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It's pretty explicitly written that they mean for this to apply to the specification, not just the documentation. > You may not use or adapt this material for

by tedivm 5y ago

It's pretty explicitly written that they mean for this to apply to the specification, not just the documentation. > You may not use or adapt this material for any commercial purpose, such as to create a commercial database or database-as-a-service offering. It'll be exciting to see Oracle vs Google turn into Mongo vs AWS, which is clearly where this is eventually going.

deleted 5y ago
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jchw 5y ago
The specification itself is documentation. edit: I mean, it’s not that I strongly care, but why not explain if you disagree? How exactly is a specification not a form of documentation? The relevant definition for spec would probably be: > a detailed description of the design and materials used to make something. That sounds an awful lot like documentation. Maybe you are implying that you can’t read it and then make your own implementation of that reading, but that’s not true. IANAL, but I’d be willing to bet my lawful ass it means you can’t reproduce the document for your own commercial implementation. Not that you can’t reference it. I don’t think “derivative” is that strong.
- derefr 5y ago
  Presuming the wire-protocol specification contains things like schemas for Protobuf/Avro/etc. data formats (the kind of formats where most compiled-language libraries for them do compile-time code-generation against the schema to create efficient codec modules), it would be very hard to make a conforming implementation that doesn't breach copyright by embedding those schemas byte-for-byte.
  - adambatkin 5y ago
    If you reverse-engineered the protocol (either from scratch, or by looking at existing implementations) and happened to (independently) come up with an identical looking data schema, that would _not_ be protected by copyright.
  - jchw 5y ago
    How would making a byte-compatible protobuf by simply looking at the existing one be different than say, creating metric-compatible fonts, or, for example, pretty much exactly what Google did in the Oracle lawsuit? (Copy them verbatim because they shouldn’t be copyrightable...) Even if you subscribe to the belief that the protobufs are eligible for protection under copyright law, which is fair since it seems to be the current understanding even if it is relatively new, I still don’t understand how creating compatible specs without reversing is illicit. It’s fair use, no? I thought interoperability was a valid claim for fair use.

by tedivm 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jchw 5y ago

The specification itself is documentation. edit: I mean, it’s not that I strongly care, but why not explain if you disagree? How exactly is a specification not a form of documentation? The relevant definition for spec would probably be: > a detailed description of the design and materials used to make something. That sounds an awful lot like documentation. Maybe you are implying that you can’t read it and then make your own implementation of that reading, but that’s not true. IANAL, but I’d be willing to bet my lawful ass it means you can’t reproduce the document for your own commercial implementation. Not that you can’t reference it. I don’t think “derivative” is that strong.

derefr 5y ago
Presuming the wire-protocol specification contains things like schemas for Protobuf/Avro/etc. data formats (the kind of formats where most compiled-language libraries for them do compile-time code-generation against the schema to create efficient codec modules), it would be very hard to make a conforming implementation that doesn't breach copyright by embedding those schemas byte-for-byte.
- adambatkin 5y ago
  If you reverse-engineered the protocol (either from scratch, or by looking at existing implementations) and happened to (independently) come up with an identical looking data schema, that would _not_ be protected by copyright.
- jchw 5y ago
  How would making a byte-compatible protobuf by simply looking at the existing one be different than say, creating metric-compatible fonts, or, for example, pretty much exactly what Google did in the Oracle lawsuit? (Copy them verbatim because they shouldn’t be copyrightable...) Even if you subscribe to the belief that the protobufs are eligible for protection under copyright law, which is fair since it seems to be the current understanding even if it is relatively new, I still don’t understand how creating compatible specs without reversing is illicit. It’s fair use, no? I thought interoperability was a valid claim for fair use.