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> has never been tested in court This used to be true, but arguably the GPL has been tested in court in the infamous Oracle v Google case. (Java is licensed un

by hnfong 5y ago

> has never been tested in court This used to be true, but arguably the GPL has been tested in court in the infamous Oracle v Google case. (Java is licensed under the GPL among other licenses) It looks like the Supreme Court said "sure... whatever, Fair Use, I guess". Are APIs copyrightable in general? God knows. But at least you have a case from a top court deciding that in some cases you can actually copy all the APIs in a GPL'ed Java library. Totally agree with FSF making stuff up though. The reality distortion field they have is pretty legit. I don't think people even realized how the Java case could have impacted the interpretation of GPL and that it was actually a high profile allegation of GPL violation. Oh well shrug

butlerm 5y ago
The claims that have never been tested in court here aren't part of the license, but rather commentary as to what constitutes a derivative work under copyright law. If true, they would affect the legality of a number of practices that apparently do not require distributing or modifying licensed components or accepting the license at all. If loading and running a program with dynamically linked modules with incompatible licenses creates a legally prohibited derivative work in memory, that is a reasonable claim that the author copyright holders of some of the code could pursue the users in question about. That is not what is controversial though. The controversial claim is that by merely making a module that is link or use compatible with another module a legally prohibited derivative work has been created. Not by incorporating inline code, or copying the structure, sequence, or organization of another module, but merely by making something that is compatible in the abstract. Where is the legal basis for this claim? It is apparently nowhere, little more than wishful thinking.
- hnfong 5y ago
  > commentary as to what constitutes a derivative work under copyright law That's part of my point actually. The question of API copyrightability in the Java case has a lot to do with whether copying APIs/ABIs in the code (whether from headers or binary symbol tables) is copyright infringement. That said, it's unfortunately true that the conclusion is far from clear. (Sidenote -- given that the Supreme Court dodged the question, does it mean that the Court of Appeals decisions still hold? [I'm not familiar with the US legal system])
  - butlerm 5y ago
    The Supreme Court conclusively established that Google's use of the APIs was fair use under copyright law, so they did not need to reach the underlying question. I believe it would be safe to conclude that API descriptions such as header files are protected by copyright even in their essentials, that fair use is necessary to reproduce them without a license, and that Congress would need to act to create a more reliable exemption for that sort of thing. Court of Appeals decisions are only binding precedents within the corresponding regions, but they generally have persuasive force throughout the country until and unless the Supreme Court overrules them.
    - hnfong 5y ago
      Pretty sure the way they teach law students is to first determine whether a work is covered by copyright before going on to fair use... :D But then, it's the Supreme Court so nobody's gonna fail their papers...
tsimionescu 5y ago
I don't think Google v Oracle had anything to do with the GPL. The Java API is not licensed under the GPL, even if the main implementation, OpenJDK is. Alternate JDKs (Microsoft's old JDK, Visual J++, for a famous case) had to obtain special licenses from Sun and later Oracle, that included terms which are very different from the GPL (in particular, these JVMs had to be fully compatible with Java, you were not allowed to create a partially compatible JVM; and there were further restrictions on JVMs that targetted mobile/embedded devices). The whole trial also stopped at the copyight-ability and fair-use grounds, it never looked at any license Google might have had (they didn't have any license to use the Java API, but the SC finally found that no license was needed, as even if the API may be copyrightable, Google's use would fall under fair use exemptions).

by hnfong 5y ago

butlerm 5y ago

The claims that have never been tested in court here aren't part of the license, but rather commentary as to what constitutes a derivative work under copyright law. If true, they would affect the legality of a number of practices that apparently do not require distributing or modifying licensed components or accepting the license at all. If loading and running a program with dynamically linked modules with incompatible licenses creates a legally prohibited derivative work in memory, that is a reasonable claim that the author copyright holders of some of the code could pursue the users in question about. That is not what is controversial though. The controversial claim is that by merely making a module that is link or use compatible with another module a legally prohibited derivative work has been created. Not by incorporating inline code, or copying the structure, sequence, or organization of another module, but merely by making something that is compatible in the abstract. Where is the legal basis for this claim? It is apparently nowhere, little more than wishful thinking.

hnfong 5y ago
> commentary as to what constitutes a derivative work under copyright law That's part of my point actually. The question of API copyrightability in the Java case has a lot to do with whether copying APIs/ABIs in the code (whether from headers or binary symbol tables) is copyright infringement. That said, it's unfortunately true that the conclusion is far from clear. (Sidenote -- given that the Supreme Court dodged the question, does it mean that the Court of Appeals decisions still hold? [I'm not familiar with the US legal system])
- butlerm 5y ago
  The Supreme Court conclusively established that Google's use of the APIs was fair use under copyright law, so they did not need to reach the underlying question. I believe it would be safe to conclude that API descriptions such as header files are protected by copyright even in their essentials, that fair use is necessary to reproduce them without a license, and that Congress would need to act to create a more reliable exemption for that sort of thing. Court of Appeals decisions are only binding precedents within the corresponding regions, but they generally have persuasive force throughout the country until and unless the Supreme Court overrules them.
  - hnfong 5y ago
    Pretty sure the way they teach law students is to first determine whether a work is covered by copyright before going on to fair use... :D But then, it's the Supreme Court so nobody's gonna fail their papers...

tsimionescu 5y ago

I don't think Google v Oracle had anything to do with the GPL. The Java API is not licensed under the GPL, even if the main implementation, OpenJDK is. Alternate JDKs (Microsoft's old JDK, Visual J++, for a famous case) had to obtain special licenses from Sun and later Oracle, that included terms which are very different from the GPL (in particular, these JVMs had to be fully compatible with Java, you were not allowed to create a partially compatible JVM; and there were further restrictions on JVMs that targetted mobile/embedded devices). The whole trial also stopped at the copyight-ability and fair-use grounds, it never looked at any license Google might have had (they didn't have any license to use the Java API, but the SC finally found that no license was needed, as even if the API may be copyrightable, Google's use would fall under fair use exemptions).