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| Authored by: al_dunsmuir on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 12:14 PM EDT |
In the subject line, please clearly identify the problem and the solution.
For example, "s/errar/error/", or "errar -> error".
And yes... that first anonymous thread was moi.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: al_dunsmuir on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 12:19 PM EDT |
| Please express your views and opinions on News Picks, using one subthread for
each news article.
When starting a new subthread, please use HTML mode
and
include a prominent link to the story being discussed.
This is helpful
particularly after the News Picks columns
scrolls down and makes the reference
by Title alone (in the
subject line) difficult to match up.
[Information
about posting in HTML mode is summarized in red
text below the Post a Comment
text-entry box.] [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: al_dunsmuir on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 12:21 PM EDT |
| This fenced off area is where off topic posts are allowed to roam
free.
Please express your views freely, within the bounds of reasonably good
taste that Groklaw requires. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: al_dunsmuir on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 12:24 PM EDT |
| Please contribute to the Comes
v. MS transcript project by posting the HTML formatted documents here in
Plain Old Text mode (for ease of cut & paste).
Or email them to PJ... [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 12:25 PM EDT |
| That court case is not relevant because all involved parties did not even bother
to imagine someone could claim copyright on APIs. So that was not a
question being handled in the case: it was taken for granted that
talking about copyright in relation to APIs would be non-sensical.
So that
question has not been given serious treatment.
It always takes some genius
to first think of making a law apply to new circumstances.
So that
court case is just a matter of missed opportunities, and not a precedent for
this one.
Just because Sony did not think of a good argument does not mean
that it would have been invalid if they did.
Hey, I almost convinced myself.
Do I get to be a celebrity lawyer? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: nsomos on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 12:35 PM EDT |
Oracle had written ...
"Oracle could not obtain copies of the complete record
within the Court’s briefing timetable."
Allow me to translate this for you ...
"Oracle could not find in the time available, those tiny
little bits (that MUST be there somewhere), that actually
strongly SUPPORT Oracle's case, within the documents that
Google provided, or that Oracle could scrape up."
or
"There has GOT to be a PONY for Oracle in there somewhere"[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: kawabago on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 12:41 PM EDT |
If the Java language was a car, then the API would be the
steering wheel, brake, gas, clutch, windshield wiper, lights,
HVAC, etc.... Every manufacturer must put the pedals in the
same order and call the clutch a clutch and the brake a brake
etc. or no one will be able to drive another manufacturers
car. It would be foolish for society to allow control
interfaces of vehicles to be copyright eligible and software
control interfaces are exactly the same thing.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 01:53 PM EDT |
Why doesn't this precedent apply to the test files which were decompiled?
---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 02:08 PM EDT |
"Google earns no plaudits for creating a version of Java that doesn't
...".
Google did no such thing. They just adopted some of the Java
API for use with Android so programmers would have an easier
time writing applications.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: bugstomper on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 02:29 PM EDT |
| Even though Oracle says it is about an ABI and uses that as one argument for
differentiating the case from their own, I disagree with Oracle and with xtifr
that Connectix was dealing with an ABI instead of an API. In fact, they copied
both the ABI and the API of the BIOS routines. I posted the following in reply
to the comment from xtifr that PJ linked to, but it is short and apropos, so I
will repeat it here...
I know that Wikipedia is not a primary source, but
the article about application
binary interface does convey well the difference I want to highlight. The
ABI would describe things such as the binary data structures and calling
conventions, which Connectix would had to have copied to make sure that the
software in the game programs could properly call the routines that they wrote
in the BIOS emulator. But this case was more about something else that Connectix
also copied, the list of which routines to put in the BIOS emulator, and what
each routine required as arguments, what functions they performed, and what
values they returned. That is the API, not the ABI. From
wikipedia:
ABIs cover details such as:
- data type, size,
and alignment
- the calling convention, which controls how functions'
arguments are passed and return values retrieved
- the system call
numbers and how an application should make system calls to the operating
system
- and in the case of a complete operating system ABI, the binary
format of object files, program libraries and so on.
