In a 69-page decision (you can read it below), the three-judge panel ruled that Oracle can pursue copyright claims against Google for the parts of Java that it used in creating Android. Oracle has argued that Google used the code without authorization.
Google’s not out of the woods yet.
It wasn’t out of the woods with the last ruling, either. Now to see if Alsup will say Google had fair use right to infringe– if he says they did, Google could be on the hook for nothing, monetarily. Or, alternatively, an appeal to the Supreme Court could produce a definitive resolution, but they could simply refuse to hear it (as I suspect they might).
Getting angry at a screwdriver for looking like a screwdriver.
I’ve long thought that Google stealing Java was far more reprehensible than their plagiarizing the iPhone.
fault lies with Sun who open sourced it.
All Google did was reverse engineer the VM which is legal.
Either way Google can change the API now.
It won’t matter because they don’t care about Java
compatibility either.
Google is even moving from JIT to AOT using LLVM for performance reason.
Blast from the past. I thought this was over.
No, that is not all Google did.
They literally took the Java specification, which Sun/Oracle spent over a decade and millions of dollars writing, and they rubbed off the copyright notice and put on “copyright Google,” and then they created a revision of the spec and called it Android.
It’s the same as if you wanted to write a book about Photoshop 13 and you took someone else’s book about Photoshop 12 and erased their copyright notice and added your own copyright notice and a couple of chapters with the new version 13 features and put it out as your own book and made a bunch of money off it. The author of the Photoshop 12 book would quite rightly ask you to withdraw the book and turn over the money you made to them.
Open sourcing something is not the same as releasing it into the public domain. Open source software always has a license and always has a copyright notice, and both must be respected while you use the software. The fact that you don’t know that basic fact really hurts your credibility on this issue.
No, it was not over. Judge Alsop’s ruling that Sun’s Java work had no copyright protection was very controversial and based on a misunderstanding of the technical issues and was always going to be appealed.
This case was the reason I stopped using all Google products. When you read the documents from this case, you see Google having a conversation within itself in which it goes from, “we need Java for Android, let’s license it,” and then through a thousand layers of BS they finally get to, “we need Java, let’s just take it — if Sun sues us, we’ll pay them off with some of the hundreds of billions we make from Android.” And then they removed “© Sun/Oracle” from the Java spec and put on “© Google” and removed “Java Spec” and put on “Android Dalvik Spec” and then revised it going forward as if they had written the original document.
The thing Google didn’t count on was that they would fail to make money from Android — even the Motorola purchase has not been paid for yet —or that Oracle would buy Sun and not only sue to get damages, but ask the court to impound and destroy Dalvik.
Wow, you’re pretty passionate for about 12 lines of code.
I just thought they were through the that phase already, that’s all.
I’m sure they miss you. 🙂
If he is, so am I. Here’s what I blogged about it a few years back: http://www.subfurther.com/blog/2012/11/04/thing-is-apis-should-be-copyrightable/
Disagree but I understand the argument. It is just some things, especially the noted methods in the suit, were pretty much expected.
It’s like saying Math.round(num) should be protected. That’s just silly.
Good thing App.net is dead, or else twitter would sue them for having the same api!