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Tortured analogies like this is why the whole software industry is going to be making a surprised pikachu face when Oracle wins (see my comment a day or two ago

Tortured analogies like this is why the whole software industry is going to be making a surprised pikachu face when Oracle wins (see my comment a day or two ago on the prior story for substantially similar sentiment). Heat transfer to a pot is not an API, not even remotely close. It's a physical fact that has been observed since the stone age. The Java API is huge. It's not a mere physical fact, nor even a collection of method prototypes. It's everything covered in the JavaDocs: what happens in error scenarios, thread safety rules, how objects are combined to get different effects, what you can subclass and what's not, what security permissions things need. It's enormous and every decision in that was a 'creative' decision, in some sense. From a plain reading of copyright law it's obvious APIs far smaller and simpler than Java should fall under copyright. The idea APIs don't is a convenient consensus-quo for the software industry that benefits competition and should probably be preserved, although there is the counterbalancing factor that the non-protectability of APIs probably has invisible side effects we can't see (e.g. under-investment in API design). But the Supreme Court won't or shouldn't care about any of that because it's a political debate. The question before them is about what the current law says, and on that, Oracle probably have a point. Also, it's going to be even more fashionable to hate on Oracle if they do win, but the current situation has always been legally fragile. Sooner or later someone would have observed the apparent skew between the software industry's approach to copyright and what the law really says. We may be at least somewhat grateful that it's a fight between two well resourced firms and not e.g. a patent troll firm type of situation, where the defenders are threatened and have to pay up because they're too small to fight it.

cookiengineer 6y ago
Well, if Oracle wins this court battle, the effect will be disastrous because Microsoft is then legally able to sue everybody that uses their NT kernel API, including Oracle. The whole software industry would have to change, and the potential pitfalls of buying software without an open source license would be too great a risk for pretty much everyone that developed any software for any proprietary environment. I mean, using a proprietary GPU could be enough to get sued because you are rendering things on the screen, right?
- thu2111 6y ago
  No they wouldn't. MS would only be able to sue people who reimplemented the NT kernel API for their own projects, which is basically just Wine and ReactOS, but those projects have no money. This case is not about using APIs to build apps. Standard software licenses clearly allow that. The case is about reimplementing them.
imtringued 6y ago
>From a plain reading of copyright law it's obvious APIs far smaller and simpler than Java should fall under copyright. You do realize that copyrighting APIs is functionally useless? There are ways of copying APIs that do not violate copyright. Reinvention is still possible precisely because of things like javadoc or the fact that Oracle doesn't have copyright ownership of code that uses the Java API. There is an endless list of loopholes that this protection is useless. >The idea APIs don't is a convenient consensus-quo for the software industry that benefits competition and should probably be preserved, although there is the counterbalancing factor that the non-protectability of APIs probably has invisible side effects we can't see (e.g. under-investment in API design). It has more to do with the fact that we already have patent law that was explicitly created for cases like these. Two inventors build the exact same thing. The first inventor should have the rights to the invention. >But the Supreme Court won't or shouldn't care about any of that because it's a political debate. The question before them is about what the current law says, and on that, Oracle probably have a point. Can you point me to software patents that protect the Java API? >Also, it's going to be even more fashionable to hate on Oracle if they do win, but the current situation has always been legally fragile. Clean room designs are the status quo in the hardware world. There is zero fragility. It's done all the time. >Sooner or later someone would have observed the apparent skew between the software industry's approach to copyright and what the law really says. They already did so to the point that patents have existed before copyright.
- thu2111 6y ago
  There are ways of copying APIs that do not violate copyright Are there? That's exactly what's being litigated. Two inventors build the exact same thing Patents don't cover APIs, by the nature of their form as a patent typically must make a narrow list of claims. To patent the Java API would presumably require making the entire specification a set of claims, which the PTO wouldn't accept. You could argue APIs should be patentable but not copyrightable. That'd be weird though. Copyright is clearly the better fit, if you want APIs to be protected works. Clean room designs are the status quo in the hardware world. There is zero fragility. It's done all the time. No. The hardware world is the exact opposite of what you claim. ARM sells ISA licenses exactly because in the hardware world the Oracle side won out a long time ago: if you want to implement the ARM instruction set you need to pay ARM for the privilege. And if you want to use ARM's implementation you need to pay them even more. AMD can only make Intel-compatible chips because they have an architecture license for complex historical reasons, and so on.

cookiengineer 6y ago

Well, if Oracle wins this court battle, the effect will be disastrous because Microsoft is then legally able to sue everybody that uses their NT kernel API, including Oracle. The whole software industry would have to change, and the potential pitfalls of buying software without an open source license would be too great a risk for pretty much everyone that developed any software for any proprietary environment. I mean, using a proprietary GPU could be enough to get sued because you are rendering things on the screen, right?

thu2111 6y ago
No they wouldn't. MS would only be able to sue people who reimplemented the NT kernel API for their own projects, which is basically just Wine and ReactOS, but those projects have no money. This case is not about using APIs to build apps. Standard software licenses clearly allow that. The case is about reimplementing them.

imtringued 6y ago

>From a plain reading of copyright law it's obvious APIs far smaller and simpler than Java should fall under copyright. You do realize that copyrighting APIs is functionally useless? There are ways of copying APIs that do not violate copyright. Reinvention is still possible precisely because of things like javadoc or the fact that Oracle doesn't have copyright ownership of code that uses the Java API. There is an endless list of loopholes that this protection is useless. >The idea APIs don't is a convenient consensus-quo for the software industry that benefits competition and should probably be preserved, although there is the counterbalancing factor that the non-protectability of APIs probably has invisible side effects we can't see (e.g. under-investment in API design). It has more to do with the fact that we already have patent law that was explicitly created for cases like these. Two inventors build the exact same thing. The first inventor should have the rights to the invention. >But the Supreme Court won't or shouldn't care about any of that because it's a political debate. The question before them is about what the current law says, and on that, Oracle probably have a point. Can you point me to software patents that protect the Java API? >Also, it's going to be even more fashionable to hate on Oracle if they do win, but the current situation has always been legally fragile. Clean room designs are the status quo in the hardware world. There is zero fragility. It's done all the time. >Sooner or later someone would have observed the apparent skew between the software industry's approach to copyright and what the law really says. They already did so to the point that patents have existed before copyright.

thu2111 6y ago
There are ways of copying APIs that do not violate copyright Are there? That's exactly what's being litigated. Two inventors build the exact same thing Patents don't cover APIs, by the nature of their form as a patent typically must make a narrow list of claims. To patent the Java API would presumably require making the entire specification a set of claims, which the PTO wouldn't accept. You could argue APIs should be patentable but not copyrightable. That'd be weird though. Copyright is clearly the better fit, if you want APIs to be protected works. Clean room designs are the status quo in the hardware world. There is zero fragility. It's done all the time. No. The hardware world is the exact opposite of what you claim. ARM sells ISA licenses exactly because in the hardware world the Oracle side won out a long time ago: if you want to implement the ARM instruction set you need to pay ARM for the privilege. And if you want to use ARM's implementation you need to pay them even more. AMD can only make Intel-compatible chips because they have an architecture license for complex historical reasons, and so on.