A file photo of people viewing the US Supreme Court building from behind security fencing on Capitol Hill in Washington. As the Supreme Court’s majority noted, much of the value of those APIs isn’t held by Oracle – it’s held by the developers who know how to use them. Allowing Google to copy the APIs enabled those developers to apply that knowledge to a new product, which is a win for innovation and productivity. — AP
It seems fitting that the Supreme Court would issue its decision in Google v. Oracle, a clash of Silicon Valley software titans, at roughly the same time Warner Media released Godzilla vs. Kong, a clash of CGI titans. I mean, whom do you root for?
In the court case, at least, the winner was more aligned with the public’s interest than the loser. Writing for a 6-2 majority, Justice Stephen Breyer found that Google had made legal use – technically, “fair use” – of some 11,500 lines of code written by Sun Microsystems (which Oracle bought in 2009) in its Android software for phones and tablets. The copied lines of code came from Java APIs, or application programming interfaces, that enable apps, websites and services using the Java software platform to interoperate.
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