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[413.36 --> 417.30] during the top prep said, well, you know, well, what about like team ownership? And I was like, oh, |
[417.70 --> 424.70] right. We talk in law school about this analogy that ownership is for reasons I don't remember, |
[424.70 --> 430.40] or maybe never knew. We talk about ownership being a bundle of sticks. And the idea is that we sort of |
[430.40 --> 435.98] we talk about it as if it's like one big trunk. But it's actually like, a lot of different small |
[435.98 --> 442.52] things, right? And ownership in the code world is very fragmented, because there's a sense of like, |
[442.60 --> 447.82] well, okay, for almost all of you, if you are working for a company, at the end of the day, |
[448.38 --> 454.02] your company owns the code that you are writing, at least on the company time, as long as you're unless |
[454.02 --> 459.78] you're very careful to like, not do it on company time, not do it on company hardware, and to do it in |
[459.78 --> 464.24] areas that are unrelated to what the company is working on. If you're doing those things, |
[464.24 --> 469.54] and you keep it, but otherwise, as a general rule of thumb, the company owns it. So that's like the |
[469.54 --> 473.58] sort of lawyer brain answer, like, well, yeah, okay, we're done here. You know, it's been a nice |
[473.58 --> 479.82] podcast. Glad to talk to you all. But there's very much, of course, all these fractal little senses of, |
[480.62 --> 485.04] well, okay, but what does it mean when the team, you know, team versus individual ownership? |
[485.04 --> 489.60] Because in some, like in a lawyerly sense, like the company is the one who can sell it, |
[489.60 --> 494.74] but who has responsibility for it within the company? Like, that's not a legal question. That's |
[494.74 --> 502.40] a, that's a team norms, team behaviors kind of question. And there's also these questions of |
[502.40 --> 506.92] what exactly is it that you own, right? Because I spent several years of my career, I am a, |
[507.46 --> 512.30] what we call a transactional lawyer, like basically, I do contracts. If the contract goes wrong, |
[512.30 --> 516.88] for some reason, that is somebody else's problem to argue about it in court. And so I've only ever |
[516.88 --> 523.52] been to court for work once, which was a little case called Oracle v Google. And you might've heard |
[523.52 --> 531.78] of that one. And the question at some level was about who owns or can anyone own the idea of an API, |
[532.74 --> 536.08] right? And that's probably not something you're thinking about too much in your day to day, |
[536.18 --> 541.12] right? And your corporate lawyers probably aren't most of the time either. They're not thinking about |
[541.12 --> 546.08] who owns the API. They're just thinking about like this file, right? Or this binary that we're |
[546.08 --> 552.06] distributing, or these days, often this SAS that we're putting out over the internet, you know, |
[552.06 --> 558.04] your customers never actually see code except for whatever's JavaScripted or WASM or whatever. But, |
[558.42 --> 562.18] you know, and of course that's a whole nother thing. Anyway, I mean, it's just fractal and we could |
[562.18 --> 567.72] talk about it for way more than an hour, but that's sort of my like 10,000 foot overview is that it's, |
[567.72 --> 573.70] there's both this ownership in the legal sense, but very much also in the code and culture sense. |
[574.06 --> 577.86] And we can talk about any or all of those, including, you know, to some extent how Go is |
[577.86 --> 582.78] different. I mean, its packaging system is one of those things that occasionally makes lawyers |
[582.78 --> 588.60] tear their hairs out a little bit because it's not something so many of our lawyers, not our lawyers, |
[588.60 --> 595.18] well, our lawyers too, but our licenses predate Go, right? They predate some modern language |
[595.18 --> 600.38] distribution practices. And sometimes that shows up. We wrote technology specific things |
[600.38 --> 606.82] for like C or C++ into our licenses. And then somebody says, well, how does that work in the |
[606.82 --> 611.88] case of Go? And the answer is, I have no idea. I guess those, those of you listening to this as a |
[611.88 --> 617.32] podcast can't see the face I just made. So just assume like perplexed search Giphy for your favorite |
[617.32 --> 621.76] perplexed GIF. And that was me just now. So yeah, so where do you all want to start with that? |
[621.76 --> 627.22] I also have a kind of meta view of some of this because I think similar to what you were, |
[627.50 --> 631.68] the line of thought you were going down where it's like, okay, well, there's the code that you've |
[631.68 --> 637.68] typed, the thing that you've written, but then there's like the knowledge of writing it and the |
[637.68 --> 642.18] idea of the thing. And that's where like the API question is very interesting because it's like, |
[642.24 --> 649.28] oh, well, someone else, like if you retype the same code, is that the same thing? Or like, |
[649.28 --> 653.28] what if you type it slightly differently, but it's conceptually the same thing? Like how far do you |
[653.28 --> 658.00] have to get away from, how different does something have to be before it's like, okay, |
[658.80 --> 664.56] now someone else can own this thing? I remember over the years talking to lawyers about, you know, |
[664.60 --> 668.32] all the non-competes and things that we tend to have. And one of the things that lawyers consistently |
[668.32 --> 674.16] told me, at least in New York, is that like your employer has no right to the knowledge that you |
[674.16 --> 678.62] gain. So they can have ownership over the code that you write and the things that you produce, |
