Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Stewart C. Russell via talk]

On 2021-04-09 1:58 p.m., David Mason via talk wrote:
> 
> The key part of what Lennart wrote is “if done right”. How could you
> imagine that the functional program would return the results out of
> order?

Well, this particular DSSSL thing did occasionally put lists out of
order, and didn't have a good way of peeking at items before or after in
the list. You sometimes need to do that in setting books.

> XSLT … is not a general purpose language and I would not want to
> program such problems with it!!!

The input data was in XML, so XSLT was the perfect language (supposedly)
for the task. I think the agency responsible for generating the data
spent quite a bit of money making it as hard to use as possible - it was
data that was required by law to be published, but Difficult Questions
might be asked of the agency if it were ever closely analyzed. So they
wrapped it up in quite the worst XML format I've ever seen.

I realize that these are domain-specific examples, but my experience of
functional languages was of unnecessary complexity and putting rules in
the way of getting results.

cheers,
 Stewart
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 11:07:35AM -0700, Dhaval Giani via talk wrote:
> Ha, and many programmers I know these days want the computer to get
> out of the way, and functional programming gives them a way to do
> that.
> 
> I think there are "niches" for both styles, and as pointed out
> elsewhere, it does take a paradigm shift to do proper functional
> programming. I could never achieve that, though I know folks who did,
> and their code was quite elegant (in functional paradigm). Did make me
> jealous at times when I had to write lots of procedural code. But,
> hey, at least I knew exactly what happened and why and how (well, OK
> most of the time) and functional programming was all magic to me.

https://fsharp.org/testimonials/ has some interesting stories.  Seems F#
is very useful for implementing data analysis and making the code fast
due to the automatic parallelization it can do and the code looks more
like the data model than C# code would.  And the code tends to be a lot
shorter too.  F# is based on ML syntax but of course with the ability
to easily interact with C# code.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 01:58:02PM -0400, David Mason via talk wrote:
> The key part of what Lennart wrote is “if done right”. How could you imagine 
> that the functional program would return the results out of order? 
> Compilers/interpreters are allow to make whatever optimizations they want, as 
> long as time and memory consumption are the only things that change from the 
> original!

Certainly if I have a list of numbers 3 6 4 9 2 and I say, add 2 to
each thing in this list, I don't really care what order that is done it,
how many threads are working on it, as long as the result is 5 8 6 11 4.
If the order was different, then the language is broken.  I don't think
any of the functional languages woudl mes that up.

> XSLT is a very specific functional language, designed for a very particular 
> job, which (from my limited experience) it does somewhere between 
> “adequately" and “very well”. But while it may be Turing complete, it is not 
> a general purpose language and I would not want to program such problems with 
> it!!! Pure lambda-calculus and Turing machines are also Turing complete, but 
> you sure wouldn’t want to be programming in those either.

No kidding.

> Haskell, Scheme, OCaML, Erlang/Elixir, Scala are much, much friendlier 
> languages for general purpose programming. All the ML dialects, as well as 
> Scheme and Scala support more imperative programming as well, that can help 
> with the transition.

I haven't used any of them very much, but the bits I have done was
very nice.

ML's polymorphism is such a neat way to handle things.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 01:44:58PM -0400, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:
> I'd agree if I were doing something like wanting the sum of the values
> of a list. /list.sum()/ is going to be many times more efficient than an
> accumulator loop on a system that's got any level of vectorization.
> Chris Tyler's talk on AARCH64 optimization in gcc a few years back
> showed that the code isn't anything like my mental model (somewhere
> around a Z80, with faulty memory management) expected.
> 
> But in document processing, you really really /really/ want the output
> to come out in the same order as the input. Which is why functional
> languages seemed a strange choice for document transformation. The
> absence of side-effects can be handy in document processing, but being
> in the right order is usually what publishing houses get paid the big
> bucks to do.

Not controlling the processing order is not the same as not controlling
the output order.  Any input list should result in output in the same
order, no matter what order each part of the list was processed in.
Now if the result depends on interaction betweem the elements in the
input, then you obviously have to treat that as a single input.

> I've had to process utility time series power generation data in XSLT.
> That was horrid. Order matters a lot there, too.
> 
> Call me old-fashioned, but I want my computers to do what I tell them. I
> don't want exceptions, I want results or error messages to explain why.
> I know there are many processes running that do things I'll never
> understand, but they must prove themselves useful to me or get out of my
> way.

Well to some extent even if writing C code you are not exactly telling
the computer what to do.  The compiler has a lot of choice in when
to move things between registers and memory, largely dependent on the
architecture you are running on.  Humans are generally not that good at
handling large complex systems, so having to explicitly manage memory
and such isn't usually a good idea, and certainly once you get to
multithreaded most people make a mess of it if they have to explicitly
control it.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Dhaval Giani via talk]

>
> Call me old-fashioned, but I want my computers to do what I tell them. I
> don't want exceptions, I want results or error messages to explain why.
> I know there are many processes running that do things I'll never
> understand, but they must prove themselves useful to me or get out of my
> way.

Ha, and many programmers I know these days want the computer to get
out of the way, and functional programming gives them a way to do
that.

I think there are "niches" for both styles, and as pointed out
elsewhere, it does take a paradigm shift to do proper functional
programming. I could never achieve that, though I know folks who did,
and their code was quite elegant (in functional paradigm). Did make me
jealous at times when I had to write lots of procedural code. But,
hey, at least I knew exactly what happened and why and how (well, OK
most of the time) and functional programming was all magic to me.

Dhaval
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Dhaval Giani via talk]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 10:58 AM David Mason via talk  wrote:
>
> On Apr 9, 2021, 1:45 PM -0400, Stewart C. Russell via talk , 
> wrote:
>
> After all with a loop you are controlling the
> execution order of the processing.  If done right you usually shouldn't
> need to care.
>
>
> But in document processing, you really really /really/ want the output
> to come out in the same order as the input. Which is why functional
> languages seemed a strange choice for document transformation. The
> absence of side-effects can be handy in document processing, but being
> in the right order is usually what publishing houses get paid the big
> bucks to do.
>
>
> The key part of what Lennart wrote is “if done right”. How could you imagine 
> that the functional program would return the results out of order? 
> Compilers/interpreters are allow to make whatever optimizations they want, as 
> long as time and memory consumption are the only things that change from the 
> original!
>

I probably misread your statement. Compilers also routinely reorder
memory accesses as well, as long as the end result will not change.
Sometimes the cause for some fun to debug issues (in C/C++).
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[David Mason via talk]

On Apr 9, 2021, 1:45 PM -0400, Stewart C. Russell via talk , 
wrote:
> After all with a loop you are controlling the
> execution order of the processing.  If done right you usually shouldn't
> need to care.
>
>
> But in document processing, you really really /really/ want the output
> to come out in the same order as the input. Which is why functional
> languages seemed a strange choice for document transformation. The
> absence of side-effects can be handy in document processing, but being
> in the right order is usually what publishing houses get paid the big
> bucks to do.

