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| Authored by: stegu on Wednesday, May 29 2013 @ 03:57 AM EDT |
The US is a country with more lawyers than engineers. This encourages
fossilization in technology and software, with the result that protective
lawsuits become more common than development. Even if all the lawyers currently
working for Oracle were to team together, they would not be able to make Java
one bit better. One could wish that some of the people who choose to become
lawyers would instead opt for a more productive profession, but that is a
different issue.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 29 2013 @ 08:50 AM EDT |
Could someone enlighten me as to exactly what "non-implementing code"
means. From the context of the google brief, it appears that they are referring
to the names of the function and classes. Why is that referred to as
"non-implementing code"?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 29 2013 @ 09:54 AM EDT |
I imagine the problem is that there's not
much return on investment if Oracle
improves Java. The lawsuit probably won't
work, but the payoff if it does is
significant; hence a higher expected
return.
This isn't just a problem for Java. Ever
noticed that we haven't seen any
significant (*) new programming languages
for at least 15 to 20 years?
(*) I mean technically significant --
there is one commercially significant
language I can think of, but it just
rehashes old ideas in a new package.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 29 2013 @ 11:31 AM EDT |
Therefore, if a work is “largely functional,” like software, “it
receives only weak protection. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It
is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and
art.”
This is not the only means by which copyright advances
the progress of science and art: the side of this coin that "intellectual
property" advocates would very much like to ignore is this: the phrase "limited
times" in the Constitution clearly indicates that it is the falling off the end
of those "limited times", i.e., into the Public Domain, that enables much of the
desired enhancement.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Google failed to
mention that here (I suppose it is slightly peripheral to the main thrust of
their argument here, but still...) [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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