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Google Chrome and Android: Legal Aspects of Open Source Software

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Google and the Law

Part of the book series: Information Technology and Law Series ((ITLS,volume 22))

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Abstract

Google makes ample use of free and open source software, both in the infrastructure for its online service platform (search engine and other Google offerings), and free software projects that Google has published and promotes, such as Android and Google Chromium. In this chapter, we comment on FOSS licensing, its role in the Information Society and Google’s use of FOSS for strategic purposes, as well as the recent “Oracle America Inc. v. Google Inc.” complaint, lodged in summer 2010, which involves both Android and Java, two free and open source software programs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Documents relating to the “Oracle America Inc. v. Google Inc.” case are available at http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=OracleGoogle (last accessed 15 February, 2011).

  2. 2.

    Available at http://groklaw.net/pdf2/OraGoogle-32.pdf (last accessed 15 February, 2011).

  3. 3.

    Since then, Oracle has provided further specifics, on 27th October 2010 (available at http://groklaw.net/pdf2/OraGoogle-36.pdf, last accessed 15 February, 2011).

  4. 4.

    Paragraph 13, Google Defense. See Open Handset Alliance, http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/index.html, Alliance Overview, http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/oha_overview.html (last accessed 15 February, 2011).

  5. 5.

    These are the exclusive rights set out in the European legal framework under the Directive 2009/24 on the protection of computer programs (former Directive 91/250/EEC). Matching, though not necessarily the same rights, is listed in the US Copyright Act and in other jurisdictions, under the Berne Convention and WIPO Copyright Treaty 1996. In continental European jurisdictions, the legal regime for authors’ rights grants certain moral rights to authors of works, including arguably software, for example rights to be recognised and attributed as author and to protect the integrity of the work.

  6. 6.

    Commented in Stallman 2004b.

  7. 7.

    Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, gives a rationale for this: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”. For a review of an interesting old case in this respect, see Mitchell, 2009.

  8. 8.

    Central Processing Unit, the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program and a means for measuring how much use is made of software.

  9. 9.

    Available at http://www.adobe.com/products/eula/tools/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  10. 10.

    Available at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  11. 11.

    Stallman 1996a.

  12. 12.

    Free Software Foundation 1996.

  13. 13.

    Jacobsen v. Katzer”, 535 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008), District Court of Munich, 19 May 2004, Case No. 21 O 6123/04 (“Welte v. Sitecom Deutschland GmbH”), District Court of Frankfurt, Docket Number 2-6 0 224/06. See Jaeger 2010; Jaeger and Gebert 2009 and Rosen 2009.

  14. 14.

    Available at http://www.opensource.org/osd.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  15. 15.

    For the FSF’s view, see Stallman 2007.

  16. 16.

    Available at http://sourceforge.net/about (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  17. 17.

    Code.google.com allegedly hosts more than 250,000 FOSS projects.

  18. 18.

    Information technology autonomy is often argued for by Prof. Eben Moglen, Director of the Software Freedom Law Center.

  19. 19.

    Chris DiBona, Google Open Source Program Manager in “Q&A: Google's open-source balancing act”, CNET, 28 May, 2008. Shankland 2008b.

  20. 20.

    A search for Google-led projects on the code.google repository http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=label:Google provides 1063 answers (last accessed 15 February 2011). See also comment at Asay 2009b.

  21. 21.

    OHA press release: Industry Leaders Announce Open Platform for Mobile Devices, 5th November 2007, available at http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  22. 22.

    For statistics, see http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustom=iOS,Android&sample=45; Reuters: Google topples Nokia from smartphones top spot, available at http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/01/31/oukin-uk-google-nokia-idUKTRE70U1YT20110131 (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  23. 23.

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  24. 24.

    See http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  25. 25.

    It also adds the Google bar, which collects keystroke data and provides significant behavioral data to Google, useful for behavioral targeting, an arrow in Google’s quiver of advertising offerings (and which raises certain privacy concerns).

  26. 26.

    Chris DiBona, Google Open Source Program Manager, Giving Google a licence to code, The Guardian, November 2nd, 2006; Arthur 2006.