The key part of what Lennart wrote is “if done right”. How could you imagine 
that the functional program would return the results out of order? 
Compilers/interpreters are allow to make whatever optimizations they want, as 
long as time and memory consumption are the only things that change from the 
original!
> I've had to process utility time series power generation data in XSLT.
> That was horrid. Order matters a lot there, too.
XSLT is a very specific functional language, designed for a very particular 
job, which (from my limited experience) it does somewhere between “adequately" 
and “very well”. But while it may be Turing complete, it is not a general 
purpose language and I would not want to program such problems with it!!! Pure 
lambda-calculus and Turing machines are also Turing complete, but you sure 
wouldn’t want to be programming in those either.

Haskell, Scheme, OCaML, Erlang/Elixir, Scala are much, much friendlier 
languages for general purpose programming. All the ML dialects, as well as 
Scheme and Scala support more imperative programming as well, that can help 
with the transition.

../Dave
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Stewart C. Russell via talk]

(oops, don't you hate it with the mail client silently assumes you only
want to reply to the sender?)

On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 11:51, Lennart Sorensen
mailto:lsore...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>> wrote:


But using a loop means you are telling the system how to do things,
rather than telling it what you want done and letting it (usually) do
a better job at the how.


I'd agree if I were doing something like wanting the sum of the values
of a list. /list.sum()/ is going to be many times more efficient than an
accumulator loop on a system that's got any level of vectorization.
Chris Tyler's talk on AARCH64 optimization in gcc a few years back
showed that the code isn't anything like my mental model (somewhere
around a Z80, with faulty memory management) expected.
 

After all with a loop you are controlling the
execution order of the processing.  If done right you usually shouldn't
need to care.


But in document processing, you really really /really/ want the output
to come out in the same order as the input. Which is why functional
languages seemed a strange choice for document transformation. The
absence of side-effects can be handy in document processing, but being
in the right order is usually what publishing houses get paid the big
bucks to do.

I've had to process utility time series power generation data in XSLT.
That was horrid. Order matters a lot there, too.

But yes functional languages require a different philosophy.  Functional
languages are not for people that want to micromanage the computer.


Call me old-fashioned, but I want my computers to do what I tell them. I
don't want exceptions, I want results or error messages to explain why.
I know there are many processes running that do things I'll never
understand, but they must prove themselves useful to me or get out of my
way.

cheers,
 Stewart

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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2021 at 02:46:01PM -0400, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:
> The only functional languages I've ever used (if openscad doesn't count)
> were DSSSL (Scheme with an embedded CSS engine for document processing
> in SGML) and XSLT (Scheme [except it's in XML syntax] with an embedded
> CSS engine for document processing in XML). Both were utterly dismal and
> I only used 'em because I was paid to. Not being able to use loops but
> having to write functions that called themselves recursively seemed a
> huge amount of faffing about and possibly constituted cruelty to
> programmers.

But using a loop means you are telling the system how to do things,
rather than telling it what you want done and letting it (usually) do
a better job at the how.  After all with a loop you are controlling the
excution order of the processing.  If done right you usually shouldn't
need to care.

But yes functional languages require a different philosophy.  Functional
languages are not for people that want to micromanage the computer.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Stewart C. Russell via talk]

On 2021-04-07 11:21 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> 
> When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo, we were required to
> use FORTRAN (WatFiv).  I hated it.  I liked the notation of Algol
> better and Algol-W (W for Wirth) was a good implementation for student
> uses.  I even created a bit of a rebellion, but it was put down.

That would have been a hard sell, considering that WatFiv was a
locally-developed project designed specifically for university use. It
produced good-enough code but very quickly, while IBM's compiler would
produce great code but bog down the machine because it was quite slow.

Algol-W seems like it was pretty fast too. I was surprised to find that
there's a (somewhat) maintained Algol-W compiler for Linux:

https://tiddly-pom.com/~glyn/

It's partly written in ocaml, and is really an Algol-W to C filter. It
seems to have some minor issues building with ocaml > 4.05, but you can
force it to work with

OCAMLPARAM="safe-string=0,_" make

The few times I need the speed of a compiled language, I'll still reach
for Fortran. C just wants to crash when I'm near it, and having to
remember to start arrays at zero just doesn't work for me.

The only functional languages I've ever used (if openscad doesn't count)
were DSSSL (Scheme with an embedded CSS engine for document processing
in SGML) and XSLT (Scheme [except it's in XML syntax] with an embedded
CSS engine for document processing in XML). Both were utterly dismal and
I only used 'em because I was paid to. Not being able to use loops but
having to write functions that called themselves recursively seemed a
huge amount of faffing about and possibly constituted cruelty to
programmers.

cheers,
 Stewart
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2021 at 12:29:18PM -0400, William Park via talk wrote:
> Can you throw few names of "functional languages" at us non-compsci folks?

ML (and hence CAML and OCAML), F#, LISP (and hence Scheme and such),
SML, Haskell, Scala, Clojure, Erlang and many more.

Main idea (to me at least) is that you have data, and then you say
what to do with the data (but not how) and you get back data that has
been worked on.  Everything is pass by value (although the code is allowed
to reuse the storage if it wants of course as long as the result is what
you asked for), and you don't care what order the work gets done, just
that it does the work you requested and return the result.  It lends
itself well to code that is automatically paralleized by the language
as well as automatically handling memory in a way that doesn't need to
use garbage collection.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[David Mason via talk]

Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, Elixir (mostly), Elm, Clojure

Static OO is kinda an oxymoron. Smalltalk, Ruby, Python are good OO (in my 
highly opinionated opinion).

