Actually Google kind of screwed themselves there because just this year they set the legal precedent that all APIs are public domain so if they sued they would lose the case against oracle(and 8.8 billion dollars).

I would not call it 'screwed'. Yes, they established, that APIs are free to reimplement.

However, just having an API to follow does not mean, that the task of reimplementation is easy - following someone's else API is actually harder than designing your own. Just ask the WINE team.

the WINE team is comprised of 100% sorcerers.

That's actually not the argument that was made, as I understand it. The argument was that the Java API -- by virtue of being part of Java, which was openly released -- was also open. The APIs that MicroG is reimplementing don't seem to have been openly released in a similar fashion.

This is completely and totally wrong, FWIW. The federal circuit ruling was that apis are copyrightable, so ....

Google won on fair use.

Then the microG developer just has to move to the EU, where APIs aren’t copyrightable, even if closed, and you have the right to reverse engineer existing software for interoperability with your own software, or for third-party reimplementations.

already there and heavily relying on EU software directive 2009/24/EC :)

You must have missed the CAFC ruling that declared API's copyrightable.

Oracle is appealing that decision. The case is going before the CAFC, which means a likely win for Oracle.

>The case is going before the CAFC, which means a likely win for Oracle

LOL Really? A likely win? The CAFC isn't going to overturn a jury verdict.

You overestimate the willingness of the American courts to render justice, play by the rules, or indeed make any sense.

According to the CAFC's ruling overturning Judge Alsup's initial decision that APIs are not copyrightable, APIs have enough unique expressikn in them to indeed be covered by copyright. Hackers are fond of a loosey-goosey, asterisk-ridden interpretation of copyright law under which copying is OK provided the author doesn't lose money in its primary line of business. (For example, that pirating abandonware is OK, etc.) The CAFC is considerably more strict and applies the letter of the law to copyright cases. While fair use is a concept ill-defined by statute, it is generally acceptes to mean extremely limited copying for express purposes, such as: scholarship, commentary, or parody. Google's copying of Oracle's Java API IP was extensive and directly related to their Android line of business. Therefore, any sensible court would rule that fair use doesn't apply, else American IP law has no meaning.

> The case is going before the CAFC, which means a likely win for Oracle.

Frankly, everything else would be a travesty.

My personal wet dream is that in response to this, Google will partner with Microsoft to get dotNET as a VM backend.

LOL.

"dotNET"? sometimes I just don't know where people come up with their capitalization schemes.

Oh jeez, I'm so sorry for pointing out that .NET has literally never been branded as "dotNET".

I did not downvote you, but the reason I used dotNET is that I don't want to keep in mind whether the markdown-flavor-du-jour interprets leading dots as special or not.

They still might have an ounce of the hacker spirit in the company - so maybe they'll be lenient!

Jokes aside, implementing a program with the same API should be fine, right? Would love to hear from someone better versed in copyright law!

> implementing a program with the same API should be fine, right?

If this is all it comes down to, Google certainly should be fine with it being that they're in the middle of (end of?) a lawsuit with Oracle over their implementation of the Java API in Android.

Middle of still. Oracle filed for appeal of their most recent loss[0].

[0] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/its-official-orac...

Amazon has been providing drop-in replacement implementations of Google APIs (for proprietary Google services) for some time now. For instance:

"The Amazon Maps API offers interface parity with version 2 of the Google Maps API. Most classes and method calls in your Google Maps app work the same on Amazon devices. "

https://developer.amazon.com/public/apis/experience/maps/doc...

I would imagine the problems they might have with this project is that it, I assume, calls private remote Google APIs -- which would by definition be an unlicensed use.

Nearly the entire point of the project is to have an Android system that isn't reliant on Google services.

Edit: I see I misunderstood. This page talks about opting in to Google services: https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki

So they are using them.

What does breaking a terms of service mean legally though? Like they're spoofing the signatures so it all appears to google that it's the same, so I'm not sure how they'd enforce it?

They could use their safetynet to check

> But won't Google have any objections on the licensing and patents regarding reimplementation of their stuff?

They'll sue you for using Java.