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The 9 lines of code that Google allegedly stole from Oracle

358 points by nkurz 10y ago

jbob2000 10y ago
Looks like something I've written a hundred times. It's a common pattern, you could "steal" this just through organically writing a program. The more I hear about this case, the more I realize it's just a bunch of lawyers trying to pad their bank accounts. No sane engineer would claim this is infringement.
- jkyle 10y ago
  I bet some even have code like that stored in their snippets library.
  - spydum 10y ago
    https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=rangeCheck+fromIndex+toIndex+arrayLen&type=Code&ref=searchresults https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=rangeCheck+fromIn... Indeed, quite a lot, but I dont think that was the point.
- geofft 10y ago
  Judge Alsup made the exact same point in the original trial: "I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it, you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America, how could you even make that kind of argument?" David Boies (counsel for Oracle): "I want to come back to rangeCheck." Alsup: "rangeCheck! All it does is make sure the numbers you're inputting are within a range, and gives them some sort of exceptional treatment. That witness, when he said a high school student could do it—" Boies: "I'm not an expert on Java—this is my second case on Java, but I'm not an expert, and I probably couldn't program that in six months." http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120515120106322 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120515120106322
  - slowmovintarget 10y ago
    "Your honor, we believe John Fogerty is infringing on our sound when he plays guitar like himself." Any other way to write that method, short of changing the exception text and variable names would be silly. The truly astonishing thing is that enough people could be fooled to think otherwise.
    - Roboprog 10y ago
      Well, there are 6 different orders in which you could insert the 3 if statements, but I'm not sure that's a material difference :-)
      - blktiger 10y ago
        Yes and no, if the first conditional is moved then the behavior of the function would be different. You could for example specify a fromIndex of -1 and a toIndex of -2. That would result in an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException instead of an IllegalArgumentException. Arguably, it doesn't matter but if it's different than it wouldn't necessarily be compatible with other calling code. Of course that still leaves two other arrangements of the remaining code.
    - gsylvie 10y ago
      Nice Fogerty reference! (He's citing this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogerty_v._Fantasy,_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogerty_v._Fantasy,_Inc.)
  - awinder 10y ago
    Is it really common that you'd have a judge in a case end up with that kind of "subject matter expertise"? I guess I can't completely fault Boies for arguing the case in the manner you see in that exchange, but I was pretty floored that the judge could just see right through it.
    - simonsarris 10y ago
      He learned Java solely for the purpose of being able to understand the case more clearly. (Wikipedia) and has implied that he knows other langauges as well. He has a B.S. in math so its not too surprising. Adorably, the Judge's full name is William Haskell Alsup.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  Exactly why no engineers will be allowed on the jury.
- mtgx 10y ago
  Not just lawyers, but entire companies want to be paid for stuff like this. See Microsoft, for instance: > Microsoft focuses on Oracle's argument that copyright supports "non-literal" elements of software. In other words, Google can be found a copyist—even if there's no actual copying of code. The "structure, sequence, and organization" (or SSO) of software "can, in some instances, be protected by the copyright in the work." Copyright violations can be found in a software case "even when the defendant did not copy the underlying developers' code," Microsoft insists, because the defendant has copied "some other, non-literal element of the software." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/microsoft-foresees-chaos-if-google-v-oracle-result-stands/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/microsoft-foresee... So it's not just literal "copying" (accidental or not) that must be punished/paid for, but companies or developers should be forced to pay for making "similar" APIs as well.
  - deong 10y ago
    To be fair, that's not an enormously crazy thing to say. If I read George R.R. Martin's work and then write the exact same story, going through sentence by sentence and changing each material word just enough to say it wasn't "copied" (e.g., "Tyrion shot the arrow through his father's heart" becomes "Tyrone fired the bolt, piercing his patriarch's breast"), I'm surely guilty of copyright infringement. I don't think SSO should qualify for this sort of protection, for a number of reasons (it has significant functional constraints on how its expressed, it's a tiny fraction of an overall creative work of software, etc.). But it's not obviously nuts to claim it should either.
    - MoreTuple 10y ago
      Would it be a more fair analogy to say that you read George's work, copied the chapter names and wrote your own story underneath those?
    - cgag 10y ago
      Could you use a less significant line as your example?
- drgath 10y ago
  The current state of the lawsuit isn't over the novelty of function, it's about the copyright of it. Also, very important to their argument is that this wasn't some random developer at Google who added it into Android, it was the guy who had added that function to OpenJDK. While I also disagree with the lawsuit, if you are coming at it from the mindset that code you have a copyright to was used elsewhere, Oracle has a compelling case. Certainly not a $9 billion case, and not one that takes up 6 years of time to decide, but that's not for me to decide.
- rayiner 10y ago
  The article misses the forest for the trees. This lawsuit isn't about rangeCheck, it's about the structure/sequence/organization of the Java APIs. Whether you think SSO should be copyrightable or not, you can't argue it's trivial. Copying the SSO allowed Google to greatly reduce the barrier to entry for Android by leveraging the enormous Java ecosystem.[1] The relevance of rangeCheck isn't that it's some crucial functionality that Google couldn't have written themselves. The relevance of rangeCheck--and Google's admission that it literally copied the code instead of developing it "organically"--is proving that Google was looking at JDK code while developing the Android JVM. Oracle would never sue on rangeCheck by itself because the damages would be trivial. They're hammering on the literal copying of rangeCheck because of what it says about Google's state of mind. [1] The fundamental legal question is actually pretty interesting and has implications beyond this case. Remember Microsoft's policy of "embrace, extend, extinguish" in the 1990s? If SSO is protectable, then "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics may cross the line from simply distasteful to actionable unfair competition.
  - vetinari 10y ago
    > Copying the SSO allowed Google to greatly reduce the barrier to entry for Android by leveraging the enormous Java ecosystem. This ecosystem doesn't belong to Oracle. It comprises of thousands of companies and individuals, who actually welcome that their existing investment into Java code can be reused on additional platform. If Oracle's argument is accepted, it becomes a gatekeeper to the platform who decides, where and for what purpose you can run your own code or not. It greatly increases the risk of using the Java platform.
    - mmastrac 10y ago
      Playing devil's advocate - perhaps Oracle sees the ecosystem as being a "derived work" of their Java IP. This would be a dangerous view for software.
      - chiefalchemist 10y ago
        It's only a matter of time before the hunter - in this case Oracle - becomes the hunted. You would think they know better. But this isn't about code and law, is it? It's a testosterone fueled pissing match. Don't cha think?
- dopamean 10y ago
  I think it would be neat if anyone who sees this would link to a github repo of their own that shows an organically created version of these nine lines. I believe that for a patent you have to demonstrate novelty. I have no idea how copyrights work. It seems that novelty is not so important in the case.
  - jandrese 10y ago
    You think someone checked in every line as they wrote it? I'm sure the repo update for that function is just "implemented the following API functions: ...." + a bunch of lines. Dirt simple 9 line functions don't "organically grow" over time, they're just pounded out and the programmer moves on.
    - EdHominem 10y ago
      Bugs count. Anything that shows you didn't cut and paste it. Bonus points for conceptual issues that demonstrate a natural convergence to the same solution as understanding of the domain increases.
  - maxlybbert 10y ago
    Copyright requires some creativity ( http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/499/340.html http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/499/340.html ): "Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. ... To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, 'no matter how crude, humble or obvious' it might be. ... Originality does not signify novelty; a work may be original even though it closely resembles other works, so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying."
