On 14-10-17 03:52 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
you would no longer be permitted to utilise or work on the Firefox
Web Browser, because it has implemented a near-identical copy of the
Microsoft COM protocol named XPCOM (badly, it has to be said.
That's not at all what the appeals court wrote. Footnote 15, in full:
'During oral argument, Google’s counsel stated that “a program written
in the Java language can run on Android if it’s only using packages
within the 37. So if I’m a developer and I have written a program, I’ve
written it in Java, I can stick an Android header on it and it will run
in Android because it is using the identical names of the classes,
methods, and packages.” Oral Argument at 31:31. Counsel did not identify
any programs that use only the 37 API packages at issue, however, and
did not attest that any such program would be useful. Nor did Google
cite to any record evidence to support this claim.'
Even if there's a useful program which only uses the 37 API packages at
issue, and I'm not sure that there's a "useful" program like that, I
don't know that it would change anything. I've seen reference to jetty
and i-jetty, but I think that just demonstrates that, no, a "useful"
program will tend to use more than the 37 API's; it might use additional
Android packages.
This really has nothing at all to do with reverse engineering:
'As the former Register of Copyrights of the United States pointed out
in his brief amicus curiae, “[h]ad Google reverse engineered the
programming packages to figure out the ideas and functionality of the
original, and then created its own structure and its own literal code,
Oracle would have no remedy under copyright whatsoever.”'
where the former Register, whomever that was, points out how reverse
engineering works -- which I'm sure that the appeals court already
knew. In any event, there it is, it's a good quote.
You absolutely will be permitted to work on on any API. In the case of
Firefox, since, I think, it's under the GPL, just release your code
under the GPL. If you're reverse engineering something, then, as the
former Register writes, that gives an exemption.
Seems pretty clear, and no different from the current situation. Right?
Or, am I misunderstanding?
However, to allow the SSO of any, and let's emphasize **any** computer
program, to be stolen, and let's use the word stolen, that would be a
dramatic shift. Yes/no?
If there's no way to enforce SSO under copyright, then any SSO can be
**stolen** -- which is the word being used by the judges in this case.
the appeals court chose to write about the wider implications, so I'm
adopting the language of first judge, and the appeals court, to use
**any** and **stolen**.
-Thufir
