Comments for madisonian.net

Comment on Oracle v. Google – Round I jury verdict (or not) by Michael Risch

Michael Risch — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:32:56 +0000

Jeff – these are all good points. That said, a jury could easily believe that if these lines somehow made it in, then others did. It doesn’t appear to be the case, as my update post details, but juries have found access on a lot less than this.

Comment on Oracle v. Google: Digging Deeper by Shachar Shemesh

Shachar Shemesh — Thu, 10 May 2012 05:05:02 +0000

Wholesale, direct compatibility copying of APIs just doesn’t happen very often, and certainly not on the scale and with the stakes of that at issue here.

I’m not sure whether that is a contradicting point, but direct API copying at a larger scale happens all the time. In fact, Apache Harmony made an attempt to copy all of Java’s API. Same goes for Wine with Windows, and any other third party implementation of a competitor’s product.

One would think that if Microsoft thought it could shut down Wine, it would.

Shachar

Comment on Oracle v. Google: Digging Deeper by Brian W. Kernighan

Brian W. Kernighan — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:18:37 +0000

It looks good for me if APIs are copyrightable. I will exercise my copyright over “int main(int,char**)”.

Comment on Oracle v. Google: Digging Deeper by Ravi

Ravi — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:37:18 +0000

Thanks for the detail that macros (and, hence, macro programming compatibility) was part of the issue in Lotus v Borland. One of the arguments for API copyrightability is that Lotus v Borland was about user interfaces, not programming interfaces. It is good to know that the dividing line is not so clear-cut.

Comment on Oracle v. Google – Round I jury verdict (or not) by JeffV

JeffV — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:31:18 +0000

You said ” Some of the code (specifically, the 9 lines) were copied directly. While not big in itself, it makes one wonder how clean the team was.”

It turns out that what happened was that the implementer of the TimSort routines took the original Python free-to-use TimSort routines and re-implemented them in Java, and donated it to Sun. While doing that he copied the 9 lines, expecting that when these would be replaced with calls to the function that included the copied lines. When it was incorporated into Java. That didn’t happen.

Later he joined Google and they used the same code because it was freely available. They also neglected to remove the 9 lines, which they should have done.

From the trial transcripts I’ve read, he was also the originator of the 9 lines, but that was produced as an employee of Sun. However I thought that there was some confusion over this point between the various lawyers and the judge, so I’m not completely certain that’s the case. In any case, it emerged during expert witness examination that the 9 lines is not special – that a high-school student could have written it, as you would expect for something called ‘RangeCheck’ which checks whether one thing is inside some bounds. Oracle’s expert assigned it a value of $0. I don’t think that’s right – it might have a value of $10 if it had to be re-implemented. Certainly it’s not as hight as $100.

The RangeCheck is available on the web for you to see. It’s not complex, it would take 5 minutes for a competent Java developer to rewrite, and 20 minutes to test thoroughly. It’s easy to search on Java Rangecheck and see the code.

Personally, I think it’s a bit rich of Oracle to sue over code that was donated.

So, I think your wondering how clean the team was, was misplaced in regard of this example. That’s not to say that that there wasn’t a problem, or that there was a problem: I’ve seen no evidence that there was, nor have I seen affirmative evidence that there wasn’t.

Comment on Symposium Summary: Julie Cohen, Configuring the Networked Self by Mike Madison

Mike Madison — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:16:32 +0000

The quote is from Complexity and Copyright in Contradiction, 18 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L. J. 125 (2000). Julie cites the piece in her book, though for a different proposition.

Comment on Symposium Summary: Julie Cohen, Configuring the Networked Self by Paul Ohm

Paul Ohm — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:04:15 +0000

Great stuff, Mike. I don’t recognize this passage, but you’re right, it does anticipate Semantic Discontinuity in really interesting ways.

Care to share the citation?

Comment on Call for Papers – Law and Virtual Worlds by manager

manager — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:40:00 +0000

Submit Conference or journal call for papers at http://www.prorch/.com.
We are making an effort to collect call for papers from the entire web

Comment on Another Tip That Education Is Changing: Open Stax Textbooks by John Mayer

John Mayer — Tue, 01 May 2012 02:09:45 +0000

This is *exactly* the goal of CALI’s eLangdell Press where we are already publishing open access casebooks and textbooks for legal education.

We’re just getting started too.

Comment on Innovation (as in Beer!) – The Punch Top Can and Lawsuits to Come by charlie

charlie — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:53:00 +0000

yes, for a ’smoother’ pour. read ‘faster’.