5 ms·

Supreme Court sides with developers in Google vs. Oracle

voidfunc 6y ago
More like developers were on the right side of a coin flip.
- etothepii 6y ago
  It was 7:2, not 5:4.
  - viro 6y ago
    yea thats not close at all.
  - blendergeek 6y ago
    6:2. Barret was not on the court when the case was heard.
asimpletune 6y ago
One thing I didn’t ask when this news first broke was did google present their case any differently to the Supreme Court? I remember when google lost last time thinking their case was presented very poorly and didn’t really attempt to explain the technical merits and how they connect to copyright law in this case too well, although I could be mistaken about that. Does anyone care to weigh in on this?
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  At least one legal scholar stated that the Google lawyer did an abysmal job presenting their case to the Supreme Court. Apparently it was enough though. Obviously people can only guess which way the court was inclined prior to arguments.
CoastalCoder 6y ago
Anyone know if this opens the door to non-nVidia implementations of the CUDA APIs?
- sida 6y ago
  This! The hardest thing for competing chip manufacturers to overcome in the deep learning world with is the CUDA APIs / CuDNN API etc.
- riskable 6y ago
  Nothing is fair use until a judge rules as such in a court of law. So to answer your question: Probably, but it would have to be litigated.
- alexisread 6y ago
  I believe so. Fair use allows that. If you were to try to hijack the APIs by extending them (in a proprietary way) then you'd possibly be open to litigation. I'd agree that the court was right to dodge the issue of copyrightability by going for the most narrow interpretation, it's for the lower courts to decide. Having said that, I think they shouldn't be copyrighted really, and the door is open for expensive litigation by larger companies shaking down smaller ones with this ruling. As far as hijacking an API goes, well anyone is free to fork an MIT-licensed project, doesn't mean that it will gain traction. Most of computing is built upon previous work so claiming originality in an API... well many more clever people than me have left their discoveries open to the public, and I suspect that any API originality doesn't measure up well against their work :)
s3r3nity 6y ago
Curious to hear from others more knowledgeable than I: did Oracle's case have _any_ merits here? Are there implications about this decision that could be worrisome? HN threads tend to portray this a bit as "beating an evil cash grab," which may be the case...but I don't know enough about both sides to make that judgement myself.
- cogman10 6y ago
  The amount of code google copied was a bit much. The SC didn't rule that this wasn't a copyright violation but instead that "this qualifies as fair use" which means that it doesn't really resolve anything and leaves this sort of an issue open for future litigation. That said, the down side of this is the old MS "embrace, extend, extinguish" approach is up for grabs by a large company. There isn't much stopping someone from making "not java" and breaking it in subtle ways (Imagine, for example, if android's dalvik/art became a common runtime for Java apps. Or more realistically, what microsoft did with Java back in the sun days). The good thing is that for now, just implementing interfaces likely is just fair use. The bad thing is you are allow to implement a LOT of interfaces before the copyright question comes up again.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Basically read Thomas' dissent. 1.) The Court skirted the issue of whether APIs are copyrightable. If they were, it would be bad, but it's unclear if they aren't copyrightable as a matter of the law as written. 2.) The majority held on the basis of fair use and, as Thomas argues, that's arguably a stretch--and certainly a very fact-dependent one.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I think Oracle's case was incredibly full of merit, and an incredible PR campaign was run by Google to ensure nobody believed it. The idea that the whole of the software industry was under threat if Google wasn't able to wholesale violate Oracle's license terms for Java is absolutely laughable, but it's nearly a commonly held belief in the industry, propped up largely by organizations Google's Public Policy team has donated large sums to. Bear in mind, Google's internal correspondence covered knowing they needed to license Java, negotiating terms to license Java, and then when they didn't want to comply with Oracle's terms (which were literally: interoperability, because they wanted Android to run standard cross-platform Java apps), they chose to steal what they wanted instead. Andy Rubin (of "Larry Page gave me $90 million after I sexually harassed subordinates" fame) had a major bonus tied to launching Android on time, and just taking what he needed was the solution. Also, if Android had been GPL-licensed, they could've built on OpenJDK from the get-go legitimately, but again, stealing was preferable in Google's case to obeying license terms, because they wanted to appeal to manufacturer's pushing proprietary code. Oracle is not a hero, but Google was fighting against interoperability and open source licensing the entire way, and bought their way into public opinion.
passtheglass 6y ago
I wonder how long it is before Google is fighting the precedent they set in this case.
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
Dunno if GitHub bringing anything new to the story here other than reiterating their obvious interest in keeping code things fair-use etc See lots of discussion from a few days ago on the ruling here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699106

More like developers were on the right side of a coin flip.

etothepii 6y ago
It was 7:2, not 5:4.
- viro 6y ago
  yea thats not close at all.
- blendergeek 6y ago
  6:2. Barret was not on the court when the case was heard.