- Philipp__ 10y ago
  But since we, engineers, aren't asked much... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  This is like saying the Vietnam War was just a bunch of of officers trying to get promoted. It happens to be a lot true, but its hardly complete.
tantalor 10y ago
(2012)
- nedsma 10y ago
  You're right. Please, someone update the headline.
nedsma 10y ago
Dear goodness. And there are tens if not hundreds of people involved in trying to prove/disprove this case and they're all getting some hefty money. What a waste of human intellect and time.
- tetrep 10y ago
  I wonder if it's possible to measure energy spent in court cases? One of the things that amazed me about spam was how many resources we spend just transmitting it across the internet, it's kind of tragic when you think about the waste, but also kinda awesome that everything still works, despite relatively poor resource allocation. The Economics of Spam: http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.26.3.87 http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.26.3.87
  - jerf 10y ago
    You'd have to define what you mean a lot more carefully. Certainly any sort of network transmission costs would be dominated by, say, climate control in the court room.
    - tlrobinson 10y ago
      I think the parent commenter was just using spam as an example of an activity that uses a disproportionate amount of energy compared to it's value. The court room climate control costs would likely be dominated by energy expended for every involved individuals' commutes, which would likely be dominated by the opportunity cost of all of those individuals doing something more productive (if you want to go that far)
- arvinjoar 10y ago
  How many SV angels can balance on a pinhead?
  - iofj 10y ago
    Depends on whether the pinhead is of the steel or investor variety.
Aelinsaar 10y ago
Incredible. The amount of money being set to the fire for the sake of something that even a student knows is utter crap.
- toyg 10y ago
  Considering this case is probably not influencing the US dollar inflation rate, nothing is being set on fire -- it's just being moved from Google's + Oracle's pockets to Google's + Oracle's _lawyers'_ pockets :)
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    So really, this is like a current flow, with dollar bills. lol
  - worldsayshi 10y ago
    Well, people-time is certainly being wasted.
enibundo 10y ago
As a software engineer, I get sad when I read news like this.
- singham 10y ago
  It's not news because the article is old. 2012
smaili 10y ago
tldr - private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex { if (fromIndex > toIndex) throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex + ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")"); if (fromIndex < 0) throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex); if (toIndex > arrayLen) throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex); }
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- aexaey 10y ago
  You may want to start lines with (at least) 4 spaces for HN to preserve original formatting.
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    2 spaces are all that's needed. OT: Really convenient use of emacs for formatting quotes. Copy the text into a text-mode buffer, put two spaces at the start, M-q and the whole thing is wrapped and each line prefixed with two spaces.
- andy_ppp 10y ago
  This like saying we found a brush stroke in your painting that you copied from Picasso, look at the details of this one stroke you copied it's the same!!! Utterly absurd...
foobarrio 10y ago
I thought it "not obvious to a practitioner of the craft" was a requirement for a patent no? Give 10 programmers the task to write "rangeCheck()" and you'll end up with very similar looking code.
- kabouseng 10y ago
  This concerns copyright, not patents.
- tgb 10y ago
  That part is a copyright claim, not patent claim.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  This is regarding copyright. But you are correct, if patents were in dispute this (alone) would fail. Keep in mind, components of an invention that's patented can be quite obvious. How a standard gearbox in a car works is well-known, but pair it up with some novel input and output or some novel use, and it's a patentable construct.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Yet, who decides? A pro-IP court powered 'industry' in East Texas that keep entire towns afloat? It seems counter to their financial wellbeing to be critical of IP claims because then we'd all assume a loss in most cases and this stuff would never go to court (mediation would probably solve most issues). Because of how the federal system operates, its difficult for the defendant to force a change of venue here. These pro-IP jurisdictions give companies like Oracle the wins they want and all the fees and fines and lawyer hourlies add up. Its a win-win for everything but justice. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts-are-back-on-top-for-patent-lawsuits/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts...
- dboreham 10y ago
  Although this case relates to copyright, I feel it worthwhile to note that in patent-lawyer-land, what you say does not work so much. I had the pleasure to spend some time working with some very (very!) smart patent lawyers on a couple of cases. Apart from feeling like I was in an episode of Boston Legal merged with The Good Wife, I was able to gain some understanding of the rules of the game. In that game things like "but it's patently obvious" gets you zero points. Any argument you advance that's based on obviousness will lead to eye rolling and deep sighs. Such arguments are extremely hard to win, it turns out. In our legal system, proving invalidity is difficult. By contrast, things like : a comma in the wrong place in claim drafting; case moved to a different jurisdiction; tricks with filing dates; prior art (the thing I was helping with) and other noninfringement theories are greeted with enthusiasm.
robin_reala 10y ago
Site’s falling over. Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fmajadhondt.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2F16%2Fgoogles%2D9%2Dlines%2F https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%...
holtalanm 10y ago
am I the only one that when looking at the implementation sees that there is a major flaw in the code? if(toIndex > arrayLen) does not handle the case in which toIndex == arrayLen, which should still throw an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if we are dealing with 0-based indexes. Please correct me if I am wrong.
- worldsayshi 10y ago
  Also the code isn't syntactically correct: (int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex { Missing parenthesis after toIndex. Something is fishy here.
  - moron4hire 10y ago
    Maybe it's transcription error. Probably a paralegal somewhere copied it from the original source to a different document and doesn't have the programmer's eye for noticing minor differences in what would basically be line-noise to them.
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    Someone copied it by hand, most likely.
- ddlatham 10y ago
  Ranges are usually specified with the lower bound being inclusive and the upper bound exclusive. In this case [fromIndex, toIndex) So if the range goes to the end of the arrary, then you would expect toIndex == arrayLen and the check is correct.
  - mannykannot 10y ago
    Is that consistent with the first condition in the function? This function accepts fromIndex == arrayLen if toIndex == arrayLen. Of course, there may be a precondition that rules it out, or it might be an acceptable postcondition.
    - 10y ago
eb0la 10y ago
I bet you can get a similar code from BSD, EMACS, Ingres, or any venerable open source codebase and use it as prior art against that patent claim. Ok, maybe that venerable codebases doesn't have exception handling like Java but you can prove to have the same logic maybe 10 or 20 years before that code was written.
worldsayshi 10y ago
Wow, this is legal bullshiting beyond comprehension. It is the equivalent of one engineer copycating the way another engineer moves his arm when fastening a screw. To give anything beyond 5 minutes attention to this in a court is an insult to society.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  It's akin to copywriting the pattern of wood and bricks used to build your house.
  - raisedbyninjas 10y ago
    I likened it to my architect spouse as copyrighting buildings for having flat walls with door and window sized openings. A win for Oracle would have every construction related company designing doors and windows in proprietary shapes.
- geofft 10y ago
  Yes, there's a concept in law called "de minimis", short for "de minimis non curat lex": "The law does not care about trivial things". Google argued that rangeCheck was "de minimis". http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120802030811156 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120802030811... This article is from 2012. The trial currently happening was remanded from an appeals court, which overruled Judge Alsup in determining that the "structure, sequence, and organization" of the Java APIs (not the code itself) was copyrightable, which is much less de minimis I don't believe rangeCheck itself is still at issue.
  - franciscop 10y ago
    "Has Oracle proven that Google's conceded use of the following was infringing, the only issue being whether such use was de mimis"
hathym 10y ago