  27. 27.

    Benkler 2006, p 63. Collaborative development models are also described in various articles in DiBona et al. 1999 and DiBona et al. 2006. For example Chris DiBona’s Open Source and Proprietary Software Development. See also Feller and Fitzgerald 2002.

  28. 28.

    See Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/ (last accessed 15 February 2011). Wikipedia is probably the most successful use of a free content license, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license (originally under GNU Free Document License).

  29. 29.

    Mary Colvig in Mozilla Blog, Over 8 millionway to go! available at http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/06/18/over-8-million-way-to-go/. Also commented at Ryan Pau: Firefox 3 launch a success: 8 million downloads in 24 h, on http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/06/firefox-3-launch-a-success-8-million-downloads-in-24-hours.ars (last accessed on 15 February 2011).

  30. 30.

    Numbers from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers (last accessed on 15 February 2011).

  31. 31.

    Netcraft, December 2010 Web Server Survey at http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/12/01/december-2010-web-server-survey.html (last accessed on 15 February 2011).

  32. 32.

    OpenOffice.org announced 300 million downloads in February 2010, http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/02/prweb3584404.htm, while the site’s statistics page indicates nearly 90 million downloads of OpenOffice.org 3.2, the latest stable version. http://marketing.openoffice.org/marketing_bouncer.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  33. 33.

    http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Solutions (last accessed on 15 February 2011).

  34. 34.

    This has been described in the seminal publication, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, by Eric Raymond (Raymond 1999).

  35. 35.

    Feller et al. 2005; DiBona et al., 1999 (in particular, Behlendorf 1999), and 2006.

  36. 36.

    Keir 2009

  37. 37.

    Available at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  38. 38.

    Available at http://source.android.com/, http://code.google.com/android/ and http://developer.android.com/index.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  39. 39.

    Available at http://www.anddev.org/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  40. 40.

    Available at http://market.android.com/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  41. 41.

    Available at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  42. 42.

    Available at http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action and http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/app-store.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  43. 43.

    Available at http://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html; Commented by Dan Morrill, Google, on Android Developers Blog, “A note for Google Apps for Android”, 25 September 2009, Available at http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/09/note-on-google-apps-for-android.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  44. 44.

    Priya Ganapati: Independent App Stores Take On Google’s Android Market, Wired Gadget Lab, 11 June 2010, available at http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/independent-app-stores-take-on-googles-android-market/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  45. 45.

    Cade Metz: Google: Android fragmentation not 'bad thing, The Register, 5th November 2009, February 2011).

  46. 46.

    See below on the “Oracle America Inc. v. Google Inc” complaint.

  47. 47.

    Cade Metz: Google plays Hide and Seek with Android SDK, The Register, 14th July 2008, available at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/14/android_developer_unrest/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  48. 48.

    Commented on Bloomberg Businessweek, “Google Holds Honeycomb Tight”, online at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2011/tc20110324_269784.htm (last accessed 15 April 2011).

  49. 49.

    Available at http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html

  50. 50.

    See, e.g. Chris DiBona video interview, in Geek Time with Chris DiBona, published in Google Open Source Blog, 28 December 2010, available at http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/12/geek-time-with-chris-dibona.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  51. 51.

    Sakai project is an example of University sponsored project under a permissive license. The names of the two most emblematic permissive licenses “BSD” and MIT licenses, refer to academic institutions.

  52. 52.

    Chris DiBona, Giving Google a licence to code, The Guardian, November 2nd, 2006.

  53. 53.

    We say without “substantive” conditions, as most licenses, including permissive, at least require some form of attribution and inclusion of the liability disclaimer, while the copyright regime itself does not allow third parties to pass themselves off as authors/creators.

  54. 54.

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_%28web_browser%29 (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  55. 55.

    Under the Android SDK license at http://developer.android.com/sdk/terms.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  56. 56.

    Available at http://www.androlib.com/appstats.aspx. (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  57. 57.

    Commented at Asay 2009a.

  58. 58.

    See GNU Foundation: What is copyleft? available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ (last accessed 15 February 2011) and Stallman 1998.

