6 ms·

Microsoft, BSA, others file briefs in support of Oracle's appeal against Google

pointyhatuk 14y ago
Why Microsoft is involved I don't know. I know their market share of windows phone is a bit crappy [1], but posturing themselves as opponents to Android isn't going to help their image either to the industry or the public and therefore their market share. I would have thought they'd get the point by now and stop acting like asshats. Oh and unsurprising SCO mention. This crap has been going on behind the scenes forever. Watching the corporate battleground is tiresome and makes me drift away from all parties. [1] I own a windows phone before anyone marks me up as a hater.
- CaveTech 14y ago
  Microsoft is not shy about "posturing themselves as opponents to Android", and has been doing so for a long time. It's not really a surprise here.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    IIRC MSFT gets paid a royalty of $10~$15 per copy of Android deployed by carriers, so they do have a hedge. (Though the fact that they have that hedge in place at all is proof that they are "opponents of Android" which they naturally have to be given their agenda. That makes me think though, is there anything preventing them from jacking up that price 2-3x once WinPhone 8 launches?)
    - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
      Though weirdly they are also complaining to the EU that Google is competing unfairly by selling Android below cost. How you can say that about a product you yourself are charging 15 bucks for is beyond me (disclosure, I think that figure is mostly Microsoft PR/FUD to scare people away from android. Not very successful though.)
    - lallysingh 14y ago
      I think MSFT will prefer power (market dominance) over money any day of the week.
  - nivla 14y ago
    >Microsoft is not shy about "posturing themselves as opponents to Android". So does Apple. The business world is as nasty as politics, everyone pretends to care for the users, no one really does.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Close. Really: everything is politics (aka human nature).
- nivla 14y ago
  >windows phone is a bit crappy I think it is rising up, especially in the Asian market. From the business point of view, the best thing they did was to partner with Nokia. If it wasn't for Lumia, I don't think I would got a windows phone. >Why Microsoft is involved I don't know. I think it has more to do with "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". They hold the grudge against Google for cutting windows phone from Youtube Api, Google Maps, Calender, the whole exchange debacle.. etc. I hate all these corporate fights, because at the end its not them but us who lose the most.
- kvb 14y ago
  Presumably they're involved because they have a number of APIs, and they believe that APIs should be copyrightable. I don't think they would take a position on this issue due to an opposition to Google alone.
  - usea 14y ago
    Presumably they're involved because they have a number of APIs, and they believe that APIs should be copyrightable. Minor correction: they believe it's in their best interests that APIs should be copyrightable.
    - kvb 14y ago
      I agree that we can't infer their true beliefs (to the extent it even makes sense to talk about a corporation's beliefs), but I think the position that APIs should be subject to copyright is actually reasonable (though IANAL).
- mythz 14y ago
  > Why Microsoft is involved I don't know. They want to kill Android so they can keep their old business model and get the world to license WP instead.
  - kvb 14y ago
    While I'm sure they'd love for Android to die, I don't think that explains this brief. In what percentage of the cases involving Android has Microsoft filed an amicus brief? It's much more likely that they care about the actual issue in this case (whether APIs are subject to copyright).
mcmc 14y ago
Microsoft owns the .NET ecosystem; they probably are looking to expand/protect their rights on C# et al. more than they want to make a direct attack on Android... (though it is a nice bonus for them.)
- mtgx 14y ago
  Weren't some people here suggesting some months ago that Google could use C# as an alternative to Java for Android, because C# is an ISO standard or something, and it's protected against Microsoft doing what you're suggesting? I don't know much about the C# license, but to me suggesting Google would use C# seemed very strange, and probably very foolish on Google's part if they were ever to do that, but a lot of people thought that would be a good idea at the time. Either way, I think this is just another vector of attack from Microsoft towards Google to hurt them, along with stuff like #droidrage, scroogle, the push for the Google search anti-trust, and now the push for the Android anti-trust in EU, too. They just want to hurt Google, badly. It doesn't really matter how they'll do it. They'll simply explore and take advantage of all opportunities to do that. It's actually a very similar strategy they've used in the past like a decade or more ago. Microsoft hasn't changed.
  - Zigurd 14y ago
    Making the language syntax and semantics a standard is only part of having a working runtime. MSIL, the VM, and the class library are also part of a complete implementation. In Android, the Java language syntax and semantics are used. In part, the class library is derived from Apache Harmony, though the implementation has substantially diverged, and in part is the original work of Google. The runtime is all specific to Android. The VM does not use Java bytecodes. It uses Dalvik bytecodes. This is a neat trick: You can use Eclipse and most of the Java compilation chain. It diverges from Java where Java bytecodes are translated to Dalvik bytecodes. That means that every tool, even the ones that depend on Java bytecodes, works for Android development. You can use other JVM languages with Android https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/scala-ide/Developing_for_Android https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/scala-ide/Developing_for_... But (!) that elegant way it all snaps together means you need to start by making C# a JVM language, which, as far as I know, hasn't been done. A deep, dark irony of this is that the modern Microsoft runtime environment and class library stems from Visual J++, which Sun sued out of existence. At the time, it was by far the best Java for writing interactive.applications.
