Each major decision in Rust starts as a Request for Comments (RFC). Everyone is invited to discuss the proposal, to work toward a shared understanding of the tradeoffs. Though sometimes arduous, this community deliberation is Rust’s secret sauce for quality.

Oracle America, Inc., is the current owner of a copyrightin Java SE, a computer program that uses the popular Java computer programming language. Google, without permis-sion, has copied a portion of that program, a portion that enables a programmer to call up prewritten software that, together with the computer’s hardware, will carry out a large number of specific tasks. The lower courts have con-sidered (1) whether Java SE’s owner could copyright the portion that Google copied, and (2) if so, whether Google’scopying nonetheless constituted a “fair use” of that mate-rial, thereby freeing Google from copyright liability. The Federal Circuit held in Oracle’s favor (i.e., that the portionis copyrightable and Google’s copying did not constitute a “fair use”). In reviewing that decision, we assume, for ar-gument’s sake, that the material was copyrightable. But we hold that the copying here at issue nonetheless consti-tuted a fair use. Hence, Google’s copying did not violate the copyright law.