[jblz]

From the dissent: "In the 1990s, Oracle created a programming language called Java..."

Sun Microsystems was acquired in 2010... I guess I should give Thomas the benefit of the doubt that he intended the statement to apply to Oracle's owned IP & not be a historical account of the language's creation and creators, but this rubbed me the wrong way.

[jakewalker]

He addresses this in footnote 1 on the same page, though. "A different company, Sun, created the library. But because Oracle later purchased Sun, for simplicity I refer to both companies as Oracle."

[jblz]

Thanks for pointing that out -- I skipped over that first footnote. On my screen, it's on the previous page from the quote I posted (for what it's worth).

[Sindisil]

Also from the first page of the dissent: "A different company, Sun, created the library. But because Oracle later purchased Sun, for simplicity I refer to both companies as Oracle."

[BoDlulu]

I mean, Android was acquired by Google as well.

[zzleeper]

Not surprised at all the Thomas and Alito are in that dissent..

[flumpcakes]

I was under the impression that a dissent has to be written, even if they all agree in the majority opinion/ruling?

[thaumasiotes]

No; in order to write a dissent, you have to disagree with the result.

If you write a separate opinion while voting with the majority, that's a "concurrence", not a dissent, and those aren't mandatory either.

[gjsman-1000]

You also forget that a justice might feel more comfortable with ruling in opposition so that he/she can write the dissent, but if his/her vote was a swing vote, the justice might have second thoughts about that. It's easy to vote in opposition when you know it doesn't matter - and then, hey, you get to write the position for the losing side.

[thaumasiotes]

> You also forget that a justice might feel more comfortable with ruling in opposition so that he/she can write the dissent, but if his/her vote was a swing vote, the justice might have second thoughts about that.

This doesn't make any sense. Justices vote in the majority while disagreeing with part or all of the majority opinion all the time. The mechanism for complaining about the majority reasoning is the same in either case: you write a separate opinion detailing your personal analysis of the case. That opinion is called a "dissent" if you voted against the majority and a "concurrence" if you voted with the majority.

There is no concept of "the dissent". Any dissenting justice is free to write one; it is routine for one case to have multiple dissents.

[KerrickStaley]

No, a dissent means that one or more of the judges disagreed with the majority ruling.

[danans]

Why is it that you aren't surprised?

[dkjaudyeqooe]

Because they tend to take extreme or simplistic positions in opposition to any sort of nuanced or interpretive view of the law.

In this case it's "Hey, it's Oracle's code, end of story."

[winwhiz]

Is intellectual surprise caused by anything other than bias?

I noticed this when I started rereading the dissent with a s/Oracle/Sun Microsystems/g. I felt a bit more swayed when I started to recollect all my fond Sun memories: blogs, hobbyist customer experience, etc. and stopped thinking about my glowing hatred of Oracle.

The dissent does seem nuanced to me even though I am quick to dismiss it based on the premise and my superior technical knowledge and maybe a bit of my own biases that I can't quite completely ignore.