5 ms·

> P.S. The law of the land is now that when you create an API it is copyrighted. I look forward to the extinction WINE and PostgreSQL, and the resurrection of

by rodgerd 11y ago

> P.S. The law of the land is now that when you create an API it is copyrighted. I look forward to the extinction WINE and PostgreSQL, and the resurrection of the SCO corpse for another tilt at Linux vendors, he said sarcastically.

riffraff 11y ago
> PostgreSQL why, which API does that infringe?
- dtech 11y ago
  SQL. Time for IBM to earn some well-earned royalties from all the current implementers.
  - jtome 11y ago
    Starting with oracle hopefully. (Un)fortunately (and IANAL) I don't think copyrights are enforceable if you don't enforce them everytime you know of a violation.
    - lftl 11y ago
      Nope, that's trademarks.
    - rms_returns 11y ago
      That won't happen because IBM also uses a lot of Java stuff including the great eclipse infrastructure. They will end up suing each other for a lot of components if that happens. If rumors are to be believed, Oracle and IBM have some sort of "agreement" that they won't sue each other on these matters.
      - bcg1 11y ago
        I would venture a guess that IBM is a paid up licensee of Java, they've been releasing their own proprietary JVM for quite a while and never been sued by Sun/Oracle for it AFAIK
    - michel-slm 11y ago
      That applies to trademarks, not copyrights IIRC.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    SQL is an international standard. IBM has gave up their rights long time ago.
pron 11y ago
I don't see why. WINE is done for interoperability and is non-profit: two fair use defenses. SQL is a language and therefore not copyrightable (its spec isn't "fixed", which is a prerequisite for copyright). And as for SCO, AFAIK, it was ruled that they don't own the copyright to begin with.
- richardwhiuk 11y ago
  Neither of those are fair use defences.
  - pron 11y ago
    This says they are[1]: Interoperability has been succesfully used as a fair-use defense in the past, and commercial use decreases the chances of a fair-use ruling. Both points (interoperability and commercial use) are central to the Oracle v. Google case, and have been brought up by both sides. See here[2]: I reached out to Collard, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney, who specializes in intellectual property... "In my opinion, the biggest problem for Google is the commercial nature of its use [of the APIs]," he said. "That is generally a strike against finding fair use. Its best argument is probably interoperability -- in other words, it should be fair use because Google must use the APIs in order to make its products interoperable." [1]: https://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/cps182s/fall02/cscopyright/Copyrights/Copyright-Fairuse.htm https://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/cps182s/fall02/cscopyright/C... [2]: https://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2015/07/google-java-apis-fair-use.aspx https://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2015/07/google-java-api...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
saurik 11y ago
WINE is designed to be compatible with Win32. It is built to be interoperable with that existing product. They strive to be complete, and when issues are found with compatibility, they fix those issues. None of this is true of Android, which explicitly went out of its way to build an incompatible ecosystem of software and libraries using the core work of defining the Java API somewhere in the middle. When the case was first being talked about here, I did a writeup on some of this, extracting quotes from the court's decision that I think make the idea clear. I recommend reading that post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7723853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7723853
- icebraining 11y ago
  Thanks for the analysis. That point on Microsoft is just their revisionism, though; the documents and emails gathered by discovery at the time show they weren't excited about Java, but actually trying to "kill cross-platform Java by growing the polluted Java market" (direct quote from their internal strategy docs).
- fpgeek 11y ago
  But WINE isn't designed to be interoperable with Windows. I'm not even sure what that means. Outside of some special cases, it's not like you can get something useful (or even functional) by arbitrarily mixing and matching Windows and WINE components. Instead, for the APIs it supports, WINE was designed to interoperate with Windows programs (binary and source) in same kind of way the Android Java environment interoperates with Java programs (again both binary and source) for the APIs it supports. There are some minor differences (e.g. WINE works with binary applications directly, Android requires that Java bytecode be compiled to Dex bytecode, etc.) but the overall structure is the same. Sure, Android only supports few Java APIs and WINE supports tons of Windows APIs, but that's the distinction fair use hangs on, how does any re-implementation of a proprietary API ever get off the ground (legally anyway)?
  - cwyers 11y ago
    There's a difference between "not compatible yet" and "rips out Swing and implements its own UI library."
zanny 11y ago
So I'm wondering who Microsoft would sue under US jurisdiction for Wine implementing Windows APIs. Its not like there is some central corporate entity behind Wine - Codeweavers sells its own proprietary fork and could be sued, but upstream free software Wine was founded by a guy from Switzerland (outside the jurisdiction of the incredibly barbaric IP around software in the US, at least until the TPP passes and spreads that plague through the Pacific rim, but even then Europe remains safe and sane for now). They could sue any individual contributor to Wine who lives in the US, but there is no way to extract royalties from the Wine project itself.
- rodgerd 11y ago
  They don't need to sell the developers, just anyone who ships it. Which would pretty much shut down Steam for Linux, as far as I can tell.
pcwalton 11y ago
> I look forward to the extinction WINE and PostgreSQL, and the resurrection of the SCO corpse for another tilt at Linux vendors, he said sarcastically. Wasn't one of the central issues that Google copied Java headers verbatim? Wine doesn't copy windows.h [1]; it seems to be a clean room reimplementation. [1]: https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/blob/367b30d8278684aaff373f5666b78264137d7a8f/include/windows.h https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/blob/367b30d8278684aaff3...