../Dave
On Apr 8, 2021, 12:29 PM -0400, William Park via talk , wrote:
> On 4/8/21 11:37 AM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
> > If I had my way, functional languages would be what is used, and
> > definitely not any that were object oriented, at least not in the way C++
> > and Java are. Multiple inheritance should not exist.
> Can you throw few names of "functional languages" at us non-compsci folks?
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[William Park via talk]

On 4/8/21 11:37 AM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:

If I had my way, functional languages would be what is used, and
definitely not any that were object oriented, at least not in the way C++
and Java are.  Multiple inheritance should not exist.

Can you throw few names of "functional languages" at us non-compsci folks?
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2021 at 12:46:49AM -0400, Nicholas Krause via talk wrote:
> While I would agree with your other points. The problem is you have two
> choices either a) people have to learn a newer way of doing OO or b)
> keep doing the same thing for the most part. Unfortunately, when designing
> a new language you kinda have the advantage of being more popular if you
> do a). Granted one thing that is much better about C++ is templates and now
> concepts are expanded at compile time in Java it seems that generics aren't.
> This can run into a runtime penalty, through C++ has the issue with try and
> catch which is a problem in the embedded or real time world. I would through
> not that I like C++'s OO if you've used C++20 considering some of it's
> changes like concepts.

The state of C++ today is not what it was when Java arrived.  There were
no templates, namespaces or STL.  Just a language somewhat based on C
with a bad class inheritance design.  C++ has improved quite a lot,
especially in the last decade.

If I had my way, functional languages would be what is used, and
definitely not any that were object oriented, at least not in the way C++
and Java are.  Multiple inheritance should not exist.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Nicholas Krause via talk]

On 4/7/21 5:44 PM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:

On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 11:21:52AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo, we were required to
use FORTRAN (WatFiv).  I hated it.  I liked the notation of Algol
better and Algol-W (W for Wirth) was a good implementation for student
uses.  I even created a bit of a rebellion, but it was put down.

The answer was going to be PL/I.  But PLIWAT never got done.

(Luckily, I missed having WatBol (COBOL) imposed on me.  But I was
a spear carrier in that project.  I worked on optimizing COMASS
execution; COMASS was used to implement Z1, a systems implementation
language used to write WATBOL.)

In your era, did they forced JAVA on you?  If so, I would understand
hating it.


No java arrived as I was finishing, so I saw the awful plugin for the
browser and also saw javascript (livescript initially before marketing
at netscape renamed it to jump on the java bandwagon).  I did soon after
have to try to deal with people wanting to use java and the comptibility
issues it had.  It was all hype, and for some reason corporations fell
for the hype.  Now they have a ton of garbage they can't easily get
rid of.


Why, in particular, do you think JAVA is a bad general purpose
language for ordinary programmers?  Note: I don't actually know JAVA.


It tries to make everything a class, except when it doesn't (like integers
are not a class, while just about everything else is).  main is a class.
It takes all the object oriented things C++ got wrong, and borrows
those, rather than borrowing it from a language that got it right.
If you have to have object oriented programming, at least do it right,
not the C++ way.

While I would agree with your other points. The problem is you have two
choices either a) people have to learn a newer way of doing OO or b)
keep doing the same thing for the most part. Unfortunately, when designing
a new language you kinda have the advantage of being more popular if you
do a). Granted one thing that is much better about C++ is templates and now
concepts are expanded at compile time in Java it seems that generics aren't.
This can run into a runtime penalty, through C++ has the issue with try and
catch which is a problem in the embedded or real time world. I would through
not that I like C++'s OO if you've used C++20 considering some of it's
changes like concepts.

Nick



I know reasons why you or I might dislike it:

- essentially cannot be statically compiled


Definitely an annoyance at times.  Interestingly golang went the other
way and essentially can't by dynamically compiled and isn't objected
oriented (although it allows functions to be associated with types which
gives you most of the best parts of object oriented programming and
making types that can work across another set of types).


- uses UTF-16 (I think).  The worst representation of UNICODE.


It does.


- the library is a sprawling mess.  I'd guess that it is impossible to
   master

- traditional JAVA programming style creates a surfeit of
   abstractions, making it hard to understand what's actually going on

- implementations are very fat.  For performance reasons, jitting is
   used.  This adds another layer of separation between your program
   and real hardware.

- tuning JAVA program performance seems to too-often devolve into
   blindly twiddling knobs on the JVM.

- JAVA cannot be improved: so much inertia, so horrible governance.

What are your reasons?

Those reasons don't make it a horrible teaching language, especially
if you subset the library.


There are much better languages for teaching.  Many places have
fortunately switched to some of them.

The resources used by a java program are usually terrible, and there
is often not much you can do about it as a programmer.  The garbage
collection isn't great (not sure it ever is in any language).

Java also is rather terrible at interfacing with other languages.
It wanted to be its own ecosystem that didn't deal with anyone else.
I guess to do the 'run anywhere' idea required that, even though that
hardly ever worked.  The fact features keep getting deprecated means
many older java programs don't run anywhere anymore (good luck if you
used jfx)


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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 11:21:52AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo, we were required to
> use FORTRAN (WatFiv).  I hated it.  I liked the notation of Algol
> better and Algol-W (W for Wirth) was a good implementation for student
> uses.  I even created a bit of a rebellion, but it was put down.
> 
> The answer was going to be PL/I.  But PLIWAT never got done.
> 
> (Luckily, I missed having WatBol (COBOL) imposed on me.  But I was
> a spear carrier in that project.  I worked on optimizing COMASS
> execution; COMASS was used to implement Z1, a systems implementation
> language used to write WATBOL.)
> 
> In your era, did they forced JAVA on you?  If so, I would understand
> hating it.

No java arrived as I was finishing, so I saw the awful plugin for the
browser and also saw javascript (livescript initially before marketing
at netscape renamed it to jump on the java bandwagon).  I did soon after
have to try to deal with people wanting to use java and the comptibility
issues it had.  It was all hype, and for some reason corporations fell
for the hype.  Now they have a ton of garbage they can't easily get
rid of.

> Why, in particular, do you think JAVA is a bad general purpose
> language for ordinary programmers?  Note: I don't actually know JAVA.

It tries to make everything a class, except when it doesn't (like integers
are not a class, while just about everything else is).  main is a class.
It takes all the object oriented things C++ got wrong, and borrows
those, rather than borrowing it from a language that got it right.
If you have to have object oriented programming, at least do it right,
not the C++ way.

> I know reasons why you or I might dislike it:
> 
> - essentially cannot be statically compiled

Definitely an annoyance at times.  Interestingly golang went the other
way and essentially can't by dynamically compiled and isn't objected
oriented (although it allows functions to be associated with types which
gives you most of the best parts of object oriented programming and
making types that can work across another set of types).

