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You’re misunderstanding your cookie analogy. You can’t copyright a single recipe that contains components of other recipes, but if you had written a book titled

You’re misunderstanding your cookie analogy. You can’t copyright a single recipe that contains components of other recipes, but if you had written a book titled “My grandmas chocolate chip cookies from scratch”, where the first recipe is for homemade chocolate chips, the second is for how to grind your own flour for dough, and the third is for combining the previous two into a cookie, then yeah you can copyright that particular set of recipes. But someone else can use any one of your recipes independently without worrying about infringement. Think of it like you put in the effort to curate a collection of recipes that work well together, and that curation is what’s copyrightable. I don’t know what will happen with the law, and if APIs like this will be deemed a “curation”, but it makes a lot more sense to me from that perspective. Ex. Anyone can have a `Math.remainder` function, but the curation of an entire `Math` library might be copyrightable, since the effort was in collecting all of the correct things that work well together, even if they aren’t individually copyrightable. A mega-recipe containing other recipes would be like making a `Math.AddAndThenMultiply`, which even if someone else had created the Add and Multiply methods, you aren’t stealing their API curation of methods, you’re just combining logic/algorithms (ingredients) from multiple methods (recipes) into a bigger method (mega-recipe).

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> You can’t copyright a single recipe that contains components of other recipes, but if you had written a book titled “My grandmas chocolate chip cookies from scratch”, where the first recipe is for homemade chocolate chips, the second is for how to grind your own flour for dough, and the third is for combining the previous two into a cookie, then yeah you can copyright that particular set of recipes. Suppose I want to compile the big book of all known recipes. Then it will contain every recipe in your book, in its entirety, as well as every recipe in every other book. But if I can put the entire contents of your book in my book then what is it that you're really claiming to protect? The order the recipes appear in the book, i.e. the order the classes appear in the file? Which isn't generally regarded as part of the API.
- meling 6y ago
  With the recipe analogy, I would say that the API would be the books table of contents. The recipes themselves are the implementation. So the question is, should the book’s toc be copyrightable? That is, is it lawful to write another book with the exact same toc, but with different recipes/implementations...
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    A ToC doesn't actually work like an API. A ToC cares what order it's in. You can't move Chapter 4 to before Chapter 2 or the implementation has to change. By contrast, the order of functions within a class, or classes within a package, isn't really part of the API -- they're most often in alphabetical order, which is totally mechanistic, and changing the order doesn't change the API. A ToC is also not a rigid formal specification (like a recipe), but that's the core of what an API is.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > A ToC doesn't actually work like an API. > A ToC cares what order it's in. You can't move Chapter 4 to before Chapter 2 or the implementation has to change. This isn't true. Table of Contents Foreword.................i Introduction............ii Preface................xvi Chapter 1................1 Chapter 2...............17 Chapter 3...............30 Chapter 4...............51 Chapter 5...............58 Chapter 6...............76 Compare: Table of Contents Foreword.................i Introduction............ii Preface................xvi Chapter 4...............51 Chapter 1................1 Chapter 2...............17 Chapter 3...............30 Chapter 5...............58 Chapter 6...............76 Note that real-world tables of contents behave in the second way. It's not at all uncommon to see chapters listed in order, followed by other materials (commonly illustrations) which are listed last in the table of contents while being physically interspersed among the chapters.
    - meling 6y ago
      To clarify what I meant. I don’t think the order matters. What would matter is the chapter and section titles... they are the package names and method signatures.
sharkmerry 6y ago
I think OPs idea was where is the smallest unit. A recipe for chocolate chip cookies is a curated collection of recipes for each ingredients, chocolate chip being one.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> You can’t copyright a single recipe that contains components of other recipes, but if you had written a book titled “My grandmas chocolate chip cookies from scratch”, where the first recipe is for homemade chocolate chips, the second is for how to grind your own flour for dough, and the third is for combining the previous two into a cookie, then yeah you can copyright that particular set of recipes. Suppose I want to compile the big book of all known recipes. Then it will contain every recipe in your book, in its entirety, as well as every recipe in every other book. But if I can put the entire contents of your book in my book then what is it that you're really claiming to protect? The order the recipes appear in the book, i.e. the order the classes appear in the file? Which isn't generally regarded as part of the API.

meling 6y ago
With the recipe analogy, I would say that the API would be the books table of contents. The recipes themselves are the implementation. So the question is, should the book’s toc be copyrightable? That is, is it lawful to write another book with the exact same toc, but with different recipes/implementations...
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  A ToC doesn't actually work like an API. A ToC cares what order it's in. You can't move Chapter 4 to before Chapter 2 or the implementation has to change. By contrast, the order of functions within a class, or classes within a package, isn't really part of the API -- they're most often in alphabetical order, which is totally mechanistic, and changing the order doesn't change the API. A ToC is also not a rigid formal specification (like a recipe), but that's the core of what an API is.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > A ToC doesn't actually work like an API. > A ToC cares what order it's in. You can't move Chapter 4 to before Chapter 2 or the implementation has to change. This isn't true. Table of Contents Foreword.................i Introduction............ii Preface................xvi Chapter 1................1 Chapter 2...............17 Chapter 3...............30 Chapter 4...............51 Chapter 5...............58 Chapter 6...............76 Compare: Table of Contents Foreword.................i Introduction............ii Preface................xvi Chapter 4...............51 Chapter 1................1 Chapter 2...............17 Chapter 3...............30 Chapter 5...............58 Chapter 6...............76 Note that real-world tables of contents behave in the second way. It's not at all uncommon to see chapters listed in order, followed by other materials (commonly illustrations) which are listed last in the table of contents while being physically interspersed among the chapters.
  - meling 6y ago
    To clarify what I meant. I don’t think the order matters. What would matter is the chapter and section titles... they are the package names and method signatures.

sharkmerry 6y ago

I think OPs idea was where is the smallest unit. A recipe for chocolate chip cookies is a curated collection of recipes for each ingredients, chocolate chip being one.