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Unpopular Opinion: Maybe it would be a good if API’s were subject to copyright protection.

• detaro 7y ago
  Wouldn't that likely lead to all kinds of legal trouble about "your API for the same problem is to similar to ours"? Is it generally good to forbid making compatible implementations of APIs?
• tobylane 7y ago
  Wasn’t that part of why Oracle v Google was disliked?
  • forrestthewoods 7y ago
    Yes. That’s why it’s an unpopular opinion! But I’m still not sure it’s a wrong one.
• ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  If APIs were subject to copyright protection, Linux would probably never have happened. All the commercial UNIXes were licensed descendants of the original Bell Labs UNIX code base; Linux was a unlicensed re-implementation of UNIX by Linus. [EDIT] The same goes for WINE and the various Windows APIs.
• int_19h 7y ago
  Do you want to live in a world with less interoperability all around?