaws/services/s3/AmazonS3ClientBuilder.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/com/am...
- deanCommie 6y agoWhat the hell kind of comparison is that? You linked a human-doc-writer written documentation to auto-generated Java SDK documentation...
- laurent92 6y agoI don’t understand why software and other IP rights aren’t de facto open-source after 10 or 20 years, if nothing else for archive and legacy purpose, but also to encourage sustained innovation. I’m not even leftist; but even in the capitalist/libertarian theory, the state shouldn’t help guard private companies’ rights in software. If you publish it, the recipient has it, period. The state lending its judges to enforce exclusive rights for a few years is already a big extraction of collective resources for private interests. Found the source of Windows XP? It’s alright, you shouldn’t be condemned for publishing it, it will only help with bugfixes and security, and as long as the owner refuses to sell it...
- rayiner 6y ago> I’m not even leftist; but even in the capitalist/libertarian theory, the state shouldn’t help guard private companies’ rights in software. If you publish it, the recipient has it, period. The state lending its judges to enforce exclusive rights for a few years is already a big extraction of collective resources for private interests. How is software, something of which there is an infinite supply that doesn’t exist until someone creates it, more of a “collective resource” than my back yard, which was here before I was born and will remain here after I die?
- AlchemistCamp 6y agoMillions of people can use VI at once without any direct impact on Bill Joy or his even even noticing it. Millions of people using his back yard at once would be an entirely different matter!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 6y agoThat means a good is non-rival. Why does that make it more or less “communal?” VI wouldn’t exist without Bill Joy, but his backyard would. Doesn’t that make VI more personal and less communal?
- xoxoy 6y agoThe Google lawyer should be fired. I can’t believe you’d put the best of the best in front of the SC and the guy didn’t even sound like he could describe what an API actually is in non-technical terms. I don’t see how he represented the best legal representation Google could buy.
- hugi 6y agoIndeed. This was bad representation to the point that I'm wondering if it was intentional. Google might have recently realized that, as a monopoly, fighting for API freedom perhaps isn't in their best interest.
- phendrenad2 6y ago4D chess time: Google wants to steal market share from Oracle, and Oracle offered a perfect opportunity by trying to shoot itself in the foot by making Java forks risky (thus ending innovation from the open-source world). I expect Google to invent a new bytecode language that looks and feels like Java, but isn't Java. Oh and it'll come with a promise not to sue if you copy the API, not like that big bad Oracle.
- qaq 6y agowas thinking exactly same thing
- pvorb 6y agoThat would have been an expensive realization, but it sounds like a reasonable explanation.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- biztos 6y agoIf they wanted to lose, wouldn't it have been much easier (and possibly cheaper) to settle? I can't imagine Oracle would have a problem with getting to say they were right, and getting a boatload of cash, without all the bother of the Supreme Court. And doesn't intentional bad representation have weird and costly externalities, like reputation damage for the lawyer? I love the image of Google and Oracle behaving like gangsters, but I'm having trouble imagining it being this sloppy.
- c-smile 6y ago> Should Oracle win this case, ... Free Software ... Hmmm... First Free Software project that will dye after this is WINE that implements Windows API ( https://www.winehq.org/ https://www.winehq.org/ )
- aninteger 6y agoMaybe just in the USA. But also Microsoft is on Google's side here. Also doesn't Microsoft's WSL also have this problem as a "reverse WINE" ?
- DoctorOW 6y agoExcept Linux is FOSS so Microsoft has a license to do it.
- dtech 6y agoOnly under Linux's GPL license, WSL is most definitively not under GPL
- lalos 6y agoProbably related to this https://spdx.org/licenses/Linux-syscall-note.html https://spdx.org/licenses/Linux-syscall-note.html
- matkoniecz 6y agoIs it possible to make WSL a GPL software without making entire Windows a GPL software?
- dtech 6y agoYes, GPL defines some boundaries but as long WSL acts as stand-alone software and Windows doesn't link against it that's allowed.
- alfalfasprout 6y ago
- generationP 6y agoYes, but we'll get a major bit rot problem with existing programming languages and probably even file formats (PDF anyone?). And that's before we get to open-source drivers for mainstream hardware, whose APIs are surely not soon going to be released from copyright?
- surround 6y agoWhen I learned that Java is open source, I had assumed that it was free. I guess I was wrong.
- cutler 6y agoThere's open source and really open source, it seems. Just wondering if the ruling will put a bomb under the Java edifice? Maybe it will even pave the way for Kotlin to become the dominant JVM language. One can only dream.
- gridspy 6y agoYes, for the last decade or more commercial companies have been polluting the term "Open Source" to mean "this software takes away all your freedoms, but at least you can read our source code." This is why the FOSS licenses enshrine Compilation, modification and redistribution also.
- gpm 6y agoGoogle isn't complying with the GPL license, so it doesn't really matter that it's open source. Also, I forget if openjdk or this infringement happened first, but if the latter was first than it wasn't open source at the time.
- penteract 6y agoMy least favorite part of the arguments was when the US government representative used the existence of open source licenses that explicitly allow copying declarations to claim that it's not commonly believed that such rights don't exist. "There is a prevalent practice of licensed copying of declarations and often that is done through what is called open-source licensing" ...(6 minutes later) "sometimes, often the license terms don't include the payment of money, they simply include a requirement like whatever improvements you make have to be given back to the programming community. Have to be made known to other potential programmers. But the copyright holders authority to impose and enforce those licenses obviously depends on the proposition that the code is copyrightable to begin with. And so those licenses would be a pointless gesture otherwise and the very fact that they are offered with such frequency tends to dispel the idea that there is a common understanding in the relevant community that this material is not copyrightable at all."
- VWWHFSfQ 6y agoit's a good point though
- penteract 6y agoI agree that part of the reason open source software is so popular (particularly for programming language implementations) is so that there is no ambiguity about the fact that people can make adaptations/alternatives without worrying about copyright lawsuits. However it seems very perverse to use the fact that so many people think it would be a bad idea if these interfaces were constrained by intellectual property laws to justify constraining them by intellectual property laws.
- mLuby 6y ago> licenses would be a pointless gesture otherwise and the very fact that they are offered with such frequency tends to dispel the idea that there is a common understanding This reasoning would also make valid those silly "I hereby declare that my photos on Facebook are my property, with all rights reserved etc etc" posts.
- tylersmith 6y ago
- kabacha 6y agoSeems like you've discovered the philosophy of Accelerationism! Sometimes it does feel that embracing awful system is the best way to topple it.