by rodgerd 11y ago

riffraff 11y ago

> PostgreSQL why, which API does that infringe?

dtech 11y ago
SQL. Time for IBM to earn some well-earned royalties from all the current implementers.
- jtome 11y ago
  Starting with oracle hopefully. (Un)fortunately (and IANAL) I don't think copyrights are enforceable if you don't enforce them everytime you know of a violation.
  - lftl 11y ago
    Nope, that's trademarks.
  - rms_returns 11y ago
    That won't happen because IBM also uses a lot of Java stuff including the great eclipse infrastructure. They will end up suing each other for a lot of components if that happens. If rumors are to be believed, Oracle and IBM have some sort of "agreement" that they won't sue each other on these matters.
    - bcg1 11y ago
      I would venture a guess that IBM is a paid up licensee of Java, they've been releasing their own proprietary JVM for quite a while and never been sued by Sun/Oracle for it AFAIK
  - michel-slm 11y ago
    That applies to trademarks, not copyrights IIRC.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  SQL is an international standard. IBM has gave up their rights long time ago.

pron 11y ago

I don't see why. WINE is done for interoperability and is non-profit: two fair use defenses. SQL is a language and therefore not copyrightable (its spec isn't "fixed", which is a prerequisite for copyright). And as for SCO, AFAIK, it was ruled that they don't own the copyright to begin with.

richardwhiuk 11y ago
Neither of those are fair use defences.
- pron 11y ago
  This says they are[1]: Interoperability has been succesfully used as a fair-use defense in the past, and commercial use decreases the chances of a fair-use ruling. Both points (interoperability and commercial use) are central to the Oracle v. Google case, and have been brought up by both sides. See here[2]: I reached out to Collard, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney, who specializes in intellectual property... "In my opinion, the biggest problem for Google is the commercial nature of its use [of the APIs]," he said. "That is generally a strike against finding fair use. Its best argument is probably interoperability -- in other words, it should be fair use because Google must use the APIs in order to make its products interoperable." [1]: https://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/cps182s/fall02/cscopyright/Copyrights/Copyright-Fairuse.htm https://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/cps182s/fall02/cscopyright/C... [2]: https://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2015/07/google-java-apis-fair-use.aspx https://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2015/07/google-java-api...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

saurik 11y ago

WINE is designed to be compatible with Win32. It is built to be interoperable with that existing product. They strive to be complete, and when issues are found with compatibility, they fix those issues. None of this is true of Android, which explicitly went out of its way to build an incompatible ecosystem of software and libraries using the core work of defining the Java API somewhere in the middle. When the case was first being talked about here, I did a writeup on some of this, extracting quotes from the court's decision that I think make the idea clear. I recommend reading that post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7723853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7723853

icebraining 11y ago
Thanks for the analysis. That point on Microsoft is just their revisionism, though; the documents and emails gathered by discovery at the time show they weren't excited about Java, but actually trying to "kill cross-platform Java by growing the polluted Java market" (direct quote from their internal strategy docs).
fpgeek 11y ago
But WINE isn't designed to be interoperable with Windows. I'm not even sure what that means. Outside of some special cases, it's not like you can get something useful (or even functional) by arbitrarily mixing and matching Windows and WINE components. Instead, for the APIs it supports, WINE was designed to interoperate with Windows programs (binary and source) in same kind of way the Android Java environment interoperates with Java programs (again both binary and source) for the APIs it supports. There are some minor differences (e.g. WINE works with binary applications directly, Android requires that Java bytecode be compiled to Dex bytecode, etc.) but the overall structure is the same. Sure, Android only supports few Java APIs and WINE supports tons of Windows APIs, but that's the distinction fair use hangs on, how does any re-implementation of a proprietary API ever get off the ground (legally anyway)?
- cwyers 11y ago
  There's a difference between "not compatible yet" and "rips out Swing and implements its own UI library."

zanny 11y ago

So I'm wondering who Microsoft would sue under US jurisdiction for Wine implementing Windows APIs. Its not like there is some central corporate entity behind Wine - Codeweavers sells its own proprietary fork and could be sued, but upstream free software Wine was founded by a guy from Switzerland (outside the jurisdiction of the incredibly barbaric IP around software in the US, at least until the TPP passes and spreads that plague through the Pacific rim, but even then Europe remains safe and sane for now). They could sue any individual contributor to Wine who lives in the US, but there is no way to extract royalties from the Wine project itself.

rodgerd 11y ago
They don't need to sell the developers, just anyone who ships it. Which would pretty much shut down Steam for Linux, as far as I can tell.

pcwalton 11y ago

> I look forward to the extinction WINE and PostgreSQL, and the resurrection of the SCO corpse for another tilt at Linux vendors, he said sarcastically. Wasn't one of the central issues that Google copied Java headers verbatim? Wine doesn't copy windows.h [1]; it seems to be a clean room reimplementation. [1]: https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/blob/367b30d8278684aaff373f5666b78264137d7a8f/include/windows.h https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/blob/367b30d8278684aaff3...