  59. 59.

    See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  60. 60.

    Stallman 1996b.

  61. 61.

    Heffan 1997; Ravicher 2000; Stallman 1998.

  62. 62.

    LGPL: Lesser GPL; MPL: Mozilla Public License, a license stewarded by the Mozilla Foundation and currently under review.

  63. 63.

    What is known as “dual” or “multiple licensing”. espoused by MySQL, Sleepycat, Trolltech. For a discussion of dual licensing, see Välimäki 2003.

  64. 64.

    Daffara 2009.

  65. 65.

    With a significant debate about derivative works in copyleft context, see Bain 2010.

  66. 66.

    Andy Rubin, Android engineering director, Google. Shankland 2008a, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9949793-39.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  67. 67.

    Interview of Chris DiBona, Google Open Source Blog.

  68. 68.

    This issue is commented in Vetter 2009 at 2119–2120.

  69. 69.

    Named after the original FOSS project that had such a provision in its license, the Affero GPLv1. AGPLv3 was published in November 2007 and is Available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html (last accessed 15 February 2011). The additional obligation is at clause 13.

  70. 70.

    AGPL cl13.

  71. 71.

    The project web page is at http://itextpdf.com/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  72. 72.

    Arguably, as there is a school of thought that dynamically linking libraries does not create a derivative work of the library subject to the copyleft terms of the license. See generally, Bain 2010.

  73. 73.

    Licensing terms at http://itextpdf.com/terms-of-use/index.php (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  74. 74.

    See recent comment in The Register: Google open source guru: 'Why we ban the AGPL', online at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_source_licenses/ (visited 15 April 2011).

  75. 75.

    See Stallman 2004a (Fighting software patents). Illustrated, for example, by the End Software Patents campaign of the FSF, Available at http://endsoftpatents.org/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  76. 76.

    Article 52 European Patent Convention, Shemtov 2010.

  77. 77.

    Recently slightly changed in the USA by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Re. Bilski, 545 F.3d 943, 88 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

  78. 78.

    Vetter 2009 at 2093. There are few FOSS projects that are likely to acquire patents for defensive purposes, although the Open Innovation Network (at http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/, last accessed 15 February 2011) was set up for this. Source code availability of FOSS allows a potential plaintiff to evaluate infringement easily (while a reverse evaluation would be more difficult).

  79. 79.

    Apache Software License 2, MPL1.1, GPLv3, OSL 3.0, AFL 3.0, CDDL, CPL/EPL… All licenses are available at http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  80. 80.

    Other initiatives include the Open Innovation Network (www.openinventionnetwork.com), a form of patent pool for free software in relation to processes implemented in the GNU/Linux operating system, in parallel with projects such as “Linux Defenders” which aim to collect prior art against determined software patents (e.g. through defensive prior publication), or Peer to Patent (http://www.peertopatent.org/), a project to assist the USPTO find the information relevant to assessing the claims of pending patent applications.

  81. 81.

    For this, for example, see Vetter 2009.

  82. 82.

    E.g. Google is a licensee of OIN (http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/press_release08_06_07.php, last accessed 15 February 2011).

  83. 83.

    Arthur 2006 (Interview with Chris DiBona).

  84. 84.

    The project is available at http://www.webmproject.org/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  85. 85.

    See http://www.mpegla.com/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  86. 86.

    See http://www.vialicensing.com/index.aspx (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  87. 87.

    See for example, Red Hat’s amicus curiae brief in the “In re Bilski” case, available at http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/rh-supreme-court-brief.pdf (last accessed 15 February 2011). See also Torrance 2009.

  88. 88.

    There are free software codec formats, such as Theora (video) and Vorbis (for audio), Pfeiffer 2010.

  89. 89.

    Like the Adobe Reader, the Flash Player can either be subsequently downloaded by the end-user, or GNU/Linux distributers can enter into an agreement with Adobe for including the closed-source package with the Linux distribution (or in a “non-free” repository, as openSuse does).

  90. 90.

    WebM includes audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec.

  91. 91.

