Day 1 of Oracle v. Google trial | Hacker News Reader

Day 1 of Oracle v. Google trial

groklaw.net

95 pointsgrellas19 comments

Groklaw is weird. It's one of the sites that I never read, because I don't really understand any of the articles, but I'm very happy that it exists, for some reason, and always click through to the articles (which, as I said, I always fail to understand).

Very interesting summary. I've never been on a jury, and I learned two things from that article:

1) The lawyers can say basically whatever they want, but the jurors are "supposed" to only consider actual evidence - stuff shown from the witness stand, with a few exceptions - when making their decision. I guess this is why you want a really good lawyer... he can convince them to interpret the evidence in his way.

2) The different parties can present stuff while talking (like the Lindholm emails) which aren't evidence, and it's basically up to the jury to remember what's what. Potentially very confusing, and again, I guess that's why you want a good lawyer.

If I'm wrong on either of these, I would appreciate it if someone who actually knows something about law would correct me. Very interesting, thorough, and well-done writeup!

During opening arguments, the lawyers are not supposed to argue. In other words, they are only supposed tell the jury what the evidence is going to show. However, there is an art to this, and there is obviously an element of persuasion in the way the evidence is presented. Also, for various reasons, the opposing counsel may not object to possibly argumentative statements.

During closing statements the lawyers are free to argue that the evidence should be interpreted a certain way, but you are basically correct that the jury should use their own judgment based on the facts presented. Yes, a persuasive lawyer is worth a lot!

As to point 2, there are exceptions and nuances, but basically the parties CANNOT present things that are not admissible evidence. During opening arguments the parties can use items that will eventually be admitted into evidence, and the email is definitely one of those things. The parties have already argued extensively over whether the email should be admitted, and the judge has ruled that it will. Ideally, the jury never hears or sees anything that is not admissible evidence.

Thanks for clarifying that about point 2, I didn't realize that the fact that it would be entered as evidence later on was relevant to his showing it now. Very interesting how the legal system works.

Clarification to my reply above: I meant to say "opening statements", and "closing arguments", not the other way around. This is what they are are actually called, I'm not sure why I wrote it the other way. I hope this clarifies my meaning a little.

groklaw.net has been the go-to source for commentary on the SCO v. IBM case (SCO tried to sue IBM claiming it "owned the copyrights to Linux").

Many HN readers will already know the background, but that's the quick summary.

More good info is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw

I love Groklaw.

What are people's opinions on the copyrightability of a programming language?

In my opinion, on one hand Java is clearly a creative work, but obviously it takes many idioms from other languages. I don't really see how they could have a valid copyright claim, unless they're claiming copyright specifically on the class interfaces, which is probably a very weak argument. Even then, I would bet that the class interfaces are based on previous works in other languages.

I guess the bigger question would be 'Can you copyright a language?' Programming languages are just a subset of all languages, and I don't believe it would be right to allow someone to copyright aspects of a language.

So I guess my belief would be that the interfaces could potentially be patentable, yet clearly aren't patented because they're based on the interfaces in prior languages, but are not copyrightable because there's no sound basis for copyrighting a language.

You mean legally our ethically?

Legally I have absolutely no clue. That's why they're in the court room for. At the end of the day it's up to some random people's opinion.

Ethically, I'm pretty sure it does by far more harm than good. Because of the whole standing in the shoulder of giants, and common as air arguments. That most here are very aware of. The only counter point would be the economic incentive that copyright gives oracle. But that's meaningless because we have mountains of evidence that people will invent great languages anyway.

Well, borrowing idioms does not make a work non-original and non-copyrightable. The philosophical/legal point Google is making is that no language (computer or human) is copyrightable because it is not well defined: it's a moving target.

OTOH, I think the main issue here is not whether or not Java the language is copyrightable, but whether the Java APIs are. I have no clue as to the legal thinking underlying this question, but my hunch says that APIs should be copyrightable.

the jury selection process seems designed to ensure that instead of a jury of your peers, you end up with a jury of people completely ignorant about what's involved in the case.

You mean because they threw out people who heard of "Open Source Software."

Yeah, that kinda stinks, but there is a bit of logic in having jurors who don't have preconceived notions of what Open Source means (since there's a good chance they're not even accurate).

Yeah, but they kind of want people who will listen to the "facts" and what the agreed explanation of the law is.

My Mom got out of one jury when the asked "Are you a member of the NRA?" she answered "No, but I own a shotgun".

That's the idea, such that their pre-existing knowledge or opinions can't influence them.

Here's the arstechnica's take http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/oracle-tells...

After months of discussion here and elsewhere I still don't understand why Oracle is doing this. Google IS making money off of Android but Java and Java APIs are one part of the whole package (Linux being the other). Google is no threat to Oracle (almost no product portfolio overlapping). On the contrary Google diminished Microsoft's influence in the mobile market and works towards doing the same with the browser (Chrome), Office (Google Docs) and OS (Google OS).

And MS is Oracle's (OK... Larry's :) ) arch rival no.1.

Why is Oracle fighting Google and wants to get a few hundreds of millions (which is not much for the company that big) when they could let Google go its thing and watch how MS gets weaker due to that?

Larry and Jobs were close friends - Larry threatened a hostile takeover of Apple back in the day if they did not bring Jobs back. Perhaps that is one reason - to make Android less attractive in the marketplace.

Heck, Jobs put him on the board (to a crowd with some people booing) when he came back to Apple.

Oracle wants the licensing money because if they give Google a free pass then certain other players will want a free pass (e.g. IBM). HP is a bigger target for Oracle than Microsoft is and I get the feeling that Oracle views Google as an upcoming threat.

Now I want a Groklaw app for my iPad.

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