> - uses UTF-16 (I think).  The worst representation of UNICODE.

It does.

> - the library is a sprawling mess.  I'd guess that it is impossible to
>   master
> 
> - traditional JAVA programming style creates a surfeit of
>   abstractions, making it hard to understand what's actually going on
> 
> - implementations are very fat.  For performance reasons, jitting is
>   used.  This adds another layer of separation between your program
>   and real hardware.
> 
> - tuning JAVA program performance seems to too-often devolve into
>   blindly twiddling knobs on the JVM.
> 
> - JAVA cannot be improved: so much inertia, so horrible governance.
> 
> What are your reasons?
> 
> Those reasons don't make it a horrible teaching language, especially
> if you subset the library.

There are much better languages for teaching.  Many places have
fortunately switched to some of them.

The resources used by a java program are usually terrible, and there
is often not much you can do about it as a programmer.  The garbage
collection isn't great (not sure it ever is in any language).

Java also is rather terrible at interfacing with other languages.
It wanted to be its own ecosystem that didn't deal with anyone else.
I guess to do the 'run anywhere' idea required that, even though that
hardly ever worked.  The fact features keep getting deprecated means
many older java programs don't run anywhere anymore (good luck if you
used jfx)

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021, 2:11 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk, 
wrote:

> | From: Evan Leibovitch via talk 
>
> | Since copyright terms exist for many years after the creator's death,
> that
> | fact is far less relevant than one might think.
>
> Absolutely correct.  I was trying to be funny, responding literally to
> what was said.
>
> The work is now in the public domain since Brendan Behan died in 1964
> and the copyright term is death + 50 years.
>

I think that depends on the jurisdiction. Lifetime against all persons +70
years after death in the US.

Of course there is no international copyright protection. The rights must
be registered in every jurisdiction which supports the concept and may be
extended a further 25 years after that on special request of the estate
holder.


> Behan was in jail a bunch of times, but mostly for IRA activities.  He
> was in Borstal for an attempt to set off a bomb at the Liverpool
> docks.  His punishment was pretty mild considering that this was in
> 1939, when World War II started (he was 16 at the time).
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Russell

“Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’
banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young,
marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable,
buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.” F. P. Dunne
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk 

| Since copyright terms exist for many years after the creator's death, that
| fact is far less relevant than one might think.

Absolutely correct.  I was trying to be funny, responding literally to
what was said.

The work is now in the public domain since Brendan Behan died in 1964
and the copyright term is death + 50 years.

Behan was in jail a bunch of times, but mostly for IRA activities.  He
was in Borstal for an attempt to set off a bomb at the Liverpool
docks.  His punishment was pretty mild considering that this was in
1939, when World War II started (he was 16 at the time).
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Evan Leibovitch via talk]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2021 at 10:42, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
wrote:


> | I'm not sure that Brendan Behan would object to the Toronto Irish Players
> | copying the script of Borstal Boy to introduce it to the citizens of
> | Toronto, but I might be wrong about that as well.
>
> Since he is dead, you can be sure that he wouldn't object.  (His body is
> probably well-preserved due to its alcohol content.)
>

Since copyright terms exist for many years after the creator's death, that
fact is far less relevant than one might think.

Marvin Gaye may well have been fine with the song "Blurred Lines" copying
the style of "Got to Give it Up" (no melody or lyrics were copied, just the
style ). But his heirs were
not, and successfully sued for infringement.

Being a Borstal boy, he probably wasn't particularly concerned with laws.
>
> More generally: a certain amount of copyright leakage is actually good for
> the creator.  Microsoft dominates in the third world due to piracy.  If
> copyright were enforced, Linux would dominate.
>

I can vouch for that particular comment based on first-hand experience.
Over the last while, MS has even been making it easier for savvy users to
legally(*) use its wares for a fraction of published prices. One such
policy is enabling licenses for retail (not OEM) Windows 10 to be fully
transferable, enabling niche services that extract license keys from
trashed PCs and resell them for less than $
3. (I can verify
that it works.) And then there's the "Home and Student" version of MS
Office that of course will never be used for small businesses or WFH.
- Evan

(*) The legalities have never been confirmed or denied and likely never
will, because there are no instances of MS pursuing perceived abuse in
these cases. At worst they're a contravention of T&C rather than piracy,
contract issues rather than copyright infringement.
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Howard Gibson via talk]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2021 10:41:22 -0400 (EDT)
"D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk"  wrote:

> The copyright law is quite draconian.  People violate it on a regular
> basis (well documented in many articles).  That's the only way it
> becomes bearable.

Hugh,

   Here is a nice article from Web Pages that Suck...

   http://www.websitesthatsuck.com/no-music-files-on-web-sites.html

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgib...@eol.ca
jhowardgib...@gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[James Knott via talk]

On 2021-04-07 11:21 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo, we were required to
use FORTRAN (WatFiv).  I hated it.


I got that at Ryerson.  Back then, I used to do my homework on a VAX 11/780.

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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Lennart Sorensen via talk 

| Many languages (probably most of them) prevent many of the bugs C makes
| easy to create.  Many of them are better than java.

When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo, we were required to
use FORTRAN (WatFiv).  I hated it.  I liked the notation of Algol
better and Algol-W (W for Wirth) was a good implementation for student
uses.  I even created a bit of a rebellion, but it was put down.

The answer was going to be PL/I.  But PLIWAT never got done.

(Luckily, I missed having WatBol (COBOL) imposed on me.  But I was
a spear carrier in that project.  I worked on optimizing COMASS
execution; COMASS was used to implement Z1, a systems implementation
language used to write WATBOL.)

In your era, did they forced JAVA on you?  If so, I would understand
hating it.

Why, in particular, do you think JAVA is a bad general purpose
language for ordinary programmers?  Note: I don't actually know JAVA.

I know reasons why you or I might dislike it:

- essentially cannot be statically compiled

- uses UTF-16 (I think).  The worst representation of UNICODE.

- the library is a sprawling mess.  I'd guess that it is impossible to
  master

- traditional JAVA programming style creates a surfeit of
  abstractions, making it hard to understand what's actually going on

- implementations are very fat.  For performance reasons, jitting is
  used.  This adds another layer of separation between your program
  and real hardware.

- tuning JAVA program performance seems to too-often devolve into
  blindly twiddling knobs on the JVM.

