Poor Oracle!

[Mia]

Supreme Court Hands Google A Win Over Oracle In Multibillion-Dollar Case

.........In layman's terms, Google's argument was that the Java code was like the basic tomato sauce on a pizza. You may be able to claim that the pizza is a new invention, but not the tomato sauce.

The 39-page opinion, written by Justice Breyer, noted that the purpose of the copyright law is not only to protect new products and innovations but, "more broadly," to "stimulate creativity for public illumination." And in this case Google has created a new computer code, open to all platforms, which "offers programmers a highly creative and innovative tool for a smartphone environment." Breyer said the small use Google made of the Java code "is consistent with that creative 'progress' that is the basic constitutional objective of copyright itself."

The decision settles many of the copyright issues that have plagued tech companies for more than a decade, said Charles Duan, senior fellow for technology and innovation policy at the R Street Institute, a nonpartisan free-market think tank.

"The decision means a lot for software compatibility," said Matt Tait, chief operating officer of Corellium, a company that provides smartphone services. "I can write platform software that other peoples' programs can run on, without worrying" that the connection is copyrighted.

Columbia law professor Jane C. Ginsburg, a leading voice on matters of intellectual property, said the decision does raise some potentially practical issues, however. Among them: "Will the Supreme Court's decision discourage open disclosure of code if programmers fear that their creativity can be cherry-picked and privatized?"

Dissenting from Monday's ruling were Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. As they saw it, when talks between Oracle and Google broke down, Google "simply copied verbatim 11,500 lines of code" from Oracle's library." And doing that "was anything but fair.".................

Supreme Court Hands Google A Win Over Oracle In Multibillion-Dollar Case

Comments?

 

[Aspychata]

The code that was copied, was it freeware? Alot of code out there is freeware, l accessed a lot of free linux programs because of this.

 

[Mia]

The code that was copied, was it freeware?

No it wasn't. Java programming language was invented and written by programmers at Sun Microsystems which Oracle bought. Google attempted to make a deal with Oracle for licensing Java, and wanted to make the Java platform open source for everyone. But Oracle didn't want that and so would not agree, Google then went ahead with it's own platform, using some of the Java code.

 

[Misery]

This sounds like a very special level of stupid. The sort that only corporations can pull off.

Something tells me that somewhere, somehow, there's a $$$reason$$$ why the verdict went that way. Call it a hunch.

Granted I could be misreading something here, but still.

 

[Joshua the Writer]

Oracle is that one web browser, right?

 

[Mia]

Oracle is that one web browser, right?

It was and it's still available for free download. Oracle Power Browser was a web browser created in 1996 by Oracle Corporation.

Oracle Corporation is an american multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company sells database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and enterprise software products—particularly its own brands of database management systems. In 2020, Oracle was the second-largest software company by revenue and market capitalization.

 

[Nervous Rex]

That article was a bit too vague.

One paragraph claimed that Google took 11,500 lines of Oracle's code, which would make anyone want to claim copyright infringement.

But another paragraph mentions "software compatibility", which isn't about copying code - it's about making your own code that's able to run on multiple different platforms or even in different languages.

This Wikipedia page explains it more thoroughly: Google vs Oracle.

Google didn't copy any code that does actual work. They copied Oracle's API (Application Programming Interface). An API is a declaration that when you call function X, you must give specific inputs and you will get a specific output as a result of the function's work. For example, here is Java's function declaration for a square root function:

public static double sqrt(double a)

This specifies that a square root function will take a specific type of number (a double) and return the square root of that number as a specific type (also a double). This does not tell you how the square root calculation is performed.

So, Google copied a bunch of Java APIs for functions they wanted and then provided their own implementation for those functions. For example, they may have also provided a "public static double sqrt(double a)" function, but they had to put their own calculations and their own code to make the the function work.

Oracle claiming copyright of the API is like saying that GM can't make a car with a mileage display on the dashboard because Ford did it first. The real invention isn't being able to see the number of miles you've gone - the invention is how to calculate mileage.

This is a great step forward for software compatibility. You can write java code and run it in Oracle's Java platform, or you can take the same code and run it in Google's platform, without having to rewrite it.

Interestingly, the same thing has been going on with Microsoft's .Net and Mono. Microsoft provides a large API for .Net. Mono provides their own libraries that implement the .Net API. Microsoft has explicitly stated that they won't go the same way Oracle did. From Wkipedia's page on Mono:

In August 2010, a Microsoft spokesman, Tom Hanrahan of Microsoft's Open Source Technology Centre, stated, in reference to the lawsuit filed by Oracle against Google over Android's use of Java, that "The type of action Oracle is taking against Google over Java is not going to happen. If a .NET port to Android was through Mono it would fall under the Microsoft Community Promise Agreement."

 

[Mia]

So, Google copied a bunch of Java APIs for functions they wanted and then provided their own implementation for those functions. For example, they may have also provided a "public static double sqrt(double a)" function, but they had to put their own calculations and their own code to make the the function work.

Now I understand Nervous Rex, thanks for clarifying, it makes far more sense than an analogy of tomato sauce on pizza.

 

[Aspychata]

That really did explain it. The brains have arrived. They are at this forum. lol