kumarm 14y ago
Microsoft is in serious trouble and they are focussing on wrong things. As a company that produced Windows8 apps, its seriously disappointing to see huge investments in their ecosystem go waste. Microsoft's answer for that? 1. Throw Dirt at others: Scroogle, lawsuits .... 2. Hide the stats of their decline: Windows8 apps dashboard used to show download trends of your app vs download trends of top5 apps in same category. This provided a way to judge whether platform is growing. For about 2 months (After initial December bump) the stats have been on decline. So now they decided not to show it any more. It is really disappointing to see MSFT fall and not even make a serious attempt.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  Microsoft is in serious trouble and they are focussing on wrong things. Chew gum and walk at the same time sort of a thing. Microsoft is more than one person so they have the resources to do many different things at the same time. My guess is that it's in Microsoft's interests to have as many rights as possible over code and languages. Also screwing Android and Google wouldn't hurt their business. Google and MS have been going at each other for a decade plus, with attacks and counter attacks. Google won the latest round by having FTC not press any changes and by having MS pay a huge fine to EU. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e748bfc8-8682-11e2-b907-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e748bfc8-8682-11e2-b907-00144feabd... March 6, 2013 6:56 pm "Google tip-off leads to Microsoft EU penalty Google has struck a €561m blow to Microsoft after the EU’s competition authority heavily fined the maker of Windows for settlement breaches secretly flagged up by the US internet group."
  - magicalist 14y ago
    I can't see that because it's paywalled, but here's another source: "According to sources quoted by the Financial Times, it was Google (along with Opera) that tipped off the EU about the lack of browser choice in Windows, putting the whole investigation in motion."[1] The situation doesn't seem all that comparable with the FTC investigation, since this fine was for a breach of a settlement Microsoft had made with the EU. I've never thought the browser ballot was a very good solution, but I'm not feeling a whole lot of sympathy here since Microsoft agreed to it, but then didn't include the ballot for 15 months and didn't reinstate it after it received initial reports that it wasn't showing up. You also ignored that pesky "along with Opera" for the sake of a nice narrative, though to be fair, the reporters also downgraded the importance of it in pursuit of the same thing. Considering that all you needed to "catch them" was to install Windows 7, this was really just waiting for someone that would notice the lack of the ballot that also had the channels to alert someone who would care. I think this is missing the OP's point anyways, which is that if the perception of developers is that Microsoft's platform is hurting, then they need to publicly focus on positive boosting of that platform. This is the same complaint many have had about the whole scroogled thing. [1] http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/07/google-microsoft-eu-fine/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/07/google-microsoft-eu-fine/
breck 14y ago
Funny, I just came across this, written in 1993: > "Oracle Corporation has taken a public stand against the patentability of software and has forsworn use of its own patents except to counter-sue in infringement claims." (http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html) Does anyone know the history of Oracle's position on software patents?
TeeDub 14y ago
So, I understand that FOSS is great and we all want more open software because there are tangible benefits to working with open software. I'm less clear on why API's shouldn't be copyrightable. An API isn't just a few lines of code. It's often an intense creative endeavor that ultimately represents a very specific (sometimes innovative) way of looking at the world. Sometimes, those views are uniquely terrible or uniquely elegant... but what's clear is that they are not "natural" in the way that a mathematical equation or physical law may be. It's clearly an act of creation, at least in my mind. With that in mind... What are the best reasons to deny copyrights to API authors in a legal system that allows writers (who create intense creative endeavors representative of very specific and often innovative ways of looking at the world) copyright protections? (Mind: I'm not against reforming said legal system; however, given the status quo, I'm not convinced about the differentiation between an API and a written work as creative (and copyrightable) works.) (Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of open source and being as "free" as possible. I love Creative Commons and fiercely enjoy the freedoms that FOSS can provide to developers and consumers. I think that API's are something that should be open rather than closed, but I don't think that means that all API's MUST be copyleft / public domain.)
- kkowalczyk 14y ago
  Because APIs are more functional than creative. Imagine an Array class. How many names can you come up with for: "number of elements in an array"? Count(), Size(), Len(), Length(). Those are 4 common names. Now imagine a system where you can copyright those names. The first 4 people who use those obvious, functional names get a monopoly on their use because that's what copyright is: a government granted monopoly. We have hundreds of languages, and many languages have multiple Array classes. Can you see how such system would destroy our ability to write understandable code? An API is a very small part of the overall code. If you want to compare this to writers: code is the novel and it does get copyright protection, just like a novel. API name is like a chapter name and just like Melville doesn't get copyright (i.e. exclusive use) of "Loomings", a programmer shouldn't get a an exclusive use of Array.Count().
  - kvb 14y ago
    Just as I can copyright a work such as a novel that contains the word "Count" even though I might not be able to copyright an isolated sentence containing it, I think there's a good argument that something like the Java standard library API hangs together and should be subject to copyright even if a single method signature would not.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