wow, each line costs nearly one billion dollars
cm2187 10y ago
There is a lot of vested interest in this case and I do not know the author of this article. Are we sure the claim is down to the implementation of this function?
nutate 10y ago
The resonance with left-pad and the questions of "how exactly to we share super simple code" evolves through so many different prisms. From legal to organizational to not invented here to...
laverick 10y ago
Uhm. That code wouldn't even compile...
- mariodiana 10y ago
  First though I had. I wonder who's responsible for the typo -- the journalist, Google, or Oracle?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Tloewald 10y ago
Is it just me or does this code seem to have an off-by-one error (i.e. throwing on toIndex > arrayLen and not toIndex >= arrayLen, given that the lower bound check implies zero-based arrays)?
masters3d 10y ago
One billion dollars per line.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
One thing I've been thinking about as I've read through the trial: It's my understanding (I am a wee lad compared to the grizzled vets here, so bear with me) that most of our common *nix tools were written during the UNIX days and were technically proprietary (awk, grep, cut, etc). When Linux came around, these tools were "ported" to become GNU tools and completely rewritten on the backend, while still keeping the same name so that existing UNIX developers would feel at-home using the same tools on Linux,BSD, etc. The key point here is that they intentionally kept the same command names, for familiarity's sake. Given that, could one make the analogy that a command name would be similar to an "API" and should also have been illegal by Oracle's logic?
- mikeryan 10y ago
  Given that, could one make the analogy that a command name would be similar to an "API" and should also have been illegal by Oracle's logic? EDIT: I first said "no" but to be honest Oracle has tried to claim ownership of the API and the implementations. And apparently Oracle has won some of these points https://gigaom.com/2014/05/09/tech-world-stunned-as-court-rules-oracle-can-own-apis-google-loses-copyright-appeal/ https://gigaom.com/2014/05/09/tech-world-stunned-as-court-ru... However the is exactly what Google is trying to do by doing "clean room" implementations of an existing API. New code but the same calling API and return values with completely new code. This whole article is one case where they did not rewrite the function but instead copied the existing one.
  - jboy55 10y ago
    Which goes to how important these lines are. Google claims to have done a 'clean room' implementation. That is, someone with access to the source, writes down the API. Someone else writes based on the API that was inferred. If there was literal copying going on, even in one small case, that breaks down the entire clean room. How can you claim you strictly kept a wall up, if code was just copied? It would have been bad enough if the engineers writing down the API were the engineers developing it.
    - singham 10y ago
shubhamjain 10y ago
Perhaps, someone should make a software that checks code to see if it is infringing any copyright. :)
gsylvie 10y ago
"I May Not Be Totally Perfect But Parts of Me Are Excellent" - I think this is a useful article to read when considering the 9 lines of code, because copyright law tends to treat novels, pop songs, and software code as the same: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection_for_short/ http://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection_...
BurningFrog 10y ago
Is this what the whole case rests on, or is it just one of many details?
erikb 10y ago
When the content of a trial are 9 lines of code then of course the topic are not really the 9 lines of code. It's just a way to gain something else. Everybody involved probably knows that. I personally am very happy if powerhouses fight each other with lawsuits instead of giving me a sword and asking me to die for them. In that regard I feel humanity has come quite far over the last centuries.
knodi123 10y ago
Interesting that these 9 lines were apparently re-typed by hand, or possibly even from memory.... or so I suppose based on the missing close-paren on the first line...
cognivore 10y ago
That has to be a joke. By pursuing this Oracle just makes themselves look like idiots to anyone who actually has an technical knowledge. So, they're idiots.
- JPKab 10y ago
  Oracle has long looked like idiots to people with technical knowledge. Their entire business has been selling software to C level executives who will never come into contact with the product, let alone use it. This isn't about merit, or technology. This is about a company's legal team doing whatever they can to utilize acquired patents to create a revenue stream. Companies the size of Oracle simply aren't structured for innovation, and have a culture which actively undermines it. They're getting their ass handed to them by Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud for this very reason. When a company starts making money off of professional services to help customers implement and utilize their software, they simply aren't going to be incentivized to make that software good. Shitty software and vendor lock-in combine to produce guaranteed revenue streams, which sustain the company just enough for them to be comfortable while they cruise towards irrelevance.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    > "They're getting their ass handed to them by Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud for this very reason." I'd add PostgreSQL to that list, they're clearly concerned about the risk it poses to their core business: http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CANNMO++6tPiwBv2OKcy-HhiYmByhL+XSSUH3NDvOs3G1VVg++g@mail.gmail.com http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CANNMO++6tPiwBv2OKcy-Hh...
sleepychu 10y ago
I'm pretty sure I've seen } before...
CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
This code is ugly anyway: private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex { if (fromIndex > toIndex) throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex + ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")"); if (fromIndex < 0) throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex); if (toIndex > arrayLen) throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex); } Missing a closing paren in the function prototype, among other things. private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex) { if (fromIndex > toIndex) { throw new IllegalArgumentException( String.format("fromIndex(%d) > toIndex(%d)", fromIndex, toIndex) ); } if (fromIndex < 0) { throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex); } if (toIndex > arrayLen) { throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex); } } There you go Google, Oracle, et al. I release this snippet under MIT / WTFPL / CC0. You're welcome.
- davesque 10y ago
  Careful, they might sue you.
  - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeXQBHLIPcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeXQBHLIPcw
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      That was good haha. Gotta wonder how many were made up.
- creshal 10y ago
  I'd use whatever Java's printf equivalent is for the IllegalArgumentException too. Sting concatenation like that is an eyesore.
  - 10y ago
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
The worst part is that the programmer only "stole" these lines as he was contributing an improvement back to the OpenJDK and wanted his stuff to be compatible. Which adds one more level of absurdity.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
eps 10y ago
Am I reading this correctly that it's actually buggy? It doesn't properly work if an array is zero-based nor it works if it's 1-based. It neither properly work if toIndex is meant to be included in the range or excluded from it.
draw_down 10y ago
> Every company tries to control its developers’ actions, but does management really know what goes into the software? This is backwards, developers do what management allows. If management cares to know what goes in the software, they will know. There are ways to know. Whether business people want to pay for that is a different matter. Of course they don't, for this precise reason- so they can throw up their hands and say, "those darn developers!"
Twisell 10y ago
This is total FUD. (EDIT ND: because thoses lines of code are already out of every discussions to be held in the current retrial, they are already ruled out the only remaining question is fair use) This trial should now be entirely focused about wether Google "stole" the API SSO under a fair use exception and shall be relieved. The preceding phases of this case already determined that: -thoses a nines lines are not significant -Google used API SSO without consent of Sun/Oracle and without any license -API SSO of Java are indeed copyrightable (this was ruled in appeal and confirmed by the Supreme Court) This retrial is only happening because judge Aslup did a half baked first trial and the appeal court returned him the case after invalidating his bad ruling about non-copyrightability of API. For thoses who seek deep insights about this case, take a look at Florian Mueller's blog: http://www.fosspatents.com http://www.fosspatents.com He pretty accurately predict the reversal of the first ruling against the opinion of many mainstream analysts. And he frequently publish link to public court documents so you can make up you mind by yourself. EDIT: If you downvote please argument, otherwise it's very suspicious. I'm totally open to discussion but I can't fight against a hidden lobbyst activity that systmatically downvote diverging views. EDIT2: I edited the first sentence to be more explicative. I've seen I got some upvote, but silent bashing seems to continue. Again, please argument! I don't get why the name of this blogger unleash so much passions while he actually always publish documents and link to actual rulings. Yes he clearly don't write as elegantly as some, and yes he's by now pretty opinionated but why such much hate?
