컴퓨터발명 연구회

Two of the world's biggest software companies face off in court this week for the second time, even though the most important issue of their dispute has already been resolved.

The high-profile trial that begins Monday will again include celebrity CEOs on the stand, dense expert testimony, and an utterly unpredictable outcome decided by a jury. But what's truly at stake in Oracle v. Google, round two?

For those who work with code for a living, a lot. The case revolves around how Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, can and cannot be used. Boiled down, APIs define how different types of code communicate to each other. If owners of those APIs can use copyright law to control how programming is done, there will be a sea change in industry practices. For many developers, especially of open source software, this will be a change for the worse.

"That is really going to create a radical shift in how software is developed worldwide," Mitch Stoltz, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation who's been following the case, said in an interview. "If it requires permission each time APIs are used and code calls other code, then you've upended the economics of software."

Oracle acquired the Java language when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2009. While the Java language itself is free to use, Oracle sued Google in 2010, saying that because Google used 37 Java APIs in building Android, it had infringed Java copyrights.

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