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It also erodes Google’s claims of fair use. Leveraging the Java language and APIs benefited Google much more than it benefited the Java ecosystem at large. Al

It also erodes Google’s claims of fair use. Leveraging the Java language and APIs benefited Google much more than it benefited the Java ecosystem at large. Almost anything that targets Java can now be used on Android, but the reverse is not true. The sharing largely flows one way. Google had little interest in expanding the reach of the Java platform—they wanted to attract Java developers to their “looks like Java, but isn’t” platform while benefiting from the years of work that went into the JDK. I don’t necessarily think APIs should be copyrightable, but since they now are as a matter of law, I’m leaning towards Google’s actions constituting infringement.

bonesss 9y ago
> The sharing largely flows one way. While this may hit on our sense of fairness, it has no relation to legal "fair use". My political parody show owes no profits to the subjects of my derision, IoW.
Zigurd 9y ago
"Benefitting the ecosystem" doesn't bear on fair use at all, but if it did, one could point to Android driving a revival of Java generally, and dragging client-end Java coding out of a coma and into prominence. The same could have been said of Visual J++ but Sun killed that opportunity before it could really flourish.