From everything I've read, Wine would quite clearly be illegal if the court rules in favor of Oracle.
I am very worried about this case.
I am very worried about this case.
WINE is using the Windows names for the purposes of allowing Windows programs to run. This is a case where a judge would easily grant fair-use because you have to use the API surface area to provide compatibility for existing programs.
Android is using the Java names for the purposes of allowing existing Java developers to be productive, not so that existing Java programs can run.
WINE could very likely win a legal battle through claiming a fair-use exemption (of course, if the case fails, they wouldn't have to go to court at all).
Where is the line? Is Android "compatible" with Java programs if those programs need to be recompiled first, but no source edits are necessary? What if source edits are necessary, but can be automated? What if recompiling isn't necessary, but you need to hex edit the binary?
"Compatibility" is a spectrum, and I'd say Android falls within that range.
There is no distinction between the two because these things are presented as evidence of Google's intent, it's not proof. There's no line. Google's case would be much stronger is Android-Java could run most Java software unmodified but it doesn't mean they'll lose just because it's not true.
Of course, in reality Google's decision was probably a little of both, right? They selected a technology based on a wide range of factors, including development costs and compatibility.
I'm still concerned that a decision in Oracle's favor would have a massive chilling effect on everyone else. All companies want to limit their potential liabilities. How can you prove in advance that you selected a language or API for the sake of compatibility, even when that is in fact the driving factor?
I wouldn't think that Google's development costs were part of the decision. There aren't that many Java APIs -- as the article says, it's ~11k lines of definitions -- so Oracle is seeking ~$818k per line. Assuming Google's lawyers predicted that there was some risk of a lawsuit like this, any engineering costs associated with redesigning the APIs would just be negligible compared to the legal risk.
One could argue that it is quite difficult to design a good API, but Java's APIs are frankly full of mistakes: Date/Calendar, immutable collections with no type safety, "optional" methods like Iterator.remove, etc. It wouldn't take a team of world-class engineers to come up with something better with the benefit of hindsight.
On the other hand, developer familiarity and compatibility with existing Java libraries could have had a significant impact on Android's adoption. I think that was what justified the legal risks.
https://www.cnet.com/news/android-chief-andy-rubin-said-java...
"Copyright and consequences: Google’s Andy Rubin defends Android to jury"
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/copyright-and-co...
> "We've been over a bunch of these, and we think they all suck," Lindholm wrote. "We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for java under the terms we need."
Not centrally. The copyrightability issue is absolutely not about Google’s intentions (and if Oracle loses that, it's game over), and Google’s intentions are relevant to one half of one of four fair use factors (the “purpose and character of use” factor) which are weighed together (it's not a pass-fail each factor test) in the fair use portion.
>Since Oracle's claim is that Google's use of the Java APIs wasn't to provide compatibility to existing software written in Java but to have a _familiar_ language for Java developers it becomes a novel but normal copyright case.
You're making a distinction between "interopability" and "end user familiarity". But Lotus also sued Borland on the basis of "familiarity" of the menu "names and structure" and they lost. The Supreme Court's 4-4 split decision left the lower appeals court's ruling intact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_In...
Sure you might not be able to take a legacy SWING Windows Java app and run it on android, but you can run entire libraries in your android app. It absolutely _is_ about interoperability in both cases. Perhaps to varying degrees
In contrast, Google didn't have their own independently developed programming language. They needed one so they copied the Java api and created one from there. They did not use the Api to create a compatability layer. It was used as a starting point to make their own copy of Java.
How would such a programming language be detectably different from being an implementation of Java?
Yes
>How would such a programming language be detectably different from being an implementation of Java?
It would have it's own unique API. As an example, Ruby can run on the JVM via JRuby and it's clear that Ruby is a different language than Java.
Its literally same difference.
In this example Google independently developed a language and made it compatible with the JVM.
In the real world Google wanted Java and didn't like the licensing terms. So they copied the Java API and from that starting point built out their own version of Java.
What you are suggestying is copying the binary API instead of the texual one. It is equally the subject of copyright.
In the real world Google deleoped their own equivalent of the JVM, which uses different bytecode. This is technically more difficult than putting together a language. But that has no relevance to the subject of copyright.
I mean, a programming language is fundamentally a set of instructions that produces output, right? So, a Java programmer writes `System.out.print("Hello")` and the Java implementation does the work to make "Hello" appear on screen. Similarly, a Windows executable running via Wine will tell the Windows API to print "Hello", and Wine will do the work to make that message appear on the screen.
This isn't an argument that has been made in court in anyway, and Google's use of the Java language hasn't been questioned.
Google could have used the Java language with completely different APIs (google.lang instead of java.lang for example). It's the APIs that this case is about.
Also, the key analogy is wrong anyway: while Android used java.lang and java.util and other related APIs, the key functionality of the phone was accessible via custom APIs that aren't copied. Note that the "interoperability" argument was lost by Google because of this exact thing.
Well, no, because many Java language constructs are defined in context to the standard library, for instance all classes being children of java.lang.Object. They'd need quite a bit of java.lang at the very least.
In 2020 it is still pretty much hint and miss getting a Java library working without changes on Android, given that the Android team cherry picks whatever they feel like from OpenJDK for their own Android API implementation purposes.
Easily to find that out from Gerrit commits and AOSP source code.
Meanwhile, effort has been spent ensuring that 100% of ISO C and ISO C++ are available on Android NDK.
Thus out of the window goes the interoperability argument.
Maybe if Sun didn't play games with access to the TCK in the past we wouldn't be here adn there'd be a valid test for compliance that wasn't "do what the official JDK does".
Do you have anything else to pivot to?
I am not pivoting, Google has only itself to blame for their little J++ adventure.
"James Gosling Triangulation's Interview on Google vs. Sun"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be...
Basically wanting Java as free beer, without paying Sun any money given that Java actually required licenses for handsets/embedded deployments in pre-OpenJDK days, in the not so good economical situation that they were, withdrawing them from possible Android license revenues.
That is torpedoing, regardless how Google employees, or wannabe employees play it.
That means they wouldn't have gotten any money from SavaJe like phones either.
The only people who "torpedoed" Sun was Sun themselves.
And yes, switching from an interoperabilty argument to 'they were morally obligated to buy Sun' is very much pivoting to a different argument.
Also, here's James Gosling later saying that APIs should not be copyrightable. http://nighthacks.com/jag/blog/397/index.html