    Originally, the patent grant was part of the WebM license, however this was split out after several complaints that the license was (a) not truly open source/free due to the limited patent grant, and (b) increases fragmentation of the community. Since June 2010, WebM software is licensed under the BSD license, and Google provides a separate patent grant for its implementation.

  92. 92.

    Additional IP Rights Grant (Patents). Patent grant Available at http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  93. 93.

    It is reported that the head of MPEG-LA is looking into creating a "a patent pool license for VP8 (http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100520/googles-royalty-free-webm-video-may-not-be-royalty-free-for-long/, last accessed 15 February 2011), and Steve Jobs allegedly has stated that Ogg/Theora might be encumbered by patents too (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/30/steve_jobs_claims_ogg_theora_attack/, last accessed 15 February 2011). Claims have also been made that VP8 is too similar to the H.264 for comfort (Garrett-Glaser 2010), claims that have been criticised if not fully rejected (Daffara 2010).

  94. 94.

    Glidden 2010; Phipps 2010.

  95. 95.

    VP8 Data Format and Decoding Guide, available at http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bankoski-vp8-bitstream-00 (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  96. 96.

    Jazayeri 2010, available at http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html and commented by Jon Brodkin in After dropping H.264, Google admits it's more popular than WebM, at http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/011911-google-webm.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  97. 97.

    According to Chris DiBona, reported by Cade Metz in The Register, 13 April 2010, available at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/13/reports_says_google_will_open_source_on2_codec_in_may/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  98. 98.

    Complaint (with jury demand) for Patent and Copyright Infringement against Google Inc. (Filing fee $350, receipt number 54611007901), filed by Oracle America, Inc. (Attachments: # (1) Civil Cover Sheet)(vlk, COURT STAFF) (Filed on 12-Aug-2010) Modified on 18-Aug-2010 (cjl, COURT STAFF). (Entered: 17-Aug-2010). Available at http://groklaw.net/pdf2/OrvGoogComplaint.pdf (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  99. 99.

    James Gosling, the creator of Java, told Reuters in an interview that Oracle's lawsuit was filed only after the failure of protracted technology licensing negotiations with Google that began long before Sun sold itself to Oracle for $5.6 billion in January. Available at http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Lawsuit-may-signal-era-of-Oracle-Google-tensions/articleshow/6315161.cms (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  100. 100.

    This is included, for example, in the OpenOffice.org suite.

  101. 101.

    A “clean room” implementation means developing a new alternative program from zero, without having access to the original program and thus be potentially liable for copyright infringement. Developing to an open specification is a form of clean room development.

  102. 102.

    A short version of the history and background to Java is included in Google’s response to Oracle America’s claim (Factual Background, Section A), available at http://groklaw.net/pdf2/OraGoogle-51.pdf (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  103. 103.

    Available at http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  104. 104.

    Available at http://openjdk.java.net/ (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  105. 105.

    For more on this, see Omar et al. 2010; Samuelson 2007.

  106. 106.

    Article 1.2 Directive 2001/29 on copyright in the information society.

  107. 107.

    See Andrew Katz in this same volume, Chap. 10.

  108. 108.

    ASF Blog, Read beyond the headers, https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/read_beyond_the_headers (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  109. 109.

    In re Bilski”, 545 F.3d 943, 88 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

  110. 110.

    See for example the numbers quoted by Wheeler, D, at http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html (last accessed 15 February 2011); “FOSS market share”, at http://joomla.linux.lu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83&Itemid=85; Netcraft’s June 2010 Web Server Survey, at http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/06/16/june-2010-web-server-survey.html; NetMarketshare’s statistics at http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0; or Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  111. 111.

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_v._IBM (last accessed 15 February 2011).

  112. 112.

    Among others, Samuelson 2010.

  113. 113.

    Mitchell 2009.

  114. 114.

    Available at http://www.flickr.com/ and http://www.jamendo.com (last accessed 15 February 2011).

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Bain, M. (2012). Google Chrome and Android: Legal Aspects of Open Source Software. In: Lopez-Tarruella, A. (eds) Google and the Law. Information Technology and Law Series, vol 22. T.M.C. Asser Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-846-0_9

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