RedHat urges US Supreme Court to support unrestricted use of software interfaces | Hacker News Reader

RedHat urges US Supreme Court to support unrestricted use of software interfaces

redhat.com

74 pointsjrepinc19 comments

Dear mods, we are called Red Hat. Two words. Not Redhat or RedHat or redhat. Thx. A Red Hatter.

"Red Hat urges US Supreme Court to support unrestricted use of software interfaces" is 81 characters long, so it won't be accepted as an HN title.

Good point, so it makes perfect sense to shorten it to “Red Hat urges US SupremeCourt to support unrestricted use of software interfaces” to stay inside 80 characters.

SCOTUS would make more sense. u2691.

This comes across as pedantry, similar in vein to the whole SyStEmD shtick, and it distracts from the content. Red Hat is just a brand asset of IBM, and getting lectured by the volunteer marketing department is not why I come to HN.

Microsoft backing this same stance plus Google is likely to tip the scale. Good to see redhat/IBM trying to do their part,

If they lose the world loses.

Oh my god. Only my stance is current otherwise it's instant doomsday

Is this really how courts work in the US? Does the Supreme Court effectively rule based on companies voting rather than the law as it is?

Definitely not. Companies may lobby or argue on their behalf, but the Supreme Court justices are solely responsible for interpreting the law and ruling on the case.

I hope IBM is considering a similar suit against Oracle for their implementation of SQL.

As a nit picking data point, "RedHat" in the title should be "Red Hat". ;)

The title is already 80 characters long as it is. Any longer and HN wouldn't accept it.

When is the Court likely to issue a ruling?

I'm not super familiar with US court proceedings, but from the docket[0] for the case, it looks like the court is accepting briefs (like this one by RedHat) until Feb 12th -- so I'd imagine the earliest next steps would be after that.

The docket also links to the full supporting argument provided by RedHat (and others).

[0] - https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/...

It would be very unusual if the court didn't issue a ruling before the end of the current term. So by about late June.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/procedures.aspx

The referred law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102

Software interfaces look to me like a "method of operation", only the implementation (the lines of code to run the interface) is subject to copyright.

I have a fairly limited understanding of copyright laws but if this stands won’t it open the courts up to even more frivolous copyright trolls?

Heck, Amazon could sue Oracle for them copying AWS’ interfaces. And IBM could sue Oracle for their use of SQL. That’d be some schadenfreude.

Red Hat was a great corporate citizen before Google adopted "don't be evil" officially and remains a good corporate citizen after Google abandoned it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com