[678.62 --> 682.40] but they're not allowed to say, well, we gave you this knowledge, so you can't take it over there |
[682.40 --> 686.96] and use it against, in one of our competitors. I'd always find that very interesting as well, |
[686.96 --> 690.80] because it's like, oh, well, this is like another aspect of things. It's like, is an API |
[690.80 --> 695.58] knowledge or is it like the code that you've written or is it, so there's this really meta aspect |
[695.58 --> 701.40] for me, at least to the whole idea of ownership. Oh yeah. I mean, absolutely. Right. And by the way, |
[701.52 --> 707.82] you know, you specifically called out New York and Natalie said in pre-chat that she wanted to ask about the EU, |
[707.82 --> 713.68] we as open source programmers and open source developers of various sorts tend to make an |
[713.68 --> 721.26] assumption that we can write a license that applies across the entire world. And in most law, |
[721.44 --> 727.72] that's like a completely laughable idea, right? Like somewhere between laughable and like actively |
[727.72 --> 735.66] considered harmful. And so we're sort of lucky in some ways that the core concept of copyright, |
[735.66 --> 743.00] which is what applies to that actual written thing distinct from the ideas is actually a global |
[743.00 --> 751.96] standard, a treaty called the burn convention. That's 1908, maybe 1903. So copyright has been |
[751.96 --> 755.86] standardized across the entire world for a hundred years, which makes it a good platform for lawyers |
[755.86 --> 761.42] to build a global system on. If you're talking about databases, no global platform, |
[761.42 --> 766.86] no global legal platform. So writing a database license is responsible for a lot of these gray hairs. |
[767.04 --> 772.04] Again, sorry, podcast listeners, you should watch it live next time. And similarly with AI, |
[772.86 --> 777.40] we don't know how some of this is going to play out. We can offer guesses. And frankly, |
[777.48 --> 781.56] they're very interesting guesses. It's a very fun theoretical game, but we don't know how it's going |
[781.56 --> 785.56] to play out in court. And by the way, Chris, I think the other meta thing that's really |
[785.56 --> 793.34] interesting for programmers, I often like to remind developers that writing a contract is like |
[793.34 --> 798.52] writing code and then not executing it at all. And you just sort of are reading it. And like, |
[798.58 --> 803.54] we all agree more or less on what the output should be. But until it's actually been executed, |
[803.54 --> 809.46] which happens through a court, right? A court says, this is what the thing is, then we don't |
[809.46 --> 815.76] actually know what the outcome is. So everything that I say here is going to be based on like a |
[815.76 --> 820.32] handful of things, right? Part of the challenge in Oracle v. Google is that we'd all been operating |
[820.32 --> 826.00] under these assumptions about what copyright law was, but there had been no litigation over what, |
[826.36 --> 832.04] whether or not an API could be copyrightable since the 80s. So the closest analogy we had was |
[832.04 --> 839.16] Lotus 1, 2, 3 dropdown menus. And like, it turns out things have changed a lot since then. |
[839.16 --> 846.38] But because it hadn't been executed by a court, we really didn't know how this was going to turn |
[846.38 --> 850.60] out. And so that makes predictions. This is why lawyers' favorite phrase is, it depends. |
[851.00 --> 855.74] There's one thing I want to stick a pin in before we move on, Angelica. And it's that idea of AI. |
[856.64 --> 860.26] And I also want to call out code generation. And I really want to talk about that later, |
[860.30 --> 864.14] because I think that's also like a very interesting thing when you, the first thing you said was like, |
[864.20 --> 868.82] oh, who's typing the code at the end of the day? And that's how copyright is generated. So I just want to |
[868.82 --> 871.38] make sure we circle back to that later. Absolutely. |
[871.84 --> 874.66] I also want, for those of us who weren't following that Google |
[874.66 --> 881.26] law case step by step, every step of the way, once it had been litigated, what was the conclusion? |
[882.08 --> 888.88] Well, so to take a step real quick back just to the very beginning, Oracle, well, Sun had created Java. |
[888.88 --> 897.84] And originally the Apache project sort of funded by IBM had re-implemented Java, complete clean room, |
[898.38 --> 902.96] very strict, very effective clean room, as best as we could tell from the pieces afterwards, |
[903.24 --> 908.72] literally just a handful of lines, probably out of several hundred thousand in that re-implementation |
[908.72 --> 913.44] that ended up looking like they were actually perhaps copied and pasted rather than |
[913.44 --> 921.84] a true clean room re-implementation. And so Google used that Apache re-implementation in their Android |
[921.84 --> 930.38] phones. And ultimately what happened after literally a decade of litigation, I think I was on my fifth |
[930.38 --> 936.64] job by the time the case ended, like from when the case, actually six jobs from when the case started |
[936.64 --> 943.80] to when the case ended. The case started with essentially Oracle claiming, there's some other |
[943.80 --> 949.10] stuff I'm going to leave out for simplicity, but Oracle claimed that copying and re-implementing |
[949.10 --> 956.04] just the API headers was a copyright violation and that therefore all of Android should have to be |
[956.04 --> 960.76] licensed from Oracle for, they originally asked for 5 billion. I think by the end of the case, |
[960.80 --> 964.26] they were asking for 9, 15 billion, something like that. |
[964.26 --> 969.74] The courts found essentially through a series of rulings over the years in this case, |
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