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It seems perfectly reasonable for Oracle to defend itself in court this way. It's kinda like an automatic win - if they get the Google lawsuit, then hey - bank.

It seems perfectly reasonable for Oracle to defend itself in court this way. It's kinda like an automatic win - if they get the Google lawsuit, then hey - bank... and then they will likely lose this case - but the stakes are pretty much tiny. Also AWS would have to go after a bunch of open source replicas of S3 too - which they probably DON'T want to do. And if they don't, Oracle may have a counter case in that it was unjustifiably targeted. However if they lose the Google case, then hey, they did nothing wrong here. Seems like a win win for Oracle.

deleted 7y ago
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dangus 7y ago
Oracle is the #1 law firm in Silicon Valley. Strangely, they seem to have a software side business.
- lowdose 7y ago
  Hence the Larry Ellison trade, a cousin of the Bob Rubin trade. Rent-seeking behavior in software development. Wall garden, vendor lock, license, and litigate for every LOC. Make customers pay for technical debt by dumping more exotic spaghetti code. Larry Ellison's way of doing business is about him and what he receives at the bottom line. The customer is an after fact in the sales funnel. A resource that needs to be milked as a proper cash cow. Larry Ellison is as a evil as the offspring of Joffrey and Cersei Lannister could be. https://www.isegoria.net/2017/05/the-bob-rubin-trade/ https://www.isegoria.net/2017/05/the-bob-rubin-trade/
rubinelli 7y ago
Copyright is not like trademark. Amazon can choose to enforce it selectively, and it should not influence any specific case.
- Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
  However if they choose not to defend it they may be opening themselves up to an “implied licence” defence from others in the future. (Though they could then revoke their license but anything created up to that point may be considered as under that implied license if the implied license defence plays off. Think of it a bit like changing from an open source license to one that’s not, you would still be allowed to work with the older open source version if you wanted) What would be a better option (IMO) then just not enforcing your rights would be to get an nominal fee from the entities you like and in return grant them a favourable license. (Not a lawyer, go ask your own lawyer if you want specific legal advice)
  - jcims 7y ago
    They are going to want the same freedom to copy service interfaces of successful customers and competitors. Defending this vigorously would be counterproductive in that regard. Besides, the innovation in S3 isn’t the API, and I don’t see what Amazon has to fear from Oracle’s implementation of a global scale object store.
    - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
      I'm not suggesting Amazon would or even should defend their API from Oracle. Just making the counter argument that while not defending your copyrights doesn't lead to a point where you can lose your copyright on something (Which can happen with trademarks) but purposely not defending them can lead to a point where you have inadvertently created an implied license causing headaches later down the road if you did decide to defend them at a later date. For an example, lets just say for the sake of argument Amazon did decide to defend their API from Oracle's implementation and take action. Oracle could use as a defence (But prob not their only line of defense) that "That Internet Archive, LeoFS, Riak CS, Minio, cloudian and others all have S3-Like API's. Amazon must be aware that these products exist and by allowing such products to exist without defending their rights (what ever they are) to the API they allowed an implied license for the API to be created thus Oracle's implementation is just another implementation of that implied license. A "Workaround" to such could be taking lets say Internet Archive to one side and saying "Hey, we like what you do, but we have a copyright on that API you are using. Pay us $1 and we will grant you a license to use that API.". Personally I dislike the idea of enforcing copyrights on an API (Sure, enforce them code behind that API, unless you wish to give that away) and feel that the products using them should stand on their own.
EGreg 7y ago
Or the judges can also make contradictory judgments and screw Oracle in both cases for being an ass.

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dangus 7y ago

Oracle is the #1 law firm in Silicon Valley. Strangely, they seem to have a software side business.

lowdose 7y ago
Hence the Larry Ellison trade, a cousin of the Bob Rubin trade. Rent-seeking behavior in software development. Wall garden, vendor lock, license, and litigate for every LOC. Make customers pay for technical debt by dumping more exotic spaghetti code. Larry Ellison's way of doing business is about him and what he receives at the bottom line. The customer is an after fact in the sales funnel. A resource that needs to be milked as a proper cash cow. Larry Ellison is as a evil as the offspring of Joffrey and Cersei Lannister could be. https://www.isegoria.net/2017/05/the-bob-rubin-trade/ https://www.isegoria.net/2017/05/the-bob-rubin-trade/

rubinelli 7y ago

Copyright is not like trademark. Amazon can choose to enforce it selectively, and it should not influence any specific case.

Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
However if they choose not to defend it they may be opening themselves up to an “implied licence” defence from others in the future. (Though they could then revoke their license but anything created up to that point may be considered as under that implied license if the implied license defence plays off. Think of it a bit like changing from an open source license to one that’s not, you would still be allowed to work with the older open source version if you wanted) What would be a better option (IMO) then just not enforcing your rights would be to get an nominal fee from the entities you like and in return grant them a favourable license. (Not a lawyer, go ask your own lawyer if you want specific legal advice)
- jcims 7y ago
  They are going to want the same freedom to copy service interfaces of successful customers and competitors. Defending this vigorously would be counterproductive in that regard. Besides, the innovation in S3 isn’t the API, and I don’t see what Amazon has to fear from Oracle’s implementation of a global scale object store.
  - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
    I'm not suggesting Amazon would or even should defend their API from Oracle. Just making the counter argument that while not defending your copyrights doesn't lead to a point where you can lose your copyright on something (Which can happen with trademarks) but purposely not defending them can lead to a point where you have inadvertently created an implied license causing headaches later down the road if you did decide to defend them at a later date. For an example, lets just say for the sake of argument Amazon did decide to defend their API from Oracle's implementation and take action. Oracle could use as a defence (But prob not their only line of defense) that "That Internet Archive, LeoFS, Riak CS, Minio, cloudian and others all have S3-Like API's. Amazon must be aware that these products exist and by allowing such products to exist without defending their rights (what ever they are) to the API they allowed an implied license for the API to be created thus Oracle's implementation is just another implementation of that implied license. A "Workaround" to such could be taking lets say Internet Archive to one side and saying "Hey, we like what you do, but we have a copyright on that API you are using. Pay us $1 and we will grant you a license to use that API.". Personally I dislike the idea of enforcing copyrights on an API (Sure, enforce them code behind that API, unless you wish to give that away) and feel that the products using them should stand on their own.

EGreg 7y ago

Or the judges can also make contradictory judgments and screw Oracle in both cases for being an ass.