- JAVA cannot be improved: so much inertia, so horrible governance.

What are your reasons?

Those reasons don't make it a horrible teaching language, especially
if you subset the library.
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Russell Reiter via talk 

| I may be wrong. I was a member of an amature theatre group, we photocopied
| the stuff anyway. I think it was one of the teachers in that heritage group
| who put it that way to me, as a cultural right.

I'm pretty sure that that's wishful thinking.  Rationalization.

The copyright law is quite draconian.  People violate it on a regular
basis (well documented in many articles).  That's the only way it
becomes bearable.

DRM is so uncomfortable because (parts of) copyright law are enforced
automatically.  (Not to mention that all kinds of bizarre other things
being enforced, like watching FBI warnings.)

Rationalization is a natural part of internalizing laws.  Judging from
our traffic, most people believe in speed limits, but increase the
numbers by perhaps 20%.

This impulse to rationalize is a problem when applied to natural laws.
That's one reason why COVID hygeine rules are hard to follow.

(I cheat at solitare.  But I have rules about cheating.)

| I'm not sure that Brendan Behan would object to the Toronto Irish Players
| copying the script of Borstal Boy to introduce it to the citizens of
| Toronto, but I might be wrong about that as well.

Since he is dead, you can be sure that he wouldn't object.  (His body
is probably well-preserved due to its alcohol content.)

Being a Borstal boy, he probably wasn't particularly concerned with
laws.

More generally: a certain amount of copyright leakage is actually good
for the creator.  Microsoft dominates in the third world due to
piracy.  If copyright were enforced, Linux would dominate.
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 06:10:25PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> I wasn't there, but...
> 
> Background:
> 
> I think Sun was a great proponent of open standards.  They won for a long 
> time by introducing new ones and always being a step ahead of the other 
> workstation and server vendors.
> 
> The idea seemed to be that a standard and the code were a bit tied 
> together.  If other companies wanted NFS, they licensed the code.  For 
> quite reasonable rates, I think.

Oh yes the "wonderful" things sun gave us like nfs, portmap, nis, etc.
I am trying to think of something they gave is that I would actually
like to see on my system these days.  They did try though.

> The first stumble was with their Windowing system NeWS.  Nobody adopted it 
> because they thought it would make Sun too powerful.  But I think that it 
> was a good system -- better than X.

There is certainly a lot wrong with X, so it could have been better.

> The Windowing system on NeXT seemed to me to be, to a first approximation, 
> inspired by NeWS.  NeWS used a language a lot like PostScript (Forth); 
> NeXT used Display PostScript.
> 
> Eventually, almost all competitors refused to have anything to do with 
> Sun initiatives.  Sun got in partnership with ATT in a way that alienated 
> all other UNIX vendors.
> 
> End of Background.
> 
> Sun released Java and pushed it hard.  Introducing a new platform takes a 
> lot of promotion.  It was open but there was only one implementation.  
> Amazingly, it took off.
> 
> - for embedded systems
> 
> - for terminal servers (not completely successful, but a good run)
> 
> - for client-side programs (in the browser).  This started out well but 
>   JavaScript has completely replaced it.  I'm not sure that this this 
>   replacement was a Good Thing

At least javascript you can see and potentially debug or do something
about.  Not so with the dreadful java browser apps.

> - for server side-programming (this surprised me)
> 
> - lots of general corporate programming.  For example, Bank software is 
>   written by large armies of programmers, usually in Java
> 
> IBM had an implementation of its own, but I think that they paid royalties 
> (I'm not sure).
> 
> Sun got in financial trouble.  Their one clearly winning product was Java.  
> How could they monitise it.  Especially since this was against their 
> previous ethos.  They struggled.
> 
> Oracle bought them and the culture changed.  Fetters were released.  
> Doing unconscionable things seems to come naturally to Oracle.

Yes Oracle is very good at that.

> Why is Java so fat?  Because the original libraries didn't do enough and a 
> replacement was needed in a hurry.  And a replacement for the replacement.  
> A do-over would be great but the amount of legacy code makes this 
> unlikely.

Certainly compatibility was a huge mess early on and of course java
developers could never be bothered to tell you what version their code
required to run (they apparentlty assumed everyone would always use the
newest one like they did).

> Java seems to be hated.  But there's a lot good about it.  It prevents a 
> wlot of bugs that come naturally to C.  (I don't use it.)

Many languages (probaby most of them) prevent many of the bugs C makes
easy to create.  Many of them are better than java.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Evan Leibovitch via talk]

The actual ruling document
  should be
quite readable by most participants here; I recommend a look. It actually
reads more like tech speak then legelase, and appears to do a thorough job
of laying the foundation for the decision. It indeed goes back to the
history and Sun's intentions before the Oracle purchase.

The really good news goes beyond the specifics of the case, as most Supreme
Court rulings do. It provides a conclusive ruling, unlikely to be
challenged again in our lifetimes, that APIs as a category of software
cannot be protected as intellectual property. While Google was acknowledged
to have copied Sun/Oracle's API code, such copying was confirmed to fall
under "fair use" exceptions to copyright infringement. Different variations
of fair use allow for legal (ie, "infringing" but exempt from action)
copying of works for the purpose of satire, education, home backups etc.

(This case, before the ruling, took up one of the weekly lecture sessions
of the Harvard CopyrightX course
 I am currently
taking. In a straw poll of the class a few weeks ago I was one of the few
who argued that and why Google should prevail. Much of the rest of the
class sided with Oracle. The next session will be fun.)

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56


On Tue, 6 Apr 2021 at 12:32, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
wrote:

> Oracle sued Google, claiming Android infringed Oracle's patents on Java.
> Somehow.  That failed.
>
> So they sued for copyright infringement based on the copying of the API
> declarations.
>
> The computer community had been very scared that APIs could be
> copyrighted, something nobody had expected.
>
> The US Supreme Court decided that this particular case came under "fair
> use". and was no infringement.  This was NOT a general decision about
> APIs.
>
> This is very good news of Free Software.  And consumers.
>
>
> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210405/09243546552/supreme-court-sides-with-google-decade-long-fight-over-api-copyright-googles-copying-java-api-is-fair-use.shtml
> ---
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 5:44 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
wrote:

> | To: D. Hugh Redelmeier , GTALUG Talk 
>
> | From: Russell Reiter via talk 
>
> | On Tuesday, 6 April 2021, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
> | wrote:
>
> | Quite so. In Oracles case I believe the issues of patent were tossed
> right
> | away leaving only the issue of copyright
>
> I said so in the first message on this thread.
>

Copyright and patent are two sides of a double edged sword.


