9 ms·

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 ab

by 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.

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.