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Google's statement is rubbish | 360 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Google's statement is rubbish
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 02 2012 @ 02:54 AM EDT
There is one way for an honest creator of API's to prevent future misuse, either specifically dedicate the API to the public domain or issue it under a permissive license like Creative Commons.
You can give a copyright license for a concrete document. An API is no such thing: it is a list of entry points and parameters. You can, at best, indemnify users of that API from patent claims, but that requires that "users of API" is well-defined, and it does not help if you don't even have a patent.

In short: copyrighting an API is nonsense, and the court has ruled as much. Issuing a copyright license to "an API" rather than just a concrete document is likewise nonsense, and lends credibility to nonsense.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Sun Was Afraid of Apache's License!!!!
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 02 2012 @ 03:53 AM EDT
That's why for 5yrs, prior to Sun announcing GNU Open Source
Apache had been working to get Sun to drop FOU (Field of
Use) clause to no avail. GNU was a slap in the face to
Apache who somehow held on the misguided belief Sun was
always going to give them the TCK and FOU waiver that never
came. If any company was playing games to their own
detriment it was Sun.

By attempting to force both Google and Apache to take an
imcompatable Open Source license that would make it
impossible for them to distribute their implementations w/o
Sun grabbing control with their Catch 22 Licensing
demands.... no wonder Sun wasn't afraid of them.

Google actually did Sun/Oracle a favor by using any of the
Java Platform and preventing Java from dying back then.
Their JavaME certainly didn't save them and even Gosling
stated publically that JavaME was a fragmented mess!

Although he blamed the carriers and phone makers, obviously
Google Android has had fewer fragmentation problems than
JavaME has ever dreamed of! ....and that's the main point.
Google in Judge Alsop opinion was after compatibility of the
Java Language to make life easier for Developers. Not for
Sun, because they may have created the Java RI (release
implementation, but they were only another member of the
Java Community and that's what Java should have been all
about in the first place.

If Oracle would have really been primarily interested in the
Java Community their asinine statement claims them to be,
developers wouldn't be so paranoid about the future of their
jobs!!! ...and that's not Google's fault either!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Licenses can not reach out and force people to agree with them.
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 02 2012 @ 02:11 PM EDT
There is one way for an honest creator of API's to prevent future misuse, either specifically dedicate the API to the public domain or issue it under a permissive license like Creative Commons.
No this won't work. As I have pointed out before, there is no way any license (open source or no) can reach out and force people to agree to it. If under copyright law, you do need a license to do a given activity, (like use an API), then you can ignore the license and do what you want. If you don't need a license, and don't agree to a license then its terms become irrelevant.

Licenses can not reach out and force people to agree to them.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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