Why Microsoft is involved I don't know. I know their market share of windows phone is a bit crappy [1], but posturing themselves as opponents to Android isn't going to help their image either to the industry or the public and therefore their market share. I would have thought they'd get the point by now and stop acting like asshats. Oh and unsurprising SCO mention. This crap has been going on behind the scenes forever. Watching the corporate battleground is tiresome and makes me drift away from all parties. [1] I own a windows phone before anyone marks me up as a hater.

CaveTech 14y ago
Microsoft is not shy about "posturing themselves as opponents to Android", and has been doing so for a long time. It's not really a surprise here.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  IIRC MSFT gets paid a royalty of $10~$15 per copy of Android deployed by carriers, so they do have a hedge. (Though the fact that they have that hedge in place at all is proof that they are "opponents of Android" which they naturally have to be given their agenda. That makes me think though, is there anything preventing them from jacking up that price 2-3x once WinPhone 8 launches?)
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    Though weirdly they are also complaining to the EU that Google is competing unfairly by selling Android below cost. How you can say that about a product you yourself are charging 15 bucks for is beyond me (disclosure, I think that figure is mostly Microsoft PR/FUD to scare people away from android. Not very successful though.)
  - lallysingh 14y ago
    I think MSFT will prefer power (market dominance) over money any day of the week.
- nivla 14y ago
  >Microsoft is not shy about "posturing themselves as opponents to Android". So does Apple. The business world is as nasty as politics, everyone pretends to care for the users, no one really does.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Close. Really: everything is politics (aka human nature).
nivla 14y ago
>windows phone is a bit crappy I think it is rising up, especially in the Asian market. From the business point of view, the best thing they did was to partner with Nokia. If it wasn't for Lumia, I don't think I would got a windows phone. >Why Microsoft is involved I don't know. I think it has more to do with "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". They hold the grudge against Google for cutting windows phone from Youtube Api, Google Maps, Calender, the whole exchange debacle.. etc. I hate all these corporate fights, because at the end its not them but us who lose the most.
kvb 14y ago
Presumably they're involved because they have a number of APIs, and they believe that APIs should be copyrightable. I don't think they would take a position on this issue due to an opposition to Google alone.
- usea 14y ago
  Presumably they're involved because they have a number of APIs, and they believe that APIs should be copyrightable. Minor correction: they believe it's in their best interests that APIs should be copyrightable.
  - kvb 14y ago
    I agree that we can't infer their true beliefs (to the extent it even makes sense to talk about a corporation's beliefs), but I think the position that APIs should be subject to copyright is actually reasonable (though IANAL).
mythz 14y ago
> Why Microsoft is involved I don't know. They want to kill Android so they can keep their old business model and get the world to license WP instead.
- kvb 14y ago
  While I'm sure they'd love for Android to die, I don't think that explains this brief. In what percentage of the cases involving Android has Microsoft filed an amicus brief? It's much more likely that they care about the actual issue in this case (whether APIs are subject to copyright).