One thing I didn’t ask when this news first broke was did google present their case any differently to the Supreme Court? I remember when google lost last time thinking their case was presented very poorly and didn’t really attempt to explain the technical merits and how they connect to copyright law in this case too well, although I could be mistaken about that. Does anyone care to weigh in on this?

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
At least one legal scholar stated that the Google lawyer did an abysmal job presenting their case to the Supreme Court. Apparently it was enough though. Obviously people can only guess which way the court was inclined prior to arguments.

CoastalCoder 6y ago

Anyone know if this opens the door to non-nVidia implementations of the CUDA APIs?

sida 6y ago
This! The hardest thing for competing chip manufacturers to overcome in the deep learning world with is the CUDA APIs / CuDNN API etc.
riskable 6y ago
Nothing is fair use until a judge rules as such in a court of law. So to answer your question: Probably, but it would have to be litigated.
alexisread 6y ago
I believe so. Fair use allows that. If you were to try to hijack the APIs by extending them (in a proprietary way) then you'd possibly be open to litigation. I'd agree that the court was right to dodge the issue of copyrightability by going for the most narrow interpretation, it's for the lower courts to decide. Having said that, I think they shouldn't be copyrighted really, and the door is open for expensive litigation by larger companies shaking down smaller ones with this ruling. As far as hijacking an API goes, well anyone is free to fork an MIT-licensed project, doesn't mean that it will gain traction. Most of computing is built upon previous work so claiming originality in an API... well many more clever people than me have left their discoveries open to the public, and I suspect that any API originality doesn't measure up well against their work :)

s3r3nity 6y ago

Curious to hear from others more knowledgeable than I: did Oracle's case have _any_ merits here? Are there implications about this decision that could be worrisome? HN threads tend to portray this a bit as "beating an evil cash grab," which may be the case...but I don't know enough about both sides to make that judgement myself.

cogman10 6y ago
The amount of code google copied was a bit much. The SC didn't rule that this wasn't a copyright violation but instead that "this qualifies as fair use" which means that it doesn't really resolve anything and leaves this sort of an issue open for future litigation. That said, the down side of this is the old MS "embrace, extend, extinguish" approach is up for grabs by a large company. There isn't much stopping someone from making "not java" and breaking it in subtle ways (Imagine, for example, if android's dalvik/art became a common runtime for Java apps. Or more realistically, what microsoft did with Java back in the sun days). The good thing is that for now, just implementing interfaces likely is just fair use. The bad thing is you are allow to implement a LOT of interfaces before the copyright question comes up again.
ghaff 6y ago
Basically read Thomas' dissent. 1.) The Court skirted the issue of whether APIs are copyrightable. If they were, it would be bad, but it's unclear if they aren't copyrightable as a matter of the law as written. 2.) The majority held on the basis of fair use and, as Thomas argues, that's arguably a stretch--and certainly a very fact-dependent one.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I think Oracle's case was incredibly full of merit, and an incredible PR campaign was run by Google to ensure nobody believed it. The idea that the whole of the software industry was under threat if Google wasn't able to wholesale violate Oracle's license terms for Java is absolutely laughable, but it's nearly a commonly held belief in the industry, propped up largely by organizations Google's Public Policy team has donated large sums to. Bear in mind, Google's internal correspondence covered knowing they needed to license Java, negotiating terms to license Java, and then when they didn't want to comply with Oracle's terms (which were literally: interoperability, because they wanted Android to run standard cross-platform Java apps), they chose to steal what they wanted instead. Andy Rubin (of "Larry Page gave me $90 million after I sexually harassed subordinates" fame) had a major bonus tied to launching Android on time, and just taking what he needed was the solution. Also, if Android had been GPL-licensed, they could've built on OpenJDK from the get-go legitimately, but again, stealing was preferable in Google's case to obeying license terms, because they wanted to appeal to manufacturer's pushing proprietary code. Oracle is not a hero, but Google was fighting against interoperability and open source licensing the entire way, and bought their way into public opinion.

passtheglass 6y ago

I wonder how long it is before Google is fighting the precedent they set in this case.

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

Dunno if GitHub bringing anything new to the story here other than reiterating their obvious interest in keeping code things fair-use etc See lots of discussion from a few days ago on the ruling here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699106