311–320 of 771 posts
If IBM had been allowed a universal copyright on the API for its BIOS, it’s very likely you wouldn’t be reading this on the device you’re using today.
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If I'd publish a cookbook with the same chapters and recipe names as a different cookbook, but every recipe my own creation from scratch; I wouldn't consider that copyright infringement.
Maybe, but imagine the original cookbook as a website with hundreds of pages of recipe titles and descriptions, each with a link to the body of the recipe. Someone clones those hundreds of pages, replacing only the domain name in the links. Now is it copyright infringement? Can designing an API be a different job from implementing a design? If so, then maybe the work product of the designer is copyrightable on its ow…
meat.beef
.. BeefAndPotatos
.. BeefAndCabbage
fish.cod
.. CodWithPeas
.. CodWithChips
This is literally an exact representation of what an API looks like. You go to a recipe and you execute it expecting a result. And you get one, the implementation of it is up to the author of the book.
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> I’m not even leftist; but even in the capitalist/libertarian theory, the state shouldn’t help guard private companies’ rights in software. If you publish it, the recipient has it, period. The state lending its judges to enforce exclusive rights for a few years is already a big extraction of collective resources for private interests. How is software, something of which there is an infinite supply that doesn’t exist…
Millions of people can use VI at once without any direct impact on Bill Joy or his even even noticing it. Millions of people using his back yard at once would be an entirely different matter!
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If I'd publish a cookbook with the same chapters and recipe names as a different cookbook, but every recipe my own creation from scratch; I wouldn't consider that copyright infringement.
Can you even create a recipe from scratch after you've learned the recipe from somebody else, will it not always be a derivative work at best, and a copy at worst? Sure, you can add or remove an egg, or change the order or when to add salt or pepper, but an omelette is an omelette.
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AWS licenses it's client library as under the Apache License. ( https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java/blob/master/LICENSE.txt ) Doesn't that mean anyone can build an interoperable service? I can then benefit from other cloud providers implementing the same API. I don't need access to AWS' source code, I wasn't going to deploy a private cloud anyway. All I want is robust competition.
I would guess that it doesn't work out that way. The Apache license has the patent clause, but it doesn't have a comparable "API copyright" clause. Though perhaps another consequence of an Oracle win is that we end up with an Apache3 license.
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Maybe, but imagine the original cookbook as a website with hundreds of pages of recipe titles and descriptions, each with a link to the body of the recipe. Someone clones those hundreds of pages, replacing only the domain name in the links. Now is it copyright infringement? Can designing an API be a different job from implementing a design? If so, then maybe the work product of the designer is copyrightable on its ow…
No, I'm not imagining it as a website. An API is literally just a table of contents. meat.beef .. BeefAndPotatos .. BeefAndCabbage fish.cod .. CodWithPeas .. CodWithChips This is literally an exact representation of what an API looks like. You go to a recipe and you execute it expecting a result. And you get one, the implementation of it is up to the author of the book.
An API is more like a set of mechanical gears that just happen to be shaped a little like words. If I change the names of things in a table of contents to synonyms, I can still use it to find what I am looking for. If I change the names of things my implementation of an API, it no longer functions as an interface for the things that worked with it previously.
An API, despite looking like works, is not a literary expression of a process, it is a machine for executing the process itself, and its shape, is essential to its function.
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> This might not just be a disaster for Google - it could be a disaster for software everywhere. Not in the EU where there is precedence with SAP/R3 saying APIs are not copyrightable.
The tech world is in the US, not the EU.
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AWS licenses it's client library as under the Apache License. ( https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java/blob/master/LICENSE.txt ) Doesn't that mean anyone can build an interoperable service? I can then benefit from other cloud providers implementing the same API. I don't need access to AWS' source code, I wasn't going to deploy a private cloud anyway. All I want is robust competition.
I would guess that it doesn't work out that way. The Apache license has the patent clause, but it doesn't have a comparable "API copyright" clause. Though perhaps another consequence of an Oracle win is that we end up with an Apache3 license.
For a copyright infringement to have taken place, there generally needs to be an unauthorised instance of recording or of duplication, of some copyrighted work.
I put generally as, I believe, precisely recreating someone else's photo can still count as an infringement of their copyrights, despite that you haven't copied the image itself in the usual sense of making duplicates. Singing someone else's song can also infringe on their copyrights over the song. I don't think this would apply here though.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, I could well be missing something obvious.)
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> who? That's an interesting question. Perhaps K&R? Or maybe their employer? Or perhaps by now the copyright may be with ANSI/ISO? But this does raise an interesting point, about who would own copyright on something that was not believed to be copyrightable for much of its history.
The current owner would probably be Micro Focus, from acquiring Attachmate from acquiring Novell from acquiring Unix System Laboratories from AT&T.
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I agree. Personally, I espouse the "copyright should not exist at all" viewpoint. However, I think in the current legal framework, APIs are clearly copyrightable. However, re-implementing the APIs should obviously be allowed under fair use. Remember that copyright exists solely for the purposes of increasing the production of otherwise-easily-copyable works that take time to create but then are "worthless" (i.e. the…
> They produced a better product, and the market rewarded them for that. You could make that same argument about patents in general, couldn't you? If you invent something, say, a new battery, and somebody else copies it, doesn't have your R&D-costs invested and prices it accordingly lower than you, the market will "reward them" by buying from them instead of you, they're getting the same thing after all. We do want s…
It would be more about copying the batteries terminal structure, such that you could build products compatible with the battery or a battery compatible with the products. It snot about copying the battery, its about supporting interoperability. That's what is at risk here. Sixty seven different kinds of outlets, or arbitrarily expensive ones where the "design" itself is licesned, instead of the code.