mcmc 14y ago

Microsoft owns the .NET ecosystem; they probably are looking to expand/protect their rights on C# et al. more than they want to make a direct attack on Android... (though it is a nice bonus for them.)

mtgx 14y ago
Weren't some people here suggesting some months ago that Google could use C# as an alternative to Java for Android, because C# is an ISO standard or something, and it's protected against Microsoft doing what you're suggesting? I don't know much about the C# license, but to me suggesting Google would use C# seemed very strange, and probably very foolish on Google's part if they were ever to do that, but a lot of people thought that would be a good idea at the time. Either way, I think this is just another vector of attack from Microsoft towards Google to hurt them, along with stuff like #droidrage, scroogle, the push for the Google search anti-trust, and now the push for the Android anti-trust in EU, too. They just want to hurt Google, badly. It doesn't really matter how they'll do it. They'll simply explore and take advantage of all opportunities to do that. It's actually a very similar strategy they've used in the past like a decade or more ago. Microsoft hasn't changed.
- Zigurd 14y ago
  Making the language syntax and semantics a standard is only part of having a working runtime. MSIL, the VM, and the class library are also part of a complete implementation. In Android, the Java language syntax and semantics are used. In part, the class library is derived from Apache Harmony, though the implementation has substantially diverged, and in part is the original work of Google. The runtime is all specific to Android. The VM does not use Java bytecodes. It uses Dalvik bytecodes. This is a neat trick: You can use Eclipse and most of the Java compilation chain. It diverges from Java where Java bytecodes are translated to Dalvik bytecodes. That means that every tool, even the ones that depend on Java bytecodes, works for Android development. You can use other JVM languages with Android https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/scala-ide/Developing_for_Android https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/scala-ide/Developing_for_... But (!) that elegant way it all snaps together means you need to start by making C# a JVM language, which, as far as I know, hasn't been done. A deep, dark irony of this is that the modern Microsoft runtime environment and class library stems from Visual J++, which Sun sued out of existence. At the time, it was by far the best Java for writing interactive.applications.

kumarm 14y ago

Microsoft is in serious trouble and they are focussing on wrong things. As a company that produced Windows8 apps, its seriously disappointing to see huge investments in their ecosystem go waste. Microsoft's answer for that? 1. Throw Dirt at others: Scroogle, lawsuits .... 2. Hide the stats of their decline: Windows8 apps dashboard used to show download trends of your app vs download trends of top5 apps in same category. This provided a way to judge whether platform is growing. For about 2 months (After initial December bump) the stats have been on decline. So now they decided not to show it any more. It is really disappointing to see MSFT fall and not even make a serious attempt.

