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| Authored by: wharris on Friday, May 31 2013 @ 05:37 AM EDT |
If you just call into whatever part of the code you like, you are not
"following an API". An API is a specification, not something you
figure out by randomly trying things and seeing what works.
I think the brief had a good balance of examples of open source API examples (I
could not submit this comment except for the fact that my web browser is able to
communicate with Groklaw's web server using an established, mutually understood
API) and proprietary examples (Compaq was legally able to sell IBM-compatible
computers because it was legally allowed to write its own implementation of
IBM's API).
I only skimmed through the brief, so I don't know if they mentioned it, but SQL
was originally developed by IBM. The only reason Oracle can legally sell its own
database programs is because APIs aren't copyright protected.
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| Authored by: DannyB on Friday, May 31 2013 @ 09:57 AM EDT |
I don't think you get it.
Oracle's Java API's are published and
documented. So they are published APIs by your definition. These are not
secret or unpublished APIs.
Yet Oracle wants to selectively restrict
their use via copyright.
Now it may be the case that APIs end up being
covered by copyright after Oracle is done setting forest fires. After a brief
period of chaos and upheaval throughout the software industry, almost all known
APIs will be covered by a copyright license that allows you to call them. After
all, that is what APIs are for.
Another end result will be widespread
and long lasting resentment towards Oracle for imposing needless costs upon
everyone.
If proprietary vendors take advantage of the opportunity to
restrict who can call their APIs, then given the widespread use of open source,
those proprietary vendors will only hasten their own demise.
On the
other hand, Oracle may lose. This will also result in widespread and long
lasting resentment towards Oracle.
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The price of freedom is eternal
litigation. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Ian Al on Friday, May 31 2013 @ 01:16 PM EDT |
Since API's are abstract ideas defining the functionality of the software
implementing the API definitions, they are not protected by copyright.
If the API is published as a text document (expression fixed in a medium) in a
form that a software writer can use, then nothing in it is protected by
copyright unless it is creative expression and after the following list has been
excluded (by 17 USC ยง 102. and case law)
Names, short phrases, functional descriptions, any idea, procedure, process,
system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the
form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such
work.
APIs (ABIs and all 'programming interfaces') are ephemeral, abstract ideas that
do not appear as computer instructions. Only the implementation code actually
exists.
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Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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