A San Francisco jury will decide: Did Google build Android the right way? (credit: Illustration by Aurich Lawson)
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.
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