OGinparadise 14y ago
Microsoft is in serious trouble and they are focussing on wrong things. Chew gum and walk at the same time sort of a thing. Microsoft is more than one person so they have the resources to do many different things at the same time. My guess is that it's in Microsoft's interests to have as many rights as possible over code and languages. Also screwing Android and Google wouldn't hurt their business. Google and MS have been going at each other for a decade plus, with attacks and counter attacks. Google won the latest round by having FTC not press any changes and by having MS pay a huge fine to EU. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e748bfc8-8682-11e2-b907-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e748bfc8-8682-11e2-b907-00144feabd... March 6, 2013 6:56 pm "Google tip-off leads to Microsoft EU penalty Google has struck a €561m blow to Microsoft after the EU’s competition authority heavily fined the maker of Windows for settlement breaches secretly flagged up by the US internet group."
- magicalist 14y ago
  I can't see that because it's paywalled, but here's another source: "According to sources quoted by the Financial Times, it was Google (along with Opera) that tipped off the EU about the lack of browser choice in Windows, putting the whole investigation in motion."[1] The situation doesn't seem all that comparable with the FTC investigation, since this fine was for a breach of a settlement Microsoft had made with the EU. I've never thought the browser ballot was a very good solution, but I'm not feeling a whole lot of sympathy here since Microsoft agreed to it, but then didn't include the ballot for 15 months and didn't reinstate it after it received initial reports that it wasn't showing up. You also ignored that pesky "along with Opera" for the sake of a nice narrative, though to be fair, the reporters also downgraded the importance of it in pursuit of the same thing. Considering that all you needed to "catch them" was to install Windows 7, this was really just waiting for someone that would notice the lack of the ballot that also had the channels to alert someone who would care. I think this is missing the OP's point anyways, which is that if the perception of developers is that Microsoft's platform is hurting, then they need to publicly focus on positive boosting of that platform. This is the same complaint many have had about the whole scroogled thing. [1] http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/07/google-microsoft-eu-fine/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/07/google-microsoft-eu-fine/

breck 14y ago

Funny, I just came across this, written in 1993: > "Oracle Corporation has taken a public stand against the patentability of software and has forsworn use of its own patents except to counter-sue in infringement claims." (http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html) Does anyone know the history of Oracle's position on software patents?

TeeDub 14y ago

So, I understand that FOSS is great and we all want more open software because there are tangible benefits to working with open software. I'm less clear on why API's shouldn't be copyrightable. An API isn't just a few lines of code. It's often an intense creative endeavor that ultimately represents a very specific (sometimes innovative) way of looking at the world. Sometimes, those views are uniquely terrible or uniquely elegant... but what's clear is that they are not "natural" in the way that a mathematical equation or physical law may be. It's clearly an act of creation, at least in my mind. With that in mind... What are the best reasons to deny copyrights to API authors in a legal system that allows writers (who create intense creative endeavors representative of very specific and often innovative ways of looking at the world) copyright protections? (Mind: I'm not against reforming said legal system; however, given the status quo, I'm not convinced about the differentiation between an API and a written work as creative (and copyrightable) works.) (Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of open source and being as "free" as possible. I love Creative Commons and fiercely enjoy the freedoms that FOSS can provide to developers and consumers. I think that API's are something that should be open rather than closed, but I don't think that means that all API's MUST be copyleft / public domain.)

kkowalczyk 14y ago
Because APIs are more functional than creative. Imagine an Array class. How many names can you come up with for: "number of elements in an array"? Count(), Size(), Len(), Length(). Those are 4 common names. Now imagine a system where you can copyright those names. The first 4 people who use those obvious, functional names get a monopoly on their use because that's what copyright is: a government granted monopoly. We have hundreds of languages, and many languages have multiple Array classes. Can you see how such system would destroy our ability to write understandable code? An API is a very small part of the overall code. If you want to compare this to writers: code is the novel and it does get copyright protection, just like a novel. API name is like a chapter name and just like Melville doesn't get copyright (i.e. exclusive use) of "Loomings", a programmer shouldn't get a an exclusive use of Array.Count().
- kvb 14y ago
  Just as I can copyright a work such as a novel that contains the word "Count" even though I might not be able to copyright an isolated sentence containing it, I think there's a good argument that something like the Java standard library API hangs together and should be subject to copyright even if a single method signature would not.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]