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Comment by msg | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, Groklaw does have a history of predicting future events in these court cases that FOSS Patents can't pretend to match. Don't blame Groklaw if the reality of the law has a strong bias in their favor.

You don't get truth by merely reading opposing viewpoints and taking the average, you get it from synthesis. In this case synthesis might involve discounting the opposing viewpoint in the end, on the merits.

Yes, Groklaw is a vociferous advocate of FOSS in this sphere. Learn to tease apart the fact from the opinion. But that's just ad hominem until you catch a flaw in their fabulous coverage.

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"Groklaw does have a history of predicting future events in these court cases that FOSS Patents can't pretend to match"

Having read both regularly I don't find this to be accurate. Groklaw makes actual predictions rarely and consequently has a cleaner track record. FM makes a lot of predictions and is, as you would expect, both wrong and right more because of it. He also covers a lot more cases.

As regards this case the big ticket item has been the Lindholm email and FM seems to have been right that it would stay in. And while I don't recall Groklaw definitively saying it wouldn't, their coverage certainly skewed heavily towards "remember that email from SCO that was just like this".

New development: The judge plans to inform the jury that structure, sequence and organization of Java APIs are copyrightable.

Source?

Judge Alsup: "It is my job to decide whether or not the copyrights on the computer programs do or do not extend to protect the structure, sequence and organization of the code of the programs. I will not be able to decide this question until after your verdict. For purposes of your deliberations, you must assume that the copyrights do cover the structure, sequence and organization of the code."

http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/04/oracle-and-google-comment...

"Groklaw makes actual predictions rarely and consequently has a cleaner track record."

So Groklaw makes predictions when they think they're right and keeps their mouth shut otherwise whereas Mueller just shoots his mouth off and is wrong much of the time. You make a good case here why people should read Groklaw and ignore FOSS patents.

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