What are people's opinions on the copyrightability of a programming language?
In my opinion, on one hand Java is clearly a creative work, but obviously it takes many idioms from other languages. I don't really see how they could have a valid copyright claim, unless they're claiming copyright specifically on the class interfaces, which is probably a very weak argument. Even then, I would bet that the class interfaces are based on previous works in other languages.
I guess the bigger question would be 'Can you copyright a language?' Programming languages are just a subset of all languages, and I don't believe it would be right to allow someone to copyright aspects of a language.
So I guess my belief would be that the interfaces could potentially be patentable, yet clearly aren't patented because they're based on the interfaces in prior languages, but are not copyrightable because there's no sound basis for copyrighting a language.
Legally I have absolutely no clue. That's why they're in the court room for. At the end of the day it's up to some random people's opinion.
Ethically, I'm pretty sure it does by far more harm than good. Because of the whole standing in the shoulder of giants, and common as air arguments. That most here are very aware of. The only counter point would be the economic incentive that copyright gives oracle. But that's meaningless because we have mountains of evidence that people will invent great languages anyway.
Well, borrowing idioms does not make a work non-original and non-copyrightable. The philosophical/legal point Google is making is that no language (computer or human) is copyrightable because it is not well defined: it's a moving target.
OTOH, I think the main issue here is not whether or not Java the language is copyrightable, but whether the Java APIs are. I have no clue as to the legal thinking underlying this question, but my hunch says that APIs should be copyrightable.
What are people's opinions on the copyrightability of a programming language?
In my opinion, on one hand Java is clearly a creative work, but obviously it takes many idioms from other languages. I don't really see how they could have a valid copyright claim, unless they're claiming copyright specifically on the class interfaces, which is probably a very weak argument. Even then, I would bet that the class interfaces are based on previous works in other languages.
I guess the bigger question would be 'Can you copyright a language?' Programming languages are just a subset of all languages, and I don't believe it would be right to allow someone to copyright aspects of a language.
So I guess my belief would be that the interfaces could potentially be patentable, yet clearly aren't patented because they're based on the interfaces in prior languages, but are not copyrightable because there's no sound basis for copyrighting a language.