> But you brought up drugs, so off we go on a different tangent.
>

Well I previously brought up the government's position on sars and cipralex
manufacturing in the context of today's covid issues and intellectual
property. Sorry for confusing your issue.

However, drug synthesis is probably some of the earliest patent law on
record.


> | > There are a few tests for US Fair Use.  Do you think that
> | > "transformative" is the same as you meant by "adds value"?
> | >
> | > 
> |
> | I believe the article indicates in this case and most likely for those
> | similar to it, the test is twofold. The issue of the facts is for the
> jury
> | to decide, the issue of law is for the judge.
>
> There are issues of fact and issues of law.  That is a potential in any
> legal case.
>

Well in some legal cases, human rights for example, issues are decided by a
single party; the Tribunal members hearing the facts and the law are on
their own without a jury of peers. Of course the precedents set are binding
only on the tribunal. However, judicial review is the only path upward from
there.


>
> In tests for US fair use, there are four major factors, with sub-parts
> 
>
>
> | I believe that for educational purposes a school may copy the entire text
> | of a play for the drama department, which the students may then use for
> | their schools production.
>
> I don't think that that is the case.  I think that it is wishful
> thinking.
> But I might be wrong.
>
> In Canada, there is special fund paid to copyright holders as compensation
> for certain kinds of educational use.  I think that it is organized by
> Access Copyright (but I could be confused)
> 
>

I may be wrong. I was a member of an amature theatre group, we photocopied
the stuff anyway. I think it was one of the teachers in that heritage group
who put it that way to me, as a cultural right.

I'm not sure that Brendan Behan would object to the Toronto Irish Players
copying the script of Borstal Boy to introduce it to the citizens of
Toronto, but I might be wrong about that as well.

>
> | This might be why this case took ten years to settle. There were quite a
> | number of equitable factors to be considered.
>
> Appeal after appeal and then a retrial and more appeals seems a more
> likely reason for delay.
>

Well that is how the legal system works, argument, decision; argue the
decision in appeal according to a reasonable/correct standard of whether
the decision was in error in fact or in law or both and finally; heard at
the supreme court where all rights to change the decision are stopped. The
final estoppel of law; it is ratified, codified and absolute.

>
> | There is the concept in natural law that just because you have an idea,
> | that doesn't necessarily make it only your own.
>
> "Intellectual Property" is an invention of mankind.  It is not natural
> law.
>

Sorry I mis-stated I meant to say natural justice.

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>


-- 
Russell
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: David Collier-Brown via talk 
| 
| On 2021-04-06 4:27 p.m., James Knott via talk wrote:
| 
| > I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that Sun made Java available and
| > encouraged it's use.  Then when Oracle bought Sun, they tried to rein it
| > back in.  They did the same with OpenOffice.  So, this boils down to Oracle
| > retroactively and unilaterally changing the terms for using Java.
| >
| I was there at the the time, and Sun absolutely did: Java was once a pretty
| little language called Oak, designed for tiny embedded devices, like set-top
| boxes and smart cards. It grew up, and then caught elephantiasis. Android
| therefor seem to me like the kind of device an adult Oak was designed for.

I wasn't there, but...

Background:

I think Sun was a great proponent of open standards.  They won for a long 
time by introducing new ones and always being a step ahead of the other 
workstation and server vendors.

The idea seemed to be that a standard and the code were a bit tied 
together.  If other companies wanted NFS, they licensed the code.  For 
quite reasonable rates, I think.

The first stumble was with their Windowing system NeWS.  Nobody adopted it 
because they thought it would make Sun too powerful.  But I think that it 
was a good system -- better than X.

The Windowing system on NeXT seemed to me to be, to a first approximation, 
inspired by NeWS.  NeWS used a language a lot like PostScript (Forth); 
NeXT used Display PostScript.

Eventually, almost all competitors refused to have anything to do with 
Sun initiatives.  Sun got in partnership with ATT in a way that alienated 
all other UNIX vendors.

End of Background.

Sun released Java and pushed it hard.  Introducing a new platform takes a 
lot of promotion.  It was open but there was only one implementation.  
Amazingly, it took off.

- for embedded systems

- for terminal servers (not completely successful, but a good run)

- for client-side programs (in the browser).  This started out well but 
  JavaScript has completely replaced it.  I'm not sure that this this 
  replacement was a Good Thing

- for server side-programming (this surprised me)

- lots of general corporate programming.  For example, Bank software is 
  written by large armies of programmers, usually in Java

IBM had an implementation of its own, but I think that they paid royalties 
(I'm not sure).

Sun got in financial trouble.  Their one clearly winning product was Java.  
How could they monitise it.  Especially since this was against their 
previous ethos.  They struggled.

Oracle bought them and the culture changed.  Fetters were released.  
Doing unconscionable things seems to come naturally to Oracle.


Why is Java so fat?  Because the original libraries didn't do enough and a 
replacement was needed in a hurry.  And a replacement for the replacement.  
A do-over would be great but the amount of legacy code makes this 
unlikely.


Java seems to be hated.  But there's a lot good about it.  It prevents a 
wlot of bugs that come naturally to C.  (I don't use it.)---
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| To: D. Hugh Redelmeier , GTALUG Talk 

| From: Russell Reiter via talk 

| On Tuesday, 6 April 2021, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
| wrote:

| Quite so. In Oracles case I believe the issues of patent were tossed right
| away leaving only the issue of copyright

I said so in the first message on this thread.

But you brought up drugs, so off we go on a different tangent.

| > There are a few tests for US Fair Use.  Do you think that
| > "transformative" is the same as you meant by "adds value"?
| >
| > 
| 
| I believe the article indicates in this case and most likely for those
| similar to it, the test is twofold. The issue of the facts is for the jury
| to decide, the issue of law is for the judge.

There are issues of fact and issues of law.  That is a potential in any 
legal case.

In tests for US fair use, there are four major factors, with sub-parts



| I believe that for educational purposes a school may copy the entire text
| of a play for the drama department, which the students may then use for
| their schools production.

I don't think that that is the case.  I think that it is wishful thinking.  
But I might be wrong.

In Canada, there is special fund paid to copyright holders as compensation 
for certain kinds of educational use.  I think that it is organized by
Access Copyright (but I could be confused)


| This might be why this case took ten years to settle. There were quite a
| number of equitable factors to be considered.

