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Comment by armini | Hacker News Reader

While I don't endorse the sneaky way Oracle purchased the rights only to sue Google it does highlight what happens when you become complacent and lose focus on what's important.

In an open market Google also had the change to buy those intellectual properties but at the time, they thought they are too smart for everyone with silly bids like the Pi bid https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/02/google-pi...

If you're serious about an industry, you work to reinvent it like apple has done with their operating system and hardware. If you take shortcuts then you need to face the music and in this instance Google has been out smarted by another industry competitor.

If we support open competition and we believe in Darwin's theory of evolution then Google is the inferior because they took shortcuts & didn't make serious investments in owning the mobile landscape.

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> If we support open competition and we believe in Darwin's theory of evolution then Google is the inferior

Evolution theory has no bearing whatsoever on critical moral and philosophical concepts like whether you should be allowed to prevent others from conforming to an API.

Evolution theory is the foundation but in business & technology it's even sighted as porters 5 forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter%27s_five_forces_analysi...

While it may seem unfair & I'm getting down votes for stating the obvious, weather we like it or not that's how the world operates.

Hmm, I agree building everything entirely on your own may have less legal risk. However shouldn't we encourage the use of public standard and compatible technologies, instead of going into the antique UNIX world where everything's proprietary and fragmented?

In my impression that when Google chose Java for the purpose, SUN really wanted Java to be a public interface like thing. Things happened afterwards may be unfortunate.

This lawsuit is nonsense. Do you think that APIs can be copyrighted? This will kill innovation and competition.

I don't see why they shouldn't. They're definitely creative works that take skill to produce.

I think using an API for the purposes of interoperability should be allowed under fair use.

However! My controversial opinion is that Google's use of the Java API wasn't for interoperability. They didn't use the Java API so that Java programs could run on Android, they used it so that Java developers could transfer their skills to a new platform which is precisely the value of a cleanly designed API -- value that Oracle doesn't want to provide for free.

I don't see why they shouldn't. They're definitely creative works that take skill to produce.

You're missing an argument in there that joins your two assertions.

The fact that something is creative or requires skill to produce doesn't mean that it should be copyrighted.

Copyright is a government enforced monopoly. In order for society to enforce that monopoly on behalf of private enterprise, there has to be a quid pro quo. The usual one is to promote creation and distribution of new works.

The question then is: would no APIs exist if they weren't copyrightable?

You have made a good case for adjusting fair use legislation to accommodate the general practice around software APIs vs. implementation.

Unfortunately courts generally can't write laws for the legislature.

> I don't see why they shouldn't. They're definitely creative works that take skill to produce.

A creative work that takes skill isn't the definition of what should get copyright. For instance sewing patterns and recipies aren't granted copyright.

> My controversial opinion is that Google's use of the Java API wasn't for interoperability.

Following that logic, then any even slightly incompatible implementation wouldn't be legal. For instance WINE isn't a perfect recreation of Win32 by any means.

> isn't the definition

There isn't really a definition at all of what makes something eligible for copyright protection. What is and isn't covered is fairly arbitrary and informed more by history than logical derivation. Source code is typically viewed as a literary work and I see no reason API documentation would be viewed any differently.

> Following that logic...

I never said it had to be perfect, just that the reason for using the API is for interoperability -- WINE is exactly that. It allows software that was designed for Windows to run on Linux.

> I see no reason API documentation would be viewed any differently

It's not the API documentation that's at dispute here. It's literally the abstract "structure, sequence, and organization" of the API. And there's tons of ninth circuit case law that sso isn't copyrightable.

> I never said it had to be perfect, just that the reason for using the API is for interoperability -- WINE is exactly that. It allows software that was designed for Windows to run on Linux.

What's the test here that a court can use to make that distinction? And just letting you know at one of my former jobs, we modified our codebase to better run on Wine a few times.

> However! My controversial opinion is that Google's use of the Java API wasn't for interoperability.

This brings to mind something I heard from my legal friends in the early days of this case. Their position was that this wasn't a dispute about APIs, copyright, etc. It was a licensing dispute -- Sun/Oracle wanted to charge for Java on Mobile, and Google didn't want to pay. Google then executed an engineering 'hack' whereby Java JVM bytecode (.class files) was converted to Google's Dalvik VM format (.dex) via a tool (dx), thus avoiding Sun's licensing fees and still being able to take advantage of the Java ecosystem.

Their argument would have been this was a fairly mechanical effort to avoid licensing fees, analogous to reprinting a copyrighted book in Piglatin, and therefore Google was liable to pay licensing fees to Oracle.

This was from ages back though; the case has of course evolved since then. I do wonder however if Google's effort to paint this as a case of straightforward re-implementation of an API may not backfire upon them.

It can be API for Oracle or it can be how electronic components are assembled on a ford windscreen wiper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns The reality is that one person did the hard work (trail and error) while another party commercially benefited with minimal effort.

We need a system that rewards those who experiment & innovate, if anything by Oracle winning this case it further highlights the value in Oracle's IP (promoting innovation and competition).

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