- DannyBee 10y ago
  This is some impressive astroturfing right here. You even got in a link to a guy paid by oracle to comment on the case!
  - Twisell 10y ago
    I didn't want to citation here but here is what he wrote about your point. Again, if you have proof he is a liar share it no problem, but please don't blindly accept and repeat mainstream opinion without seeking information by yourself first. http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/the-biggest-problem-for-oracle-v-google.html?m=1 http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/the-biggest-problem-for-o... Quoting Mueller Please bear with me while I'm repeating the following: I haven't done any work for Oracle in quite a while, I have no reason to assume today that I'll ever do any again (I'll release two game apps this year and that's my professional future), and I have taken consistent positions ever since the case started. This lawsuit was filed not long after I had been fighting against Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems on the antitrust front. Despite having embroiled in a bitter fight with Oracle, I realized early on that Oracle had a point here (though I usually like Google a lot, especially Android). I still hold those views even though working with Oracle on standard-essential patent matters is a thing of the past for me. An opinionated, independent view is not "propaganda" by any stretch of the imagination. This blog got copyrightability right when Judge Alsup got it wrong, and three higher judges than Judge Alsup totally agreed with me (and the top U.S. court didn't elect to hear the case in order to disagree). The truth is on my side, not his. And when all is said and done, people will see that this blog also got "fair use" right to a greater extent than he did/does.
guelo 10y ago
This article is from 2012 and is very outdated. The "famous 9 lines" are not being contested anymore. Google lost that case. The current trial is about whether Google's copyright infringement constituted "fair use".
- polpo 10y ago
  I was also surprised to see this here. It needs a (2012) tag in the title at the very least, as this is not what is being litigated right now.
  - justinclift 10y ago
    "tag" is apparently not the correct word. I was downvoted for using the same term to point out the same thing for another article recently. No idea what the "correct" word should be though.
    - logn 10y ago
      Maybe you weren't downvoted over the terminology. Putting the year in titles isn't required if it's an evergreen article (i.e., not news, not timely).
      - justinclift 10y ago
        Interesting, thanks that's something I hadn't considered.
vladaionescu 10y ago
Pretty sure that the only reason they copied that code was that they didn't know how to do it themselves.
mark242 10y ago
A void function that does nothing but throw exceptions. Scala engineers everywhere cringe at the thought of converting this kind of code to native Scala.
- _ZeD_ 10y ago
  Who cares? We are talking about Java, were is perfectly fine to do "*check()" methods that signals errors through exceptions.
gvb 10y ago
More relevant information: "What are the 37 Java API packages possibly encumbered by the May 2014 Oracle v Google decision?" http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23583968/what-are-the-37-java-api-packages-possibly-encumbered-by-the-may-2014-oracle-v-g http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23583968/what-are-the-37-... From the #1 answer (it is worth clicking the link and reading the full answer): java.awt.font java.beans java.io java.lang java.lang.annotation java.lang.ref java.lang.reflect java.net java.nio java.nio.channels java.nio.channels.spi java.nio.charset java.nio.charset.spi java.security java.security.acl java.security.cert java.security.interfaces java.security.spec java.sql java.text java.util java.util.jar java.util.logging java.util.prefs java.util.regex java.util.zip javax.crypto javax.crypto.interfaces javax.crypto.spec javax.net javax.net.ssl javax.security.auth javax.security.auth.callback javax.security.auth.login javax.security.auth.x500 javax.security.cert javax.sql
Matt3o12_ 10y ago
Does anyone have an idea what is really going on? I've heard people say that Google actually copied the API structure (which is copyright-able) but I've also heard that this lawsuit was actually about Google using a wrong (or missing license). And I've heard that Google also manipulated the developer community by only propagating "we only copied 7 lines of code" and big evil oracle sues us. From what I know Google used Java's API structure but did not include a license. They could have paid oracle for a license to use it conmercially or they could have used the GPL from OpenSDK and be bound to its restrictions. What they did instead was not to include a license at all, because try did not want to pay oracle but also did not want to be bound by the GPL (which might complicate things with phone manufacturers that change the code). Could anyone tell me what the fuck this lawsuit is actually about?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Oletros 10y ago
This case is not about RangeCheck, is about the 37 Java classed declaration
meganvito 10y ago
In the university I graduated, the professor definitely will mark plagiarism and give an F, unless a strict rule of sourcing followed. Most openjdk source has the first line a usual header. Maybe I am a late student of JDK. or may be there the court may prevail an exception. Finally you have to consider yourself what do we mean to contribute to open source?
meganvito 10y ago
I would leave my last comment, doing 'cheap things' is/are habitual.
devy 10y ago
Sort of off topic, anyone know who's this Tim Peters who created the TimSort? Python docs and Wikipedia[1] has virtually no bio for him even though he's very well known Python contributor and his code becomes a legacy in this billion dollar lawsuit, among other things(like Zen of Python[2]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timsort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timsort [2]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/
hermannj314 10y ago
Yeah, a bunch of jurors will be ruined financially while being forced to watch billionaires fight over how to best split up their empire. Sortition is how you spell slavery in the 21st century.
sgc 10y ago
Given the guy who wrote this wrote both the first and supposedly infringing code, I have a bit of an analogy here from personal experience from another field. For a while I worked in translating, and I translated a couple of books for the same author. One of the later books quoted about a page from the first one I had translated a couple of years earlier. I just translated it again because it was faster than finding the passage in my other translation (first point). Afterwards, I went back out of curiosity and checked the two translations against each other. I was quite surprised to see that in one full page of translation, after years of further experience, there was only one or two prepositions that were meaninglessly changed (point two). Some things are just so obvious that the same guy doing the same thing years apart will produce the same results, especially if he is an expert in his craft. Unless there is some way to prove otherwise, this point of the case should be definitively dropped.
0xmohit 10y ago
Thankfully the patent system didn't exist when the number system was developed. Otherwise one would need to pay a royalty for counting.
foldablechair 10y ago
Reminds me of all those court cases of 'stolen' logos, using a small and fixed set of geometric primitives, the probability of coincidences is just high that way. Of course, some people believe all art is immitation and nothing ever gets created from first principles.
curiousgal 10y ago
>if i is between 0 and 11 before retrieving the ith element of a 10-element list. Shouldn't i be between 0 and 9?
rootlocus 10y ago
> Google owes Oracle between $1.4 billion and $6 billion in damages if liable In what damages, exactly?
chiefalchemist 10y ago
Code aside. This should strike fear in the hearts and minds of any dev who wishes to change jobs and doesn't change industries / product type. I would think that push come to shove employers will opt for less direct experience.
chiefalchemist 10y ago
Actual code aside, I would think this should strike fear in the hearts and minds of any dev who wishes to change jobs and doesn't change industries / product type. I would think that push come to shove employers will opt for less direct experience, else they'll fear "a temporary measure" they didn't ask for. That is, suddenly, experience might not be as valuable as it used to be.
udkl 10y ago
Naively, that's $200 million to $800 million per line of code.
chenster 10y ago
Thanks for wasting course time on non-sense like this. Things like this squatting our legal system and yields absolutely nothing.
known 10y ago
Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._International_Business_Machines_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._Internation....

