4 ms·

To be clear, what is at stake is not using the API, it is to copy the API. In the case of a website, let's assume that you created ws.com, and that you develop

by d--b 11y ago

To be clear, what is at stake is not using the API, it is to copy the API. In the case of a website, let's assume that you created ws.com, and that you developed an API that answered 'A' when you call ws.com/A, and 'B' when you call ws.com/B. Then you could sue anyone who'd develop a different website that behaves the same way even though the implementation itself may be completely different.

forrestthewoods 11y ago
I'm not entirely convinced that's unreasonable. Designing a good API is hard. Most interfaces are terrible. If someone wants to clone wordpress then maybe they should just design their own API. If the Wordpress API is that good then maybe it's worth licensing.
- swozey 11y ago
  By that logic Ford should copyright a cars brake and gas pedal and force other manufacturers to design completely new interface systems to stop and accelerate cars that aren't brake or gas pedals. Sounds great /s. I don't even know where Cloning WordPress came into your thought process. WordPress runs on top of Apache/nginx. That is what responds to ws.com/a. Interoperability is incredibly important, unless you want to go back to having to run a specific Web browser for every other website that isn't using Web standards / rfcs.
  - imayzon 11y ago
    Actually car companies are starting to patent vehicle control interfaces, (for e.g. Teslas patents for Sunroof control interface [1], Audio Control interface [2], etc) If the current craze of IP-as-offensive-weapon were the trend back in the days where basic vehicular controls were being defined, I think we would have seen some similar behavior from car companies - (and in my opinion, their case would be more defensible than Oracle's software API copyright protection). [1] http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140095029.php http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140095029.php [2] http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140096003.php http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140096003.php Edit: typo
  - forrestthewoods 11y ago
    Ford's API could be copyrighted. Sure. Why not? Every car manufacturer has their own software. Why would you even want Ford's version? The braking API isn't "bool braking;". And acceleration isn't "float accel; // [0,1]". Those systems are wildly complex. Ford's copyrighting of their API does nothing to prevent another manufacturing from making their own.
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- jclulow 11y ago
  By that logic, the Linux ecosystem should be paying a handsome sum to whatever litigious shadow is left holding the UNIX IP.
  - dragandj 11y ago
    Apparently not, because "GNU is Not Unix", while Google deliberately marketed their language as Java to developers.
    - jclulow 11y ago
      It is extremely disingenuous to suggest that some combination of the Linux kernel and surrounding libraries are not intentionally knocking off at least a large subset of UNIX APIs. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, which is part of what makes the Oracle assault so disgusting.
- d--b 11y ago
  Clearly some people at Oracle think that way too. They probably paid a lot for 'owning' the Java language and runtime, and only to see that Google just developed their own, and copied the whole API on top of it. So they are probably pissed that their language is slipping away (Java is definitely no longer associated with the Oracle brand). Thing is Oracle got screwed in the first place, they shouldn't have thought they could "buy" the language.
  - groovy2shoes 11y ago
    I don't think Java was ever associated with the Oracle brand. By the time Oracle acquired Sun, Java was already starting to slip away from being associated with Sun! "Java" was only ever qualified when referring to third-party implementations: you never heard "Sun Java", but you'd sometimes hear "IBM Java", etc. "Sun Java" at some point became just "Java". Personally, as a Java developer from 2005-2012, I never associated Java with Oracle. I can't imagine that I'm the only one. Even now, when I need a JRE or JVM, I navigate to http://java.sun.com/ http://java.sun.com/ instead of wherever it is I'm supposed to go.
- ergothus 11y ago
  Remember why there are govt protections for these things in the first place. Imagine a spectrum - on one side, there are no protections, and people can copy ideas, implementations, etc. For some industries this is no big deal, but for others it would seriously harm the production of new ideas/products, because it remove any financial incentive. Take writers for example: While I think the US copyright terms are stupidly long, I wouldn't want to live in a world where the only books written and published were done so as labors of love. On the other end of the spectrum is a collection of hard, strong rules governing the use of any other ideas. On this end too few new ideas/products are made, because it is in the short-term financial interests of those that have the lock on any market to prevent competition or disruption. We have several industries quite close to this end of the spectrum. The happy place for society is in-between these areas. Lower barriers of entry for potential competitors, so that they can compete. Does this mean that some of these competitors would benefit from the hard work of those that came before? Absolutely! But the alternative is making the barriers to entry too high, so that no competitor can gain traction because they can't be better in all ways and produce an industry interested in compatibility overnight. (Witness Linux and device drivers for a good example) The reason govt offer protections for various areas is NOT to benefit a small number of companies or individuals (in theory) - it's to benefit the whole of society, in the long-term (which should include those companies and individuals, along with future companies and individuals). It's not about protecting that which is _that good_, but about pushing us towards _even better_.

