Top all-time · #10440
Maja D'Hondt
Personal blog · majadhondt.wordpress.comprogrammingculture
Maja D'Hondt's personal blog at majadhondt.wordpress.com covers programming and culture. Since 2016, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 8 times, most often “The 9 lines of code that Google allegedly stole from Oracle”. The last post was in 2012, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog as the source for the nine-line rangeCheck allegation in Oracle v. Google, and cite it in discussions of copyright, API reimplementation and code licensing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
the soft spot
Most-linked posts?
- The 9 lines of code that Google allegedly stole from Oracle6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2016-05-18
What Hacker News says?
I just took a look at the rangeCheck: https://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/ Is this example correct? Can someone explain to me how this: if (toIndex > arrayLen) is correct? If the array length is say 5, and toIndex is 5, that should still throw an index out of bounds exception, right? But it would be acceptable here.
Comment linking /2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/
on “Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]”Submitted The 9 lines of code that Google allegedly stole from Oracle as a story · 358 points
HN discussionExcept that CC-BY-SA is not a permissive license; the SA part is a form of copyleft. It's just that nobody enforces it. From the text [1]: - "[I]f You Share Adapted Material You produce [..] The Adapter’s License You apply must be a Creative Commons license with the same License Elements, this version or later, or a BY-SA Compatible License." - "Adapted Material means material [..] that is derived from or based upon…
Comment linking /2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/
on “Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments”I have heard it mentioned before, but I wonder how long Copilot is banned from companies due to licensing issues. I'm not a lawyer, but I can see the risk if code seems to be substantially copied from copyleft corpuses of code. I'm reminded of the "9 lines of code" that was disputed in Oracle vs Google. https://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/
Comment linking /2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/
on “Don't encode POST bodies like GitHub Copilot, use URLSearchParams”> But doesn't that make it way too easy for someone to extract the network and use it to train their "own" AI with distillation learning? If you're targeting medium-to-large businesses, I suspect lots of them will buy a licence just to make sure they can't be sued (e.g. https://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/ ), even if it would be realistically near-impossible to detect if they 'stole' it.
Comment linking /2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/
on “Ex-Googlers raise $40M to democratize natural-language AI”There was another way to do it: Google could have designed its own API from scratch for Android, rather than reimplementing the Java standard library. Of course, this would have sacrificed two things: compatibility with existing Java code, and familiarity for existing Java developers. However, thanks to the typical game of telephone seen when lawyers and judges discuss technical subjects they're not deeply familiar…
Comment linking /2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/
on “Research recitation: A first look at rote learning in GitHub Copilot suggestions”The problem is with source theft(cut paste): http://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines Clearly what they did is read how the code in question works, then stole the idea to do it their way. They were looking at the source code! They did not start w/ API, there is no clean room argument that can stand ground to reason. I blame the Oracle lawyers for loosing.
Comment linking /2012/05/16/googles-9-lines
on “Stakes Are High in Oracle v. Google, But the Public Has Already Lost”Slightly more than "half a dozen bytes", and copyright rather than license but see the "rangeCheck" allegation from Oracle back in their trial against Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... > The copyright phase started on April 16, 2012, and consisted of several distinct claims of infringement: a nine-line rangeCheck function, several test files, the structure, sequence and organiza…
Comment linking /2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/
on “Do open source licences cover the Ship of Theseus?”