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Off topic | 189 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Work as a whole
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 03:03 PM EDT
I'm actually on Oracle's side here more than Oracle itself is: with regard to
copyrightability, I consider "work as a whole" the smallest containing
functional unit that makes independent sense, and that would likely be just the
rangeCheck function itself, or at the very most the module to which it
(apparently) is private.

So yes, I'd call that infringement. The quality of the function, and the amount
of "damages" or "profits" that Oracle wants to see riding on
it, however, is plainly ridiculous. And since it is so plainly ridiculous, I
would, were I the judge, not deny Google recovering their expenses from Oracle
only based on _that_ infringement, particularly when looking at the
circumstances under which it got into the code and out again that don't indicate
premeditation of Google proper, and at best carelessness by the programmer
responsible.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Google is muffing the performance argument
Authored by: pem on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 03:19 PM EDT
Rangecheck actually decreases performance.

The entire purpose of rangecheck is to look out for programmer mistakes and throw an exception (typically aborting the program, unless a higher level function has coded an exception handler for that particular error) when certain classes of programmer errors occur.

If Android is calling rangecheck 2600 times on boot, that's probably completely wasted CPU cycles, because those errors that rangecheck might be able to catch probably don't exist in the code -- if they did, then rangecheck would have notified upper level code of the problem, the upper level code probably would have aborted program execution, the system would have given a traceback, and the programmer would have fixed it. All would then be copacetic, except rangecheck is still there, checking the exact same thing over and over, on every boot.

There are significant philosophical programming debates about whether library functions should protect themselves from the bad behavior of the programmers who write code that calls them. These pretty much boil down to efficiency vs. ease of debugging and checking correctness. The inclusion and use of rangecheck falls squarely in the "debugging and correctness are much more important than efficiency camp" so for Oracle to argue that the inclusion of rangecheck somehow makes Android run faster is beyond the pale, and for google to fail to point this out indicates that the lawyers and programmers aren't communicating effectively.

[ Reply to This | # ]

A few more losses
Authored by: kawabago on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 03:25 PM EDT
A few more losses for Oracle and it will have to change it's
name to Didn't See It Coming!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections here
Authored by: feldegast on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 03:33 PM EDT
So they can be fixed

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

News picks
Authored by: feldegast on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 03:34 PM EDT
Please make links clickable

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off topic
Authored by: feldegast on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 03:35 PM EDT
Please make links clickable

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle Replies to Google's JMOL Motion: Is Google's Copying of rangeCheck De Minimis Use? ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 06:06 PM EDT
I am a newcomer to this issue - is there something
extremely clever about the copied code? If it saves
some cycles because it is more clever than just having 3 "if"
statements, then wouldn't its importance be measured by the
number of cycles saved, and some estimate of the value of
cycles?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes Goes Here
Authored by: artp on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 06:42 PM EDT
For transcriptions of the documents on the Comes v. MS trial
(see link above).

Thank you!

---
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Triviality
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 07:31 PM EDT
The fact that a function is called a lot could just mean it was badly coded, not qualitatively significant,

The fact that rangeCheck is called a lot has nothing to do with whether or not it is trivial. The word "the" is used a lot in English, but it's still a trivial word. Its frequency of use doesn't mean that it forms a significant part of the actual conversation.

But Professor Mitchell actually testified that “a good high school programmer or graduate student, if told exactly what was needed, could write the code.” RT 1316:24-25 (Mitchell) (emphasis added). In fact, the rangeCheck “code has some subtlety”

Any student who could not figure out how to write a range check function could not reasonably expect to pass even an introductory programming course. Anyone who suggests that something as basic as a range check function requires any great skill is either unqualified to comment on the matter (i.e. doesn't even have introductory level programming skill), or is simply lying through his teeth.

This would be like saying that it takes incredible skill and knowledge for a trial lawyer to know how to say "good morning" to a judge and that Oracle's lawyers must have stolen their briefs from Google because such a thing is beyond their own abilities. In fact however, it's merely something that an lawyer in their line of business is expected to know how to do, and the fact that they all do it more or less the same way is "trivial".

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Triviality - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 08:04 PM EDT
    • Triviality - Authored by: Wol on Sunday, August 05 2012 @ 08:38 AM EDT
      • Triviality - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 05 2012 @ 12:12 PM EDT
      • Functionality - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 05 2012 @ 06:55 PM EDT
Oracle Replies to Google's JMOL Motion: Is Google's Copying of rangeCheck De Minimis Use? ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 04 2012 @ 09:43 PM EDT
You have produced a long winded explanation of existing law, and Oracle/Google
have argued about this over many lines of text.

In practice this is 9 lines of code and the functionality is dictated by the
interface (API).

It would take me about 5 minutes to write this and probably 20 minutes to write
code that tests it works properly.

Is it rearly worth arguing about? There is no "IP" here.

[ Reply to This | # ]

De Minimis rendered meaningless
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 05 2012 @ 01:14 AM EDT
If rangeCheck does not fall below the bar of De Minimis then it's a near
certainty that no other function ever will. The reason is that if its operation
were any simpler then it wouldn't be appropriate to use a function at all.

Judge Alsup really needs to take a step back and stop getting entwined in the
web of technicalities that Oracle are weaving, because they're reducing De
Minimis to total impotency.

If after careful consideration he decides that the De Minimis concept might as
well be killed off in Computing, fine (although that would very likely get
overturned on appeal), but he shouldn't let Oracle filibuster him into dropping
the De Minimis bar so low that it's practically on the ground. This could have
severe ramifications for the future.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, he needs to draw a line in the sand.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Rangecheck - the heart of your program?
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 05 2012 @ 01:42 AM EDT
If rangecheck has anything to do with the heart of your program then I can't
imagine just how trivial your program must be.

[ Reply to This | # ]

ala carte copyright protection?
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 05 2012 @ 03:18 AM EDT
Assume for the moment that the author of the RangeCheck function that appears in
Android first appeared in other code that the author wrote, and that he re-used
that code (substantially unchanged) from that earlier work.

Would this disqualify the RangeCheck function from being considered copyrighted
within the Java library entirely?

Or would it merely disqualify it from being considered copyrightable except as a
portion of the larger work?

Consider as an analogy the opening phrase "It was a dark and stormy
night". In its original work, it might have been copyrighted or
copyrightable. But as part of a Bulwer-Lytton contest entry, it might only be
considered copyrightable as a portion of the entire work.

To what extent is copyright limited or expanded by context?

[ Reply to This | # ]

header files are functional. Where is the creativity?
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 05 2012 @ 03:34 AM EDT
Reads like propaganda: "header files are functional. Where is the
creativity?:

When you have to work with a bad header file, you will wish for some creativity
on the author's side.

It is easy to brush over the effort that goes into expressing the right
interface in the right way.

It takes intelligence, experience and creativity too to recognize quality and
acknowledge the potential for screw-ups,

So please rethink.

[ Reply to This | # ]

saying 'Happy Birthday' is not ©, but singing it in a certain and obvious way is
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 05 2012 @ 08:06 PM EDT
Based on the 1935 copyright registration, Warner claims that the United States copyright will not expire until 2030, and that unauthorized public performances of the song are technically illegal unless royalties are paid to it. - Wikipedia

So it might be that Oracle is not as crazy as you all think... right.

de minimis be damned

[ Reply to This | # ]

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