What pisses me off about this whole saga is that now we are left with a legal precedent that broadly validates all copyrights on APIs.
And my feeling is that it may not have come to this if Google hadn't violated not just the law but also the spirit of the social contract around APIs in such a brazen fashion.
Here comes a hugely profitable company with a business model based on advertising and clones a struggling innovator's entire platform for use on the up-and-coming class of devices without paying the creator a single cent.
Google didn't just implement an API to make two different pieces of software compatible so they would work better together. They didn't fight for everyone's freedom to implement APIs either. The only thing they did was fight to keep every last cent of their profits to themselves in the most short sighted, unimaginative and harmful way possible.
I don't have great sympathy for Oracle's business culture. But as I see it, here are two big corporations, each of them ruthlessly pursuing their own self interest, neither of them giving a shit about everyone elses freedoms or any legal precendent they are setting. And neither of them is showing the slightest hint of creativity in their approach.
Freedoms ultimately cannot be based on the benevolence or charity of corporations. Sometimes we share common interests with one or other corporation. And sometimes, as in this case, we don't, and things go to shit without being in anyone's interest at all. Everyone loses, including Google and Oracle. Pure stupidity all the way down.
What pisses me off about this whole saga is that now we are left with a legal precedent that broadly validates all copyrights on APIs.
And my feeling is that it may not have come to this if Google hadn't violated not just the law but also the spirit of the social contract around APIs in such a brazen fashion.
Here comes a hugely profitable company with a business model based on advertising and clones a struggling innovator's entire platform for use on the up-and-coming class of devices without paying the creator a single cent.
Google didn't just implement an API to make two different pieces of software compatible so they would work better together. They didn't fight for everyone's freedom to implement APIs either. The only thing they did was fight to keep every last cent of their profits to themselves in the most short sighted, unimaginative and harmful way possible.
I don't have great sympathy for Oracle's business culture. But as I see it, here are two big corporations, each of them ruthlessly pursuing their own self interest, neither of them giving a shit about everyone elses freedoms or any legal precendent they are setting. And neither of them is showing the slightest hint of creativity in their approach.
Freedoms ultimately cannot be based on the benevolence or charity of corporations. Sometimes we share common interests with one or other corporation. And sometimes, as in this case, we don't, and things go to shit without being in anyone's interest at all. Everyone loses, including Google and Oracle. Pure stupidity all the way down.