[ ...
]
An ABI should not be confused with an application programming interface
(API) which defines a library of routines to call, data structures to
manipulate, and/or object classes to use in the construction of an application
using that particular (often language specific) API.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- I agree - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 03:05 PM EDT
- Connectix was about API not ABI - Authored by: Ian Al on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 03:12 PM EDT
- matth was wrong - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 04:48 PM EDT
- Connectix was about API not ABI - Authored by: xtifr on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 03:35 PM EDT
- Connectix created their own API - Authored by: xtifr on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 03:53 PM EDT
- no, this is WRONG - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 04:52 PM EDT
- no, this is WRONG - Authored by: xtifr on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 06:03 PM EDT
- aha - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 06:22 PM EDT
- aha - Authored by: xtifr on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 08:17 PM EDT
- aha - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 08:45 PM EDT
- You are forgetting about SSO - Authored by: bugstomper on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 05:32 PM EDT
- Connectix was about API not ABI - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 05:03 PM EDT
- Analogy, but not an auto analogy - Authored by: Ian Al on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 05:57 AM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 02:33 PM EDT |
Android is not interoperable with Java. Java applications cannot run
on Android. Android applications cannot run on Java
First the
definition
Android: A handheld piece of hardware supported by software to
make it functional, offering a runtime environment for task that are suitable
for that handheld device
Java: A runtime environment ported to all kind of
hardware bigger then a handheld device; up to company servers.
So it isn't
that strange that you can't run that ERP piece of software on your
Android.
But now the monkey get out of the slieve
This case is nOT
about copyright, not about API's and not about
patents......
hijacking the Java developers by using their
familiarity with the Java APIs to get them to program for
Android.
Oracle does not wanne bent the IP law,
all they want
is a lock in on the programmers!
NB: A long time back i was attending a
show where Sun was presenting a new product that makes it possible to run window
applications on the Sun OS pizza box.
The name of the product was WABI and
there where questions from the audience "if WABI was was acronym"
The only
reply from the Sun reps was: "It's just a name" [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Kalak on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 02:45 PM EDT |
As a prior user of VGS, I remember this case well. I also remember that
Connectix sold VGS off to Sony right after this lawsuit. (I suspect Sony used
the code in the PS1 emulation on the PS2 due to similar compatibility issues of
the two products. The purchase of VGS by Sony may not have been to just drop the
product from the market, but to get Connextix's code to use in the PS2.)
Most of what was left of the company after the sale of VGS was Virtual PC, which
MS still has available for download (though it's lagging behind many of the VM
technologies out there). At that time, VPC was the only really relevant product
Connectix still had, so the change to MS probably kept the employees from losing
their jobs outright.
---
Kalak: I am, and always will be, an idiot.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 03:00 PM EDT |
The materials Oracle has been able to retrieve show the content
Connectix duplicated is far simpler than the Java APIs.
Sound like
regular boys talk "The my'n is bigger"
began with an empty table
consisting of entry points into the BIOS
A hole lot of nothing
?
An ABI describes low-level system conventions, such as how one
routine passes arguments to, and receives a return value from, another. Unlike
an API, an ABI does not specify which routines must exist or how they are
intended to be used.
(sarcasm)
They are right: For calls to the
bios you don't have to
set registers,
pointers may just point anywhere into
memory.
and if you work that way you don't have to border about return
values,
you will not get any
There is absolute no documentation on any
bios
(/sarcasm)
/Arthur
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 05:25 PM EDT |
(1) PJ wrote:
Emulation, which is what Connectix was doing, is
something that Sun itself does with Java. Without it, there can be no
competition against the original software.
I don't think this is
really correct. Connectix made an "emulator" (a software program) which
competed with an existing hardware platform (the Sony PlayStation).