358 points by nkurz 10y ago

jbob2000 10y ago

Looks like something I've written a hundred times. It's a common pattern, you could "steal" this just through organically writing a program. The more I hear about this case, the more I realize it's just a bunch of lawyers trying to pad their bank accounts. No sane engineer would claim this is infringement.

jkyle 10y ago
I bet some even have code like that stored in their snippets library.
- spydum 10y ago
  https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=rangeCheck+fromIndex+toIndex+arrayLen&type=Code&ref=searchresults https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=rangeCheck+fromIn... Indeed, quite a lot, but I dont think that was the point.
geofft 10y ago
Judge Alsup made the exact same point in the original trial: "I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it, you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America, how could you even make that kind of argument?" David Boies (counsel for Oracle): "I want to come back to rangeCheck." Alsup: "rangeCheck! All it does is make sure the numbers you're inputting are within a range, and gives them some sort of exceptional treatment. That witness, when he said a high school student could do it—" Boies: "I'm not an expert on Java—this is my second case on Java, but I'm not an expert, and I probably couldn't program that in six months." http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120515120106322 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120515120106322
- slowmovintarget 10y ago
  "Your honor, we believe John Fogerty is infringing on our sound when he plays guitar like himself." Any other way to write that method, short of changing the exception text and variable names would be silly. The truly astonishing thing is that enough people could be fooled to think otherwise.
  - Roboprog 10y ago
    Well, there are 6 different orders in which you could insert the 3 if statements, but I'm not sure that's a material difference :-)
    - blktiger 10y ago
      Yes and no, if the first conditional is moved then the behavior of the function would be different. You could for example specify a fromIndex of -1 and a toIndex of -2. That would result in an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException instead of an IllegalArgumentException. Arguably, it doesn't matter but if it's different than it wouldn't necessarily be compatible with other calling code. Of course that still leaves two other arrangements of the remaining code.
  - gsylvie 10y ago
    Nice Fogerty reference! (He's citing this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogerty_v._Fantasy,_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogerty_v._Fantasy,_Inc.)
- awinder 10y ago
  Is it really common that you'd have a judge in a case end up with that kind of "subject matter expertise"? I guess I can't completely fault Boies for arguing the case in the manner you see in that exchange, but I was pretty floored that the judge could just see right through it.
  - simonsarris 10y ago
    He learned Java solely for the purpose of being able to understand the case more clearly. (Wikipedia) and has implied that he knows other langauges as well. He has a B.S. in math so its not too surprising. Adorably, the Judge's full name is William Haskell Alsup.
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
Exactly why no engineers will be allowed on the jury.
mtgx 10y ago
Not just lawyers, but entire companies want to be paid for stuff like this. See Microsoft, for instance: > Microsoft focuses on Oracle's argument that copyright supports "non-literal" elements of software. In other words, Google can be found a copyist—even if there's no actual copying of code. The "structure, sequence, and organization" (or SSO) of software "can, in some instances, be protected by the copyright in the work." Copyright violations can be found in a software case "even when the defendant did not copy the underlying developers' code," Microsoft insists, because the defendant has copied "some other, non-literal element of the software." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/microsoft-foresees-chaos-if-google-v-oracle-result-stands/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/microsoft-foresee... So it's not just literal "copying" (accidental or not) that must be punished/paid for, but companies or developers should be forced to pay for making "similar" APIs as well.
- deong 10y ago
  To be fair, that's not an enormously crazy thing to say. If I read George R.R. Martin's work and then write the exact same story, going through sentence by sentence and changing each material word just enough to say it wasn't "copied" (e.g., "Tyrion shot the arrow through his father's heart" becomes "Tyrone fired the bolt, piercing his patriarch's breast"), I'm surely guilty of copyright infringement. I don't think SSO should qualify for this sort of protection, for a number of reasons (it has significant functional constraints on how its expressed, it's a tiny fraction of an overall creative work of software, etc.). But it's not obviously nuts to claim it should either.
  - MoreTuple 10y ago
    Would it be a more fair analogy to say that you read George's work, copied the chapter names and wrote your own story underneath those?
  - cgag 10y ago
    Could you use a less significant line as your example?
drgath 10y ago
The current state of the lawsuit isn't over the novelty of function, it's about the copyright of it. Also, very important to their argument is that this wasn't some random developer at Google who added it into Android, it was the guy who had added that function to OpenJDK. While I also disagree with the lawsuit, if you are coming at it from the mindset that code you have a copyright to was used elsewhere, Oracle has a compelling case. Certainly not a $9 billion case, and not one that takes up 6 years of time to decide, but that's not for me to decide.
rayiner 10y ago
The article misses the forest for the trees. This lawsuit isn't about rangeCheck, it's about the structure/sequence/organization of the Java APIs. Whether you think SSO should be copyrightable or not, you can't argue it's trivial. Copying the SSO allowed Google to greatly reduce the barrier to entry for Android by leveraging the enormous Java ecosystem.[1] The relevance of rangeCheck isn't that it's some crucial functionality that Google couldn't have written themselves. The relevance of rangeCheck--and Google's admission that it literally copied the code instead of developing it "organically"--is proving that Google was looking at JDK code while developing the Android JVM. Oracle would never sue on rangeCheck by itself because the damages would be trivial. They're hammering on the literal copying of rangeCheck because of what it says about Google's state of mind. [1] The fundamental legal question is actually pretty interesting and has implications beyond this case. Remember Microsoft's policy of "embrace, extend, extinguish" in the 1990s? If SSO is protectable, then "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics may cross the line from simply distasteful to actionable unfair competition.
- vetinari 10y ago
  > Copying the SSO allowed Google to greatly reduce the barrier to entry for Android by leveraging the enormous Java ecosystem. This ecosystem doesn't belong to Oracle. It comprises of thousands of companies and individuals, who actually welcome that their existing investment into Java code can be reused on additional platform. If Oracle's argument is accepted, it becomes a gatekeeper to the platform who decides, where and for what purpose you can run your own code or not. It greatly increases the risk of using the Java platform.
  - mmastrac 10y ago
    Playing devil's advocate - perhaps Oracle sees the ecosystem as being a "derived work" of their Java IP. This would be a dangerous view for software.
    - chiefalchemist 10y ago
      It's only a matter of time before the hunter - in this case Oracle - becomes the hunted. You would think they know better. But this isn't about code and law, is it? It's a testosterone fueled pissing match. Don't cha think?
dopamean 10y ago
I think it would be neat if anyone who sees this would link to a github repo of their own that shows an organically created version of these nine lines. I believe that for a patent you have to demonstrate novelty. I have no idea how copyrights work. It seems that novelty is not so important in the case.
- jandrese 10y ago
  You think someone checked in every line as they wrote it? I'm sure the repo update for that function is just "implemented the following API functions: ...." + a bunch of lines. Dirt simple 9 line functions don't "organically grow" over time, they're just pounded out and the programmer moves on.
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    Bugs count. Anything that shows you didn't cut and paste it. Bonus points for conceptual issues that demonstrate a natural convergence to the same solution as understanding of the domain increases.
- maxlybbert 10y ago
  Copyright requires some creativity ( http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/499/340.html http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/499/340.html ): "Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. ... To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, 'no matter how crude, humble or obvious' it might be. ... Originality does not signify novelty; a work may be original even though it closely resembles other works, so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying."
Philipp__ 10y ago
But since we, engineers, aren't asked much... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
This is like saying the Vietnam War was just a bunch of of officers trying to get promoted. It happens to be a lot true, but its hardly complete.

