Interoperability

In a surprise, the Supreme Court ruled for Google and Google v. Oracle. This was a welcome development for basically everyone who doesn’t want to extract rents for interoperable software. Justice Breyer framed his opinion around the history of the Android phone operating system, especially the idea that many programmers invested substantial time into learning what would be an open world to make a series of calls, Breyer then provides a lucid description of how APIs work. The heart of the case is that Oracle then bought Sun, the creator of Java, and then sued Google. At first the case was about software patents (which in 2010…