Appeal after appeal and then a retrial and more appeals seems a more
likely reason for delay.

| There is the concept in natural law that just because you have an idea,
| that doesn't necessarily make it only your own.

"Intellectual Property" is an invention of mankind.  It is not natural
law.
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[David Collier-Brown via talk]

On 2021-04-06 4:27 p.m., James Knott via talk wrote:

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that Sun made Java available 
and encouraged it's use.  Then when Oracle bought Sun, they tried to 
rein it back in.  They did the same with OpenOffice.  So, this boils 
down to Oracle retroactively and unilaterally changing the terms for 
using Java.


I was there at the the time, and Sun absolutely did: Java was once a 
pretty little language called Oak, designed for tiny embedded devices, 
like set-top boxes and smart cards. It grew up, and then caught 
elephantiasis. Android therefor seem to me like the kind of device an 
adult Oak was designed for.


Changing the subject slightly, the US Supreme court said "even if we 
assume you can copyright an interface, your suit will fail because it 
meets one (actually two) of the fair-use criteria". That means the 
question of copyrighting interfaces didn't get addressed.


I don't know US law, so interfaces might still be copyrightable in the 
western court-region, but I rather suspect that the next time Oracle 
wants to claim copyright on an interface, they'll have to start /all 
over again/ and try to fool the next trial judge.  They one in the Java 
case was a programmer, and didn't fall for it.


--dave






--
David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
dav...@spamcop.net   |  -- Mark Twain

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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 4:27 PM James Knott via talk  wrote:

> On 2021-04-06 4:15 p.m., Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 02:30:14PM -0400, William Park via talk wrote:
> >> I prefer Oracle to win.  Then, Google would be forced to dump Java and
> find
> >> replacement.
> > The result on the entire industry would not be worth it.  If you don't
> > want them to use java, you don't have to use android.
> >
> > Apple seems to prefer objc instead.
> >
> > I would love for java to not exist at all, but that doesn't appear to
> > be happening no matter how much oracle tries to make it unappealing
> > to everyone.
> >
>
> I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that Sun made Java available and
> encouraged it's use.  Then when Oracle bought Sun, they tried to rein it
> back in.  They did the same with OpenOffice.  So, this boils down to
> Oracle retroactively and unilaterally changing the terms for using Java.
>

Reverse engineering C[hash:hash] style. Double your money perhaps?

>
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-- 
Russell
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 4:16 PM Lennart Sorensen via talk 
wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 02:30:14PM -0400, William Park via talk wrote:
> > I prefer Oracle to win.  Then, Google would be forced to dump Java and
> find
> > replacement.
>
> The result on the entire industry would not be worth it.  If you don't
> want them to use java, you don't have to use android.
>
> Apple seems to prefer objc instead.
>
> I would love for java to not exist at all, but that doesn't appear to
> be happening no matter how much oracle tries to make it unappealing
> to everyone.
>

Oracle tries to make it unappealing.
 +1 on that.

-- 
> Len Sorensen
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Russell
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 2:47 PM Nicholas Krause via talk 
wrote:

>
>
> On 4/6/21 2:17 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> > | From: Russell Reiter via talk 
> > |
> > | I read that article with interest after I had used a
> pharmacological/health
> > | sciences metaphore about copyright in another thread.
> >
> > Most drugs are "protected" by patent legislation.  Very different from
> > copyright.
> >
> > Perhaps surprisingly, trademark law is very helpful to drug companies
> > because what something is called may matter more than what it is.
>
> Yes one of my family members stated this about aspirin after working
> at Bayer. They stated the cost was basically 3 to 4 times the regular
> non traded medicine even through it was the same. Most people still
> bought aspirin through. Happens all the time with other medicines as
> well.
>

I believe it was in in the early 1800's that Dr. Friedrich Serturner
isolated an alkaloid
from the opium poppy. He called it morphine after morpheus the god of
sleep. In the modernization of
medicine the english Dr. Sydenham, one of the earliest english diarists
said “Of all the remedies it has pleased almighty God to give man to
relieve his pain and suffering, none is so universal and so efficacious as
opium.”

I think it was in 1888 that Bayer patented and released two products,
Aspirin and Heroin (heroic) the substance legally described as diacetyl
morphine. If I recall correctly it is created by exposing the alkaloid
morphine to acetic acid anhydrides.

Interestingly the Opium Poppy (papaver somniferum) has many alkaloids but
only a few psychoactives which affect human biology; morphine, codeine,
thebaine, noscapine (also called narcotine), and papaverine. The modern
endorphin receptors were firstly named opium receptors.

It was the fact that opium affected all mammals in every corner of the
world, which led to those studies in symbiosis that led to further
research. Why would a substance, which only grows well in a narrow
equatorial region affect mammals not present in those areas?

Ancient sumerian tablets had images of people with poppy stalks growing out
of their heads, which indicated that those ancients were well aware of the
psychotropic effects of the oil extracted from the seeds and used for
cooking.

Of course there is always the Seinfeld episode, for a bit of comic relief,
under fair use policy @ 0.30 in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYzuQr7YVYg


> >
> > | You may use other copy protected work under fair use if it adds value
> to
> > | the proposition. I think this decision makes that pretty clear.
> >
> > There are a few tests for US Fair Use.  Do you think that
> > "transformative" is the same as you meant by "adds value"?
> >
> > 
>
> I'm not a lawyer but to my knowledge there can be overlap. It really
> comes now to content again. For APIs the content is clearly no but
> perhaps in other cases it is. For example, translations add value but
> are considered transformative in nature. Content in the legal system
> is always critical.
>
>
> Nick
> > ---
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Russell
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[James Knott via talk]

On 2021-04-06 4:15 p.m., Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:

On Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 02:30:14PM -0400, William Park via talk wrote:

I prefer Oracle to win.  Then, Google would be forced to dump Java and find
replacement.

The result on the entire industry would not be worth it.  If you don't
want them to use java, you don't have to use android.

Apple seems to prefer objc instead.

I would love for java to not exist at all, but that doesn't appear to
be happening no matter how much oracle tries to make it unappealing
to everyone.



I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that Sun made Java available and 
encouraged it's use.  Then when Oracle bought Sun, they tried to rein it 
back in.  They did the same with OpenOffice.  So, this boils down to 
Oracle retroactively and unilaterally changing the terms for using Java.


