Take your own example, to the API involved in some company's
creative solution to fopen() for example.
That company decided to create a caching layer, and a
special spell-correcting parser to their fopen()
implementation. So they created an elaborate API abstracting
the needed functions, such as _fopen_check_cache(),
_fopen_fill_cache(), _fopen_check_nearest_spelling(),
_fopen_prefill_nearest_spelling(),
_fopen_error_with_context() et cetera.
By _just_ looking at the function names, parameters and
description or documentation, you can understand what they
do, if you are involved in the field. This _is_ creative
work. The implementation here doesn't really matter. In
fact, implementation is often, if not always, quite trivial.
The abstraction, or, "API" is the most time and effort
consuming thing, and that is where the core create work is
packed.
Will you argue that this creative solution to fopen() is not
protected by copyright? Or is it protected only if it
includes the mostly-trivial function definitions?
Please do read any non-trivial commercial or open-source
project source code. Do the function/method definitions
themselves actually seem complex or creative to you in the
context of the whole project? Do you think that those are
the most creative parts of the project?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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