tantalor 10y ago

(2012)

nedsma 10y ago
You're right. Please, someone update the headline.

nedsma 10y ago

Dear goodness. And there are tens if not hundreds of people involved in trying to prove/disprove this case and they're all getting some hefty money. What a waste of human intellect and time.

tetrep 10y ago
I wonder if it's possible to measure energy spent in court cases? One of the things that amazed me about spam was how many resources we spend just transmitting it across the internet, it's kind of tragic when you think about the waste, but also kinda awesome that everything still works, despite relatively poor resource allocation. The Economics of Spam: http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.26.3.87 http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.26.3.87
- jerf 10y ago
  You'd have to define what you mean a lot more carefully. Certainly any sort of network transmission costs would be dominated by, say, climate control in the court room.
  - tlrobinson 10y ago
    I think the parent commenter was just using spam as an example of an activity that uses a disproportionate amount of energy compared to it's value. The court room climate control costs would likely be dominated by energy expended for every involved individuals' commutes, which would likely be dominated by the opportunity cost of all of those individuals doing something more productive (if you want to go that far)
arvinjoar 10y ago
How many SV angels can balance on a pinhead?
- iofj 10y ago
  Depends on whether the pinhead is of the steel or investor variety.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

Incredible. The amount of money being set to the fire for the sake of something that even a student knows is utter crap.

toyg 10y ago
Considering this case is probably not influencing the US dollar inflation rate, nothing is being set on fire -- it's just being moved from Google's + Oracle's pockets to Google's + Oracle's _lawyers'_ pockets :)
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  So really, this is like a current flow, with dollar bills. lol
- worldsayshi 10y ago
  Well, people-time is certainly being wasted.

enibundo 10y ago

As a software engineer, I get sad when I read news like this.

singham 10y ago
It's not news because the article is old. 2012

smaili 10y ago

tldr - private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex { if (fromIndex > toIndex) throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex + ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")"); if (fromIndex < 0) throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex); if (toIndex > arrayLen) throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex); }

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aexaey 10y ago
You may want to start lines with (at least) 4 spaces for HN to preserve original formatting.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  2 spaces are all that's needed. OT: Really convenient use of emacs for formatting quotes. Copy the text into a text-mode buffer, put two spaces at the start, M-q and the whole thing is wrapped and each line prefixed with two spaces.
andy_ppp 10y ago
This like saying we found a brush stroke in your painting that you copied from Picasso, look at the details of this one stroke you copied it's the same!!! Utterly absurd...

foobarrio 10y ago

I thought it "not obvious to a practitioner of the craft" was a requirement for a patent no? Give 10 programmers the task to write "rangeCheck()" and you'll end up with very similar looking code.

kabouseng 10y ago
This concerns copyright, not patents.
tgb 10y ago
That part is a copyright claim, not patent claim.
Jtsummers 10y ago
This is regarding copyright. But you are correct, if patents were in dispute this (alone) would fail. Keep in mind, components of an invention that's patented can be quite obvious. How a standard gearbox in a car works is well-known, but pair it up with some novel input and output or some novel use, and it's a patentable construct.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Yet, who decides? A pro-IP court powered 'industry' in East Texas that keep entire towns afloat? It seems counter to their financial wellbeing to be critical of IP claims because then we'd all assume a loss in most cases and this stuff would never go to court (mediation would probably solve most issues). Because of how the federal system operates, its difficult for the defendant to force a change of venue here. These pro-IP jurisdictions give companies like Oracle the wins they want and all the fees and fines and lawyer hourlies add up. Its a win-win for everything but justice. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts-are-back-on-top-for-patent-lawsuits/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts...
dboreham 10y ago
Although this case relates to copyright, I feel it worthwhile to note that in patent-lawyer-land, what you say does not work so much. I had the pleasure to spend some time working with some very (very!) smart patent lawyers on a couple of cases. Apart from feeling like I was in an episode of Boston Legal merged with The Good Wife, I was able to gain some understanding of the rules of the game. In that game things like "but it's patently obvious" gets you zero points. Any argument you advance that's based on obviousness will lead to eye rolling and deep sighs. Such arguments are extremely hard to win, it turns out. In our legal system, proving invalidity is difficult. By contrast, things like : a comma in the wrong place in claim drafting; case moved to a different jurisdiction; tricks with filing dates; prior art (the thing I was helping with) and other noninfringement theories are greeted with enthusiasm.

robin_reala 10y ago

Site’s falling over. Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fmajadhondt.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2F16%2Fgoogles%2D9%2Dlines%2F https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%...

holtalanm 10y ago

am I the only one that when looking at the implementation sees that there is a major flaw in the code? if(toIndex > arrayLen) does not handle the case in which toIndex == arrayLen, which should still throw an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if we are dealing with 0-based indexes. Please correct me if I am wrong.

worldsayshi 10y ago
Also the code isn't syntactically correct: (int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex { Missing parenthesis after toIndex. Something is fishy here.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  Maybe it's transcription error. Probably a paralegal somewhere copied it from the original source to a different document and doesn't have the programmer's eye for noticing minor differences in what would basically be line-noise to them.
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  Someone copied it by hand, most likely.
ddlatham 10y ago
Ranges are usually specified with the lower bound being inclusive and the upper bound exclusive. In this case [fromIndex, toIndex) So if the range goes to the end of the arrary, then you would expect toIndex == arrayLen and the check is correct.
- mannykannot 10y ago
  Is that consistent with the first condition in the function? This function accepts fromIndex == arrayLen if toIndex == arrayLen. Of course, there may be a precondition that rules it out, or it might be an acceptable postcondition.
  - 10y ago

eb0la 10y ago

I bet you can get a similar code from BSD, EMACS, Ingres, or any venerable open source codebase and use it as prior art against that patent claim. Ok, maybe that venerable codebases doesn't have exception handling like Java but you can prove to have the same logic maybe 10 or 20 years before that code was written.

worldsayshi 10y ago

Wow, this is legal bullshiting beyond comprehension. It is the equivalent of one engineer copycating the way another engineer moves his arm when fastening a screw. To give anything beyond 5 minutes attention to this in a court is an insult to society.

stephengillie 10y ago
It's akin to copywriting the pattern of wood and bricks used to build your house.
- raisedbyninjas 10y ago
  I likened it to my architect spouse as copyrighting buildings for having flat walls with door and window sized openings. A win for Oracle would have every construction related company designing doors and windows in proprietary shapes.
geofft 10y ago
Yes, there's a concept in law called "de minimis", short for "de minimis non curat lex": "The law does not care about trivial things". Google argued that rangeCheck was "de minimis". http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120802030811156 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120802030811... This article is from 2012. The trial currently happening was remanded from an appeals court, which overruled Judge Alsup in determining that the "structure, sequence, and organization" of the Java APIs (not the code itself) was copyrightable, which is much less de minimis I don't believe rangeCheck itself is still at issue.
- franciscop 10y ago
  "Has Oracle proven that Google's conceded use of the following was infringing, the only issue being whether such use was de mimis"

hathym 10y ago

wow, each line costs nearly one billion dollars

cm2187 10y ago

There is a lot of vested interest in this case and I do not know the author of this article. Are we sure the claim is down to the implementation of this function?