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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 02:30:14PM -0400, William Park via talk wrote:
> I prefer Oracle to win.  Then, Google would be forced to dump Java and find
> replacement.

The result on the entire industry would not be worth it.  If you don't
want them to use java, you don't have to use android.

Apple seems to prefer objc instead.

I would love for java to not exist at all, but that doesn't appear to
be happening no matter how much oracle tries to make it unappealing
to everyone.

-- 
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[GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Tuesday, 6 April 2021, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
wrote:

> | From: Russell Reiter via talk 
> |
> | I read that article with interest after I had used a
> pharmacological/health
> | sciences metaphore about copyright in another thread.
>
> Most drugs are "protected" by patent legislation.  Very different from
> copyright.


Quite so. In Oracles case I believe the issues of patent were tossed right
away leaving only the issue of copyright


>
> Perhaps surprisingly, trademark law is very helpful to drug companies
> because what something is called may matter more than what it is.
>
> | You may use other copy protected work under fair use if it adds value to
> | the proposition. I think this decision makes that pretty clear.
>
> There are a few tests for US Fair Use.  Do you think that
> "transformative" is the same as you meant by "adds value"?
>
> 


I believe the article indicates in this case and most likely for those
similar to it, the test is twofold. The issue of the facts is for the jury
to decide, the issue of law is for the judge.

I believe that for educational purposes a school may copy the entire text
of a play for the drama department, which the students may then use for
their schools production. I think the transformation in that case may be in
the supposition that, education is always a value added proposal for
society as a whole. This transcends the rights of the rights holder to
burden the users with the normal fee the creator would be entitled to. When
the work is done by professionals who then make financial gains from it,
that is a different kettle of fish.

This might be why this case took ten years to settle. There were quite a
number of equitable factors to be considered.

There is the concept in natural law that just because you have an idea,
that doesn't necessarily make it only your own. All the modern world is the
sum total of the arts, artifice and artifacts of the historical record. No
one person today could claim that as their own. However that doesn't
necessarily stop people from trying.


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> tinfo/talk
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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Nicholas Krause via talk]

On 4/6/21 2:17 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

| From: Russell Reiter via talk 
|
| I read that article with interest after I had used a pharmacological/health
| sciences metaphore about copyright in another thread.

Most drugs are "protected" by patent legislation.  Very different from
copyright.

Perhaps surprisingly, trademark law is very helpful to drug companies
because what something is called may matter more than what it is.


Yes one of my family members stated this about aspirin after working
at Bayer. They stated the cost was basically 3 to 4 times the regular
non traded medicine even through it was the same. Most people still
bought aspirin through. Happens all the time with other medicines as
well.


| You may use other copy protected work under fair use if it adds value to
| the proposition. I think this decision makes that pretty clear.

There are a few tests for US Fair Use.  Do you think that
"transformative" is the same as you meant by "adds value"?




I'm not a lawyer but to my knowledge there can be overlap. It really
comes now to content again. For APIs the content is clearly no but
perhaps in other cases it is. For example, translations add value but
are considered transformative in nature. Content in the legal system
is always critical.


Nick

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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[William Park via talk]

I prefer Oracle to win.  Then, Google would be forced to dump Java and 
find replacement.


On 4/6/21 1:06 PM, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
On Tue, Apr 6, 2021, 12:31 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk, 
mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:


Oracle sued Google, claiming Android infringed Oracle's patents on
Java.
Somehow.  That failed.

So they sued for copyright infringement based on the copying of
the API
declarations.

The computer community had been very scared that APIs could be
copyrighted, something nobody had expected.

The US Supreme Court decided that this particular case came under
"fair
use". and was no infringement.  This was NOT a general decision about
APIs.

This is very good news of Free Software.  And consumers.


https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210405/09243546552/supreme-court-sides-with-google-decade-long-fight-over-api-copyright-googles-copying-java-api-is-fair-use.shtml


I read that article with interest after I had used a 
pharmacological/health sciences metaphore about copyright in another 
thread. This description of how the courts view a value added 
proposition, is closer to the crucible of linux topicality, but the 
principal is the same.


Shame on Oracle for not sharing what they conceptually borrowed 
elsewhere for their product.


You may use other copy protected work under fair use if it adds value 
to the proposition. I think this decision makes that pretty clear.



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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Russell Reiter via talk 
| 
| I read that article with interest after I had used a pharmacological/health
| sciences metaphore about copyright in another thread.

Most drugs are "protected" by patent legislation.  Very different from 
copyright.

Perhaps surprisingly, trademark law is very helpful to drug companies 
because what something is called may matter more than what it is.

| You may use other copy protected work under fair use if it adds value to
| the proposition. I think this decision makes that pretty clear.

There are a few tests for US Fair Use.  Do you think that
"transformative" is the same as you meant by "adds value"?


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Re: [GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021, 12:31 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk, 
wrote:

> Oracle sued Google, claiming Android infringed Oracle's patents on Java.
> Somehow.  That failed.
>
> So they sued for copyright infringement based on the copying of the API
> declarations.
>
> The computer community had been very scared that APIs could be
> copyrighted, something nobody had expected.
>
> The US Supreme Court decided that this particular case came under "fair
> use". and was no infringement.  This was NOT a general decision about
> APIs.
>
> This is very good news of Free Software.  And consumers.
>
>
> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210405/09243546552/supreme-court-sides-with-google-decade-long-fight-over-api-copyright-googles-copying-java-api-is-fair-use.shtml
>

I read that article with interest after I had used a pharmacological/health
sciences metaphore about copyright in another thread. This description of
how the courts view a value added proposition, is closer to the crucible of
linux topicality, but the principal is the same.

Shame on Oracle for not sharing what they conceptually borrowed elsewhere
for their product.

You may use other copy protected work under fair use if it adds value to
the proposition. I think this decision makes that pretty clear.


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[GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

Oracle sued Google, claiming Android infringed Oracle's patents on Java.  
Somehow.  That failed.

So they sued for copyright infringement based on the copying of the API 
declarations.

The computer community had been very scared that APIs could be 
copyrighted, something nobody had expected.

The US Supreme Court decided that this particular case came under "fair 
use". and was no infringement.  This was NOT a general decision about 
APIs.

This is very good news of Free Software.  And consumers.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210405/09243546552/supreme-court-sides-with-google-decade-long-fight-over-api-copyright-googles-copying-java-api-is-fair-use.shtml
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