

FSF statement on jury's partial verdict in Oracle v Google - Tsiolkovsky
http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-statement-on-jurys-partial-verdict-in-oracle-v-google

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fpp
It all distills down to the Judge's decision - Sun / Oracle might well get /
keep a copyright on the SSO / API as long as any use of it covered by the GNU
/ Apache licenses will always be considered "fair use" (as in free not in the
strict legal sense).

Otherwise this will be like having a copyright on speech - first you teach
people a language to communicate (and many universities / colleges have
invested substantial amounts based on the promise by Sun that it has provided
the use of the Java language for free), and later you change your mind and ask
a judge to decide if people using the words of the language should not all pay
you money for using these words.

If you want to charge people for your language / its implementation you should
not provide it as open source e.a. licenses. One reason why so many
universities / colleges took Java and not for example C# was because the
language was declared as free to use.

If the outcome of this case will be that Google is forced to pay licensing
fees for using the building blocks of the Java language, this will also be a
death sentence for Java. Already now even with the strong demand for Android
developers the demand for Java programmers is shrinking since at least 12
months.

Luckily sharpen (Java -> C#) is making great progress these days and MS is
step-by-step understanding the benefits of open source for platform /
infrastructure providers.

At the same time how about giving Oracle their way with this process and at
the same time provide all universities / colleges / training centers and all
those having been trained there the right to reclaim the cost for training in
Java and retrain them in another (but still free) language, pay them salaries
and educate them for years until they got to the same experience level they
might have with Java now. 10 million Java users is a lot and 1995-2012 is a
long time.

And lets do these reclaims "Hollywood style" just the way ORCL likes to do it
themselves - how about $50 Billion, $100 Billion or even better 10 Million
times what they claim from Google Oracle should pay back to all those who
invested into the Java language after having been deceived by statements from
Sun & Oracle that Java is a free language they can use to build businesses on.

~~~
taligent
Sorry but your analogy to speech makes NO sense. You might as well have
compared Java to cars.

Using Java the language does not mean that Oracle will have a copyright to
your work. Oracle just wants the ability to have a copyright to Java the
platform.

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VBprogrammer
Asking the free software foundation their opinion on this is pretty much like
asking the turkey if it's looking forward to Christmas. The idea of an API
being copyright runs so contrary to their ideals.

That being said, I'd hate to think of the number of APIs which have been
cloned without the explicit permission of the copyright owner.

I can't imagine how this wouldn't cause trouble for Wine. Possibly even
VirtualBox, it re-implements the IBM PC API. Could any emulator fall victim to
this? Isn't a processors instruction set just the API for the processor?

~~~
othermaciej
Doesn't the GPL rely on copyrightability of APIs, in that it claims even code
linking to a GPL library is subject to the GPL? That's one reason this might
be surprising; a finding against API copyrightability might be taken as
undermining the GPL.

~~~
VBprogrammer
I don't think so but I'm not an expert. The ruling in this case would be that
no own could implement the same API without violating the copyright on the GPL
code. For example you couldn't create a GPL free glib etc.

I would be willing to bet that if that ruling would cause vastly more issues
than it solves for the open source community.

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0x09
If the judge determines that APIs are indeed copyrightable, will this not have
equally important implications for the FSF in the other direction?

To use a particularly well-known example, libraries implementing a readline-
compatible API could become subject to the terms of the GPL. Am I wrong?

~~~
patrickaljord
How about the C language? stdlibs api are still under copyright so the author
could sue the FSF for the GCC, Apple for LLVM and whoever use C.

~~~
taligent
Bit of a difference for me. C is a standard i.e. ANSI/ISO.

For me standards should not be able to copyrighted and patented.