I think
the correct parallel to draw, is that the Sony PlayStation was a platform for
running software (PlayStation games) and Connectix made a competing platform
that could run the same software. Whereas in this case, Sun/Oracle made
the J2SE platform for running software (Java programs) and Google made a
competing platform (Dalvik) that could also run software written in Java, but it
was not attempting to be 100% compatible with Oracle's Java platform/product.
So there is a difference: Connectix was trying to run the same software
on their new platform. But that's not a goal of Android -- Google was after a
different kind of compatibility.
In both cases, the competitor's platform
does not reproduce 100% of the functionality of the original platform; only
enough to meet the competitor's compatibility goals. For Connectix, the goal
was to run existing Sony PlayStation games just as well as a PlayStation did.
For Android, the goal was to have compatible APIs to make it easy for
programmers, and to allow them to re-use some of the vast amounts of source code
and libraries and knowledge about Sun's Java platform.
(2) PJ
wrote:
The two products were not interoperable themselves. The
compatibility was for programmers, to aid them in writing code so that it would
be possible to run selected games on Connectix that also ran on Sony's
PlayStation.
That describes Android, but its not really true of
Connectix. The PlayStation games already existed, and whatever they might have
said in court, Connectix could not realistically have expected PlayStation game
programmers to specifically write code with their VGS platform in mind. They
had to make a platform that would correctly run already-existing
PlayStation games, and hopefully, future games designed exclusively for Sony
PlayStation (with no knowledge of VGS). So they needed 100% binary
compatibility, at least for any functionality that was actually used by the
games. Many of the BIOS functions provided by Sony, seem to have never been
used in actual games (or possibly, in only a small number of games that weren't
popular enough for VGS to worry about them).
P.S. For many years, I've
had a hobby interest in console game emulators (primarily for older consoles
like the NES and SNES) and I can say its not at all unusual for there to be
2,000 different games made for a console, and for it to have certain weird
hardware quirks or certain APIs which are only used by a small number of games,
in some cases only *one* game. It is likely that the 137 (?) APIs implemented
by VGS were enough to run 98% of the Sony PlayStation games ever published. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 08:44 PM EDT |
Connectix copied more than Google did, IMHO. They had to copy all the minor
details about how it works, not just the abstract interfaces the programmers
deal with. The ABI deals with all kinds of implementation details, while the
API is much more abstract.
There are tons of docs out there on how Playstation emulation works, though I
don't know that any are specific to that emulator, which was bought out a decade
or so ago.
But there are plenty of docs on how the BIOS itself works which should be enough
to show what functions they had to copy.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: polymath on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 09:22 PM EDT |
I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the Oracle/Sun Java APIs at issue are
highly derivative. Presumably, Google kept only the most basic and fundamental
APIs which are the necessary foundation of any procedural object oriented
programming language for a GUI environment. Cursory examination would,
doubtless, reveal that they evolved from and built on standard libraries found
in C, C++ and many other languages and any originality is limited a few early
design decisions the balance being dictated by good programming practice
(similarity, consistency and predictability).[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: mjscud on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 10:18 PM EDT |
Oracle's brief:
Google took only what it wanted, hijacking the Java
developers by using their familiarity with the Java APIs to get them to program
for Android.
Since Oracle contends that I as a Java developer can
be hijacked by Google, they apparently believe that I am their
property.
Sounds to me like they actually want to steal my effort and
the cost spent by me and my employers on learning the Java language. Perhaps as
a free man I can decide who gives me the best tools and opportunities for my
programming skills?
This is an extreme
insult.
Let it be known, all you fellow Java Programmers!
Oracle considers you their slaves!
---
Even a fool, when
he keeps silent, is considered wise. Proverbs 17:28 [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 01:45 AM EDT |
the Judge WILL defer to the expertise of the European Court which has already
decided that APIs are not copyrightable. He's NOT going to set the US at odds
with Europe on this question... that way lies madness and software development
will flee US soil and all the innovation will happen elsewhere leaving the US as
a backwater...[ Reply to This | # ]
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