nutate 10y ago

The resonance with left-pad and the questions of "how exactly to we share super simple code" evolves through so many different prisms. From legal to organizational to not invented here to...

laverick 10y ago

Uhm. That code wouldn't even compile...

mariodiana 10y ago
First though I had. I wonder who's responsible for the typo -- the journalist, Google, or Oracle?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Tloewald 10y ago

Is it just me or does this code seem to have an off-by-one error (i.e. throwing on toIndex > arrayLen and not toIndex >= arrayLen, given that the lower bound check implies zero-based arrays)?

masters3d 10y ago

One billion dollars per line.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

One thing I've been thinking about as I've read through the trial: It's my understanding (I am a wee lad compared to the grizzled vets here, so bear with me) that most of our common *nix tools were written during the UNIX days and were technically proprietary (awk, grep, cut, etc). When Linux came around, these tools were "ported" to become GNU tools and completely rewritten on the backend, while still keeping the same name so that existing UNIX developers would feel at-home using the same tools on Linux,BSD, etc. The key point here is that they intentionally kept the same command names, for familiarity's sake. Given that, could one make the analogy that a command name would be similar to an "API" and should also have been illegal by Oracle's logic?

mikeryan 10y ago
Given that, could one make the analogy that a command name would be similar to an "API" and should also have been illegal by Oracle's logic? EDIT: I first said "no" but to be honest Oracle has tried to claim ownership of the API and the implementations. And apparently Oracle has won some of these points https://gigaom.com/2014/05/09/tech-world-stunned-as-court-rules-oracle-can-own-apis-google-loses-copyright-appeal/ https://gigaom.com/2014/05/09/tech-world-stunned-as-court-ru... However the is exactly what Google is trying to do by doing "clean room" implementations of an existing API. New code but the same calling API and return values with completely new code. This whole article is one case where they did not rewrite the function but instead copied the existing one.
- jboy55 10y ago
  Which goes to how important these lines are. Google claims to have done a 'clean room' implementation. That is, someone with access to the source, writes down the API. Someone else writes based on the API that was inferred. If there was literal copying going on, even in one small case, that breaks down the entire clean room. How can you claim you strictly kept a wall up, if code was just copied? It would have been bad enough if the engineers writing down the API were the engineers developing it.
  - singham 10y ago

shubhamjain 10y ago

Perhaps, someone should make a software that checks code to see if it is infringing any copyright. :)

gsylvie 10y ago

"I May Not Be Totally Perfect But Parts of Me Are Excellent" - I think this is a useful article to read when considering the 9 lines of code, because copyright law tends to treat novels, pop songs, and software code as the same: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection_for_short/ http://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection_...

BurningFrog 10y ago

Is this what the whole case rests on, or is it just one of many details?

erikb 10y ago

When the content of a trial are 9 lines of code then of course the topic are not really the 9 lines of code. It's just a way to gain something else. Everybody involved probably knows that. I personally am very happy if powerhouses fight each other with lawsuits instead of giving me a sword and asking me to die for them. In that regard I feel humanity has come quite far over the last centuries.

knodi123 10y ago

Interesting that these 9 lines were apparently re-typed by hand, or possibly even from memory.... or so I suppose based on the missing close-paren on the first line...

cognivore 10y ago

That has to be a joke. By pursuing this Oracle just makes themselves look like idiots to anyone who actually has an technical knowledge. So, they're idiots.

JPKab 10y ago
Oracle has long looked like idiots to people with technical knowledge. Their entire business has been selling software to C level executives who will never come into contact with the product, let alone use it. This isn't about merit, or technology. This is about a company's legal team doing whatever they can to utilize acquired patents to create a revenue stream. Companies the size of Oracle simply aren't structured for innovation, and have a culture which actively undermines it. They're getting their ass handed to them by Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud for this very reason. When a company starts making money off of professional services to help customers implement and utilize their software, they simply aren't going to be incentivized to make that software good. Shitty software and vendor lock-in combine to produce guaranteed revenue streams, which sustain the company just enough for them to be comfortable while they cruise towards irrelevance.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "They're getting their ass handed to them by Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud for this very reason." I'd add PostgreSQL to that list, they're clearly concerned about the risk it poses to their core business: http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CANNMO++6tPiwBv2OKcy-HhiYmByhL+XSSUH3NDvOs3G1VVg++g@mail.gmail.com http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CANNMO++6tPiwBv2OKcy-Hh...

sleepychu 10y ago

I'm pretty sure I've seen } before...

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago

This code is ugly anyway: private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex { if (fromIndex > toIndex) throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex + ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")"); if (fromIndex < 0) throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex); if (toIndex > arrayLen) throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex); } Missing a closing paren in the function prototype, among other things. private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex) { if (fromIndex > toIndex) { throw new IllegalArgumentException( String.format("fromIndex(%d) > toIndex(%d)", fromIndex, toIndex) ); } if (fromIndex < 0) { throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex); } if (toIndex > arrayLen) { throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex); } } There you go Google, Oracle, et al. I release this snippet under MIT / WTFPL / CC0. You're welcome.

davesque 10y ago
Careful, they might sue you.
- CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeXQBHLIPcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeXQBHLIPcw
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    That was good haha. Gotta wonder how many were made up.
creshal 10y ago
I'd use whatever Java's printf equivalent is for the IllegalArgumentException too. Sting concatenation like that is an eyesore.
- 10y ago

ZeroGravitas 10y ago

The worst part is that the programmer only "stole" these lines as he was contributing an improvement back to the OpenJDK and wanted his stuff to be compatible. Which adds one more level of absurdity.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

eps 10y ago

Am I reading this correctly that it's actually buggy? It doesn't properly work if an array is zero-based nor it works if it's 1-based. It neither properly work if toIndex is meant to be included in the range or excluded from it.

draw_down 10y ago

> Every company tries to control its developers’ actions, but does management really know what goes into the software? This is backwards, developers do what management allows. If management cares to know what goes in the software, they will know. There are ways to know. Whether business people want to pay for that is a different matter. Of course they don't, for this precise reason- so they can throw up their hands and say, "those darn developers!"

Twisell 10y ago

This is total FUD. (EDIT ND: because thoses lines of code are already out of every discussions to be held in the current retrial, they are already ruled out the only remaining question is fair use) This trial should now be entirely focused about wether Google "stole" the API SSO under a fair use exception and shall be relieved. The preceding phases of this case already determined that: -thoses a nines lines are not significant -Google used API SSO without consent of Sun/Oracle and without any license -API SSO of Java are indeed copyrightable (this was ruled in appeal and confirmed by the Supreme Court) This retrial is only happening because judge Aslup did a half baked first trial and the appeal court returned him the case after invalidating his bad ruling about non-copyrightability of API. For thoses who seek deep insights about this case, take a look at Florian Mueller's blog: http://www.fosspatents.com http://www.fosspatents.com He pretty accurately predict the reversal of the first ruling against the opinion of many mainstream analysts. And he frequently publish link to public court documents so you can make up you mind by yourself. EDIT: If you downvote please argument, otherwise it's very suspicious. I'm totally open to discussion but I can't fight against a hidden lobbyst activity that systmatically downvote diverging views. EDIT2: I edited the first sentence to be more explicative. I've seen I got some upvote, but silent bashing seems to continue. Again, please argument! I don't get why the name of this blogger unleash so much passions while he actually always publish documents and link to actual rulings. Yes he clearly don't write as elegantly as some, and yes he's by now pretty opinionated but why such much hate?