by d--b 11y ago

forrestthewoods 11y ago

I'm not entirely convinced that's unreasonable. Designing a good API is hard. Most interfaces are terrible. If someone wants to clone wordpress then maybe they should just design their own API. If the Wordpress API is that good then maybe it's worth licensing.

swozey 11y ago
By that logic Ford should copyright a cars brake and gas pedal and force other manufacturers to design completely new interface systems to stop and accelerate cars that aren't brake or gas pedals. Sounds great /s. I don't even know where Cloning WordPress came into your thought process. WordPress runs on top of Apache/nginx. That is what responds to ws.com/a. Interoperability is incredibly important, unless you want to go back to having to run a specific Web browser for every other website that isn't using Web standards / rfcs.
- imayzon 11y ago
  Actually car companies are starting to patent vehicle control interfaces, (for e.g. Teslas patents for Sunroof control interface [1], Audio Control interface [2], etc) If the current craze of IP-as-offensive-weapon were the trend back in the days where basic vehicular controls were being defined, I think we would have seen some similar behavior from car companies - (and in my opinion, their case would be more defensible than Oracle's software API copyright protection). [1] http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140095029.php http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140095029.php [2] http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140096003.php http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140096003.php Edit: typo
- forrestthewoods 11y ago
  Ford's API could be copyrighted. Sure. Why not? Every car manufacturer has their own software. Why would you even want Ford's version? The braking API isn't "bool braking;". And acceleration isn't "float accel; // [0,1]". Those systems are wildly complex. Ford's copyrighting of their API does nothing to prevent another manufacturing from making their own.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
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jclulow 11y ago
By that logic, the Linux ecosystem should be paying a handsome sum to whatever litigious shadow is left holding the UNIX IP.
- dragandj 11y ago
  Apparently not, because "GNU is Not Unix", while Google deliberately marketed their language as Java to developers.
  - jclulow 11y ago
    It is extremely disingenuous to suggest that some combination of the Linux kernel and surrounding libraries are not intentionally knocking off at least a large subset of UNIX APIs. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, which is part of what makes the Oracle assault so disgusting.
d--b 11y ago
Clearly some people at Oracle think that way too. They probably paid a lot for 'owning' the Java language and runtime, and only to see that Google just developed their own, and copied the whole API on top of it. So they are probably pissed that their language is slipping away (Java is definitely no longer associated with the Oracle brand). Thing is Oracle got screwed in the first place, they shouldn't have thought they could "buy" the language.
- groovy2shoes 11y ago
  I don't think Java was ever associated with the Oracle brand. By the time Oracle acquired Sun, Java was already starting to slip away from being associated with Sun! "Java" was only ever qualified when referring to third-party implementations: you never heard "Sun Java", but you'd sometimes hear "IBM Java", etc. "Sun Java" at some point became just "Java". Personally, as a Java developer from 2005-2012, I never associated Java with Oracle. I can't imagine that I'm the only one. Even now, when I need a JRE or JVM, I navigate to http://java.sun.com/ http://java.sun.com/ instead of wherever it is I'm supposed to go.
ergothus 11y ago
Remember why there are govt protections for these things in the first place. Imagine a spectrum - on one side, there are no protections, and people can copy ideas, implementations, etc. For some industries this is no big deal, but for others it would seriously harm the production of new ideas/products, because it remove any financial incentive. Take writers for example: While I think the US copyright terms are stupidly long, I wouldn't want to live in a world where the only books written and published were done so as labors of love. On the other end of the spectrum is a collection of hard, strong rules governing the use of any other ideas. On this end too few new ideas/products are made, because it is in the short-term financial interests of those that have the lock on any market to prevent competition or disruption. We have several industries quite close to this end of the spectrum. The happy place for society is in-between these areas. Lower barriers of entry for potential competitors, so that they can compete. Does this mean that some of these competitors would benefit from the hard work of those that came before? Absolutely! But the alternative is making the barriers to entry too high, so that no competitor can gain traction because they can't be better in all ways and produce an industry interested in compatibility overnight. (Witness Linux and device drivers for a good example) The reason govt offer protections for various areas is NOT to benefit a small number of companies or individuals (in theory) - it's to benefit the whole of society, in the long-term (which should include those companies and individuals, along with future companies and individuals). It's not about protecting that which is _that good_, but about pushing us towards _even better_.