
Oracle attorney says Google’s court victory might kill the GPL - jor-el
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/op-ed-oracle-attorney-says-googles-court-victory-might-kill-the-gpl/?comments=1
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CyberFonic
Of course an Oracle attorney would try to put a scary spin on the decision.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that Google used the Java API
documentation and re-implemented the API for Android. The Java byte-code get's
translated into Dalvik environment (DEX) code. There is NO JVM, etc being
used. The Java byte-code was well documented in a book back in the days when
Sun owned it.

Since Oracle have bought Sun, they have adopted patent troll techniques.

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weinzierl
> [..] Google's narrative boiled down to this: because the Java APIs have been
> open, any use of them was justified and all licensing restrictions should be
> disregarded. In other words, if you offer your software on an open and free
> basis, any use is fair use.

Drawing this conclusion is a bit far fetched, isn't it? I there really a basis
for the idea that the very specific "Oracle v. Google fair use" verdict can be
applied to open source software in general?

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threatofrain
I'm not entirely sure, but from my reading:

* There were two major questions, one was about copyrights, the other was about patents.

* I think that the district court believes that names and short phrases are not copyrightable. So the court excluded API names and class and function headers from the question. So a question that was left was whether the structure / sequence / organization of API's were copyrightable.

* The court doesn't hold that the structure / sequence / organization of API's are uncopyrightable, just that in Oracle's case it wasn't.

* I think the jury found minor copyright violations (9 lines of copied code and tests that weren't shipped in production), and I believe Oracle and Google settled those matters for $0. As a detail, the court noted that the 9 lines of copied code was written by the same person who was employed by both Sun and Google.

* So the remaining question was on patents, and the jury found that Google's implementation of code underneath API calls were original.

* The court phrases legal questions for jury consideration very precisely as an itemized checklist for the foreman to tally up unanimous consensus, which is left blank if the jury deadlocks. The first jury deadlocked on the most important question of fair use, and the second jury unanimously felt that Oracle did not make its case on the structure / sequence / organization. I believe one argument about structure related to whether the structure of names (which themselves cannot be copyrighted) were due to external factors of compatibility or industry expectations.

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Joof
GPL might lose rights over API, but it shouldn't have them in the first place
and certainly never intended to.

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dogma1138
While it's a hyperbole the argument stems from 2 things as i can see it: The
fact that Google ignored license restrictions, and the fact that Google
"reworte" SUN's/Oracle's code and released it on a different license. The
lawyer thinks this can be used as a precedent for other companies to violate
GPL in general not just where an API is concerned and this ruling would
decrease the level of protection that GPL provides making companies less
likely to use it for their software.

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hysan
I don't see any explanation of how the ruling will kill the GPL in the
article, just a lot of hyperbole. Reading it a second time, maybe the author
is just taking a lot of logical jumps that I cannot understand. Can anyone
give me a reasoned explanation of what the author is trying to say?

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ocdtrekkie
OpenJDK was available under GPL. Android took copyrighted parts of that
software (the API) and released it under Apache, violating the GPL.

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incompatible
It's unfortunate that the API was judged to be copyrightable. However if
Google's use of the API in a commercial product is considered to be fair use,
then presumably any use of the API would be fair use, and in practice the API
is therefore public domain. I suppose I'm confused by the whole thing.

~~~
threatofrain
From my reading, the names used for the API weren't copyrightable because
copyrights didn't cover short names and phrases, so the remaining major
question was whether the structure / sequence / organization of the API is
copyrightable.

There was like a multi-prong framework for viewing whether use of the
structure of API was fair use, and I believe one argument rested on whether
the copying of that structure related to external environmental factors like
industry expectations.

Another important aspect of the ruling was that copyrights were not meant to
enforce monopolies, but rather patents were, and on the patent question the
jury found Google to have written original classes and methods underneath the
API.

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joshka
Jury instructions are the interesting part of this:
[https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/05/26/google_oracle_jury_instruc...](https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/05/26/google_oracle_jury_instructions.pdf)

