[jgmjgm]

I'm really not sure about why this comment has been down-voted besides that people disagree with it. This comment and the one above that was heavily down-voted both inspired some relatively interesting responses. It's a shame because the HN that I used to appreciate had more tolerance for civil disagreements. (Maybe this is just a reddit norm leaking here.) So it goes.

[akersten]

You're seeing folks with a certain persuasion downvoted because frankly, there is a right answer here, and it's astounding that people would undermine their own profession.

If Oracle wins, software engineering will be seriously hampered. And that's not hyperbole. If you are on Oracle's side you directly jeopardize the livelihoods of most of the contributors of this board. So not only am I not surprised by the downvotes, I think they're appropriate.

[ocdtrekkie]

That is actually the very definition of hyperbole. No, software engineering isn't going to be seriously hampered because Google has to pay for what they knew they stole.

Some terms about API use would likely change in some software agreements. Google would fess up about 8 billion dollars. And not much else would happen.

Software engineering is a vital part of the world and the economy and it will not go away because the law got enforced.

[musicale]

Well I suppose an Oracle victory could be good news for AT&T if they own the copyright to the standard C library and the UNIX/POSIX API.

Then they could demand licenses for any C toolchain as well as any piece of code (libc, Linux) that included libc/UNIX compatible declarations.

This could be highly beneficial to software engineering since it would discourage the use of languages like C and Java, as well as UNIX-like systems. ;-)

[wtallis]

Specious arguments that provoke well-informed corrections may be better than obvious trolling, but overall they're still not beneficial to the level of discourse here.