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>It does raise a question in my mind as to how that one function got copies, but it's also possible that it was re-implemented and happened to be done exactly t

by ABCLAW 9y ago

>It does raise a question in my mind as to how that one function got copies, but it's also possible that it was re-implemented and happened to be done exactly the same without looking at the original They literally admit to having copied it. All the hypotheticals trying to find the end of cleanroom dev in this case keep missing the point: They didn't do cleanroom dev. They admit to not having done it. Their defenses aren't organized around them doing it. So what's the furor about?

monocasa 9y ago
Oracle's counsel was publicly admonished by Alsup for even trying to push that argument. Alsup: "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—"
doktrin 9y ago
> So what's the furor about? Probably about the absurdity of being hit with potentially astronomical penalties for "copying" 9 lines of trivial code that's barely worth hitting ctrl-c for. Obviously, common sense is - as always - distant from the pedantic nature of law and laywers, but just about anyone sane is gonna look at this and go "well that's just stupid".
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Probably about the absurdity of being hit with potentially astronomical penalties for "copying" 9 lines of trivial code that's barely worth hitting ctrl-c for. IIRC, the literal copying of code was something for which the parties stipulated to $0 in damages; the potential liability is about copying the API, not the one trivial 9-line function.

by ABCLAW 9y ago

monocasa 9y ago

Oracle's counsel was publicly admonished by Alsup for even trying to push that argument. Alsup: "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—"

doktrin 9y ago

> So what's the furor about? Probably about the absurdity of being hit with potentially astronomical penalties for "copying" 9 lines of trivial code that's barely worth hitting ctrl-c for. Obviously, common sense is - as always - distant from the pedantic nature of law and laywers, but just about anyone sane is gonna look at this and go "well that's just stupid".

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Probably about the absurdity of being hit with potentially astronomical penalties for "copying" 9 lines of trivial code that's barely worth hitting ctrl-c for. IIRC, the literal copying of code was something for which the parties stipulated to $0 in damages; the potential liability is about copying the API, not the one trivial 9-line function.