DannyBee 10y ago
This is some impressive astroturfing right here. You even got in a link to a guy paid by oracle to comment on the case!
- Twisell 10y ago
  I didn't want to citation here but here is what he wrote about your point. Again, if you have proof he is a liar share it no problem, but please don't blindly accept and repeat mainstream opinion without seeking information by yourself first. http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/the-biggest-problem-for-oracle-v-google.html?m=1 http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/the-biggest-problem-for-o... Quoting Mueller Please bear with me while I'm repeating the following: I haven't done any work for Oracle in quite a while, I have no reason to assume today that I'll ever do any again (I'll release two game apps this year and that's my professional future), and I have taken consistent positions ever since the case started. This lawsuit was filed not long after I had been fighting against Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems on the antitrust front. Despite having embroiled in a bitter fight with Oracle, I realized early on that Oracle had a point here (though I usually like Google a lot, especially Android). I still hold those views even though working with Oracle on standard-essential patent matters is a thing of the past for me. An opinionated, independent view is not "propaganda" by any stretch of the imagination. This blog got copyrightability right when Judge Alsup got it wrong, and three higher judges than Judge Alsup totally agreed with me (and the top U.S. court didn't elect to hear the case in order to disagree). The truth is on my side, not his. And when all is said and done, people will see that this blog also got "fair use" right to a greater extent than he did/does.

guelo 10y ago

This article is from 2012 and is very outdated. The "famous 9 lines" are not being contested anymore. Google lost that case. The current trial is about whether Google's copyright infringement constituted "fair use".

polpo 10y ago
I was also surprised to see this here. It needs a (2012) tag in the title at the very least, as this is not what is being litigated right now.
- justinclift 10y ago
  "tag" is apparently not the correct word. I was downvoted for using the same term to point out the same thing for another article recently. No idea what the "correct" word should be though.
  - logn 10y ago
    Maybe you weren't downvoted over the terminology. Putting the year in titles isn't required if it's an evergreen article (i.e., not news, not timely).
    - justinclift 10y ago
      Interesting, thanks that's something I hadn't considered.

vladaionescu 10y ago

Pretty sure that the only reason they copied that code was that they didn't know how to do it themselves.

mark242 10y ago

A void function that does nothing but throw exceptions. Scala engineers everywhere cringe at the thought of converting this kind of code to native Scala.

_ZeD_ 10y ago
Who cares? We are talking about Java, were is perfectly fine to do "*check()" methods that signals errors through exceptions.

gvb 10y ago

More relevant information: "What are the 37 Java API packages possibly encumbered by the May 2014 Oracle v Google decision?" http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23583968/what-are-the-37-java-api-packages-possibly-encumbered-by-the-may-2014-oracle-v-g http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23583968/what-are-the-37-... From the #1 answer (it is worth clicking the link and reading the full answer): java.awt.font java.beans java.io java.lang java.lang.annotation java.lang.ref java.lang.reflect java.net java.nio java.nio.channels java.nio.channels.spi java.nio.charset java.nio.charset.spi java.security java.security.acl java.security.cert java.security.interfaces java.security.spec java.sql java.text java.util java.util.jar java.util.logging java.util.prefs java.util.regex java.util.zip javax.crypto javax.crypto.interfaces javax.crypto.spec javax.net javax.net.ssl javax.security.auth javax.security.auth.callback javax.security.auth.login javax.security.auth.x500 javax.security.cert javax.sql

Matt3o12_ 10y ago

Does anyone have an idea what is really going on? I've heard people say that Google actually copied the API structure (which is copyright-able) but I've also heard that this lawsuit was actually about Google using a wrong (or missing license). And I've heard that Google also manipulated the developer community by only propagating "we only copied 7 lines of code" and big evil oracle sues us. From what I know Google used Java's API structure but did not include a license. They could have paid oracle for a license to use it conmercially or they could have used the GPL from OpenSDK and be bound to its restrictions. What they did instead was not to include a license at all, because try did not want to pay oracle but also did not want to be bound by the GPL (which might complicate things with phone manufacturers that change the code). Could anyone tell me what the fuck this lawsuit is actually about?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

Oletros 10y ago

This case is not about RangeCheck, is about the 37 Java classed declaration

meganvito 10y ago

In the university I graduated, the professor definitely will mark plagiarism and give an F, unless a strict rule of sourcing followed. Most openjdk source has the first line a usual header. Maybe I am a late student of JDK. or may be there the court may prevail an exception. Finally you have to consider yourself what do we mean to contribute to open source?

meganvito 10y ago

I would leave my last comment, doing 'cheap things' is/are habitual.

devy 10y ago

Sort of off topic, anyone know who's this Tim Peters who created the TimSort? Python docs and Wikipedia[1] has virtually no bio for him even though he's very well known Python contributor and his code becomes a legacy in this billion dollar lawsuit, among other things(like Zen of Python[2]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timsort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timsort [2]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/

hermannj314 10y ago

Yeah, a bunch of jurors will be ruined financially while being forced to watch billionaires fight over how to best split up their empire. Sortition is how you spell slavery in the 21st century.

sgc 10y ago

Given the guy who wrote this wrote both the first and supposedly infringing code, I have a bit of an analogy here from personal experience from another field. For a while I worked in translating, and I translated a couple of books for the same author. One of the later books quoted about a page from the first one I had translated a couple of years earlier. I just translated it again because it was faster than finding the passage in my other translation (first point). Afterwards, I went back out of curiosity and checked the two translations against each other. I was quite surprised to see that in one full page of translation, after years of further experience, there was only one or two prepositions that were meaninglessly changed (point two). Some things are just so obvious that the same guy doing the same thing years apart will produce the same results, especially if he is an expert in his craft. Unless there is some way to prove otherwise, this point of the case should be definitively dropped.

0xmohit 10y ago

Thankfully the patent system didn't exist when the number system was developed. Otherwise one would need to pay a royalty for counting.

foldablechair 10y ago

Reminds me of all those court cases of 'stolen' logos, using a small and fixed set of geometric primitives, the probability of coincidences is just high that way. Of course, some people believe all art is immitation and nothing ever gets created from first principles.

curiousgal 10y ago

>if i is between 0 and 11 before retrieving the ith element of a 10-element list. Shouldn't i be between 0 and 9?

rootlocus 10y ago

> Google owes Oracle between $1.4 billion and $6 billion in damages if liable In what damages, exactly?

chiefalchemist 10y ago

Code aside. This should strike fear in the hearts and minds of any dev who wishes to change jobs and doesn't change industries / product type. I would think that push come to shove employers will opt for less direct experience.

chiefalchemist 10y ago

Actual code aside, I would think this should strike fear in the hearts and minds of any dev who wishes to change jobs and doesn't change industries / product type. I would think that push come to shove employers will opt for less direct experience, else they'll fear "a temporary measure" they didn't ask for. That is, suddenly, experience might not be as valuable as it used to be.

udkl 10y ago

Naively, that's $200 million to $800 million per line of code.

chenster 10y ago

Thanks for wasting course time on non-sense like this. Things like this squatting our legal system and yields absolutely nothing.

known 10y ago

Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._International_Business_Machines_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._Internation....