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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 02:50 PM EDT |
| PJ you are biased. Biased in favour of accuracy. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 03:03 PM EDT |
Thanks for your reply, PJ, and I take back the accusation of
you being dishonest. Yes, I'm an Israeli, but I'm the
founder of a Silicon Valley startup so I'm very interested
in this outcome, though I do not think it would matter as
much as you do. Why? See my reply to pem above (sorry, I saw
his comment first); not to FOSS and not to proprietary
software. As a matter of fact, my company has developed
(Java) software which we'll soon release under the LGPL
license, so I myself am an opensource developer. I don't
know if there are bloggers supporting my position - perhaps
there are none - but I am an industry veteran with a couple
of decades of professional software development behind me in
different industries, and I'm yet to be persuaded that the
API copyrightability issue will have a major effect (again,
see my reply to pem for a detailed resoning). Also, I'm
strongly opposed to software patents, but seeing that
(unfortunately) they are constantly used by major
corporations in their battles against one another, I don't
swoon when a company pulls the patent card.
You do mention Wine, which, I think is an interesting case,
and the one well-known software that I admit would be
directly affected by a ruling in this trial. However, last I
looked at Wine (many years ago) it required the actual
Windows kernel files to run, so I'm not sure whether it
implements the Windows API to be used by applications, or
whether it emulates the hardware for use by the Windows
kernel. If the former, it could indeed become illegal (and
if the latter, maybe that's for legal reasons?), but I doubt
Microsoft will pursue the matter because Wine poses very
little threat to them. And if it did pose a threat, I'm sure
Microsoft would have gone after Wine a long time ago. In any
case, Wine is a very special outlier.
The most important point you're making, IMO, is this:
"courts are not supposed to be used for anti-competitive
purposes." This is an interesting statement, but I'm not
sure where you're coming from. If this is an ideological
statement, or wishful thinking, I must say I agree. However,
the entire point of patents and copyrights is precisely to
limit UNFAIR competition, and this is what Oracle is
essentially claiming: that Google is competing with them
unfairly by infringing on their legal competition defenses
of copyrights and patents. Whether or not they are right,
and whether or not competition should at all be limited by
copyright and patents is a whole other issue, one on which I
have no definite opinion. If, OTOH, your statement was not
an expression of an ideal but of practice (i.e. courts are
not commonly used to fight competition), I must ask you, is
that really the case? And if not, does that mean that you
will always favor the defendant? Because if so, your
commentary is more ethical than legal, and even then I'm not
sure ethics is always on your side.
As to whether or not you're biased or simply right (what
does that mean? That you're able to predict the outcome? I
don't think your predictions are wrong), my legal knowledge
is indeed inferior to yours but you have repeatedly made
some claims that are false, and are not a matter of law but
of fact. Google has claimed that the Java API are necessary
to write a Java program. Well, APIs are necessary but not
necessarily THE Java APIs. Saying that the JDK's APIs are
necessary to write Java programs is a factually false
statement, and its falsehood is easily proven: Java SE (for
desktops) and Java ME (for mobile devices) use different
APIs. Stronger proof: (which I've repeated elsewhere in this
thread) Android IS NOT USING THE JDK APIs - just some of
them (37, was it?). Arguably the most important API for
client app development is the UI API, and Android has chosen
to diverge from both Java SE and Java EE for its UI API. So
why did they use the same collection API? Why did they use a
hybrid JDK-non-JDK API for IO? I really don't know, but no
one is going to tell me that THE Java APIs are required to
write a Java program because even Android has chosen to
implement several incompatible APIs and several compatible
ones.
I think that my perspective has made this case all the more
interesting for me precisely because I don't see the issue
as clear cut.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- And BTW... - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 03:37 PM EDT
- And BTW... - Authored by: PJ on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 03:56 PM EDT
- Homework - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 04:08 PM EDT
- What is this, kindergarten? - Authored by: PJ on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 04:01 PM EDT
- What is this, kindergarten? - Authored by: PJ on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 04:13 PM EDT
- What is this, kindergarten? - Authored by: Wol on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 04:21 PM EDT
- On interoperability and on WINE - Authored by: bugstomper on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 06:45 PM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 05:50 PM EDT |
| You state "courts are not supposed to be used for anti-competitive purposes",
but unfortunately, that is inaccurate. The law is not supposed to be
usable for anti-competitive purposes. If it is, because the lawmakers failed to
do their job properly, it is out of the courts' hands to fix that.
Because
their job is to uphold the laws. They have leeway in seeing how to apply the
law, and they have leeway in interpreting the law's words in a manner that makes
sense and reflects the intent of the law's wording.
But they don't
have leeway in modifying its rules when they find they defeat the law's ultimate
purpose. It's the lawmakers' job to get this right.
"The court should not
rule xxx because it would harm the industry" is wishful thinking. That is not
within the court's wiggle room. If a law is wrong, they can't make it right. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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