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Asking the free software foundation their opinion on this is pretty much like asking the turkey if it's looking forward to Christmas. The idea of an API being c
by VBprogrammer 14y ago
Asking the free software foundation their opinion on this is pretty much like asking the turkey if it's looking forward to Christmas. The idea of an API being copyright runs so contrary to their ideals.
That being said, I'd hate to think of the number of APIs which have been cloned without the explicit permission of the copyright owner.
I can't imagine how this wouldn't cause trouble for Wine. Possibly even VirtualBox, it re-implements the IBM PC API. Could any emulator fall victim to this? Isn't a processors instruction set just the API for the processor?
- koenigdavidmj 14y ago> Isn't a processors instruction set just the API for the processor? Especially now that most modern-day processors (at least of the x86 family) translate their native instruction set to a microcode.
- ktizo 14y agoI wonder if DOS would have got off the ground if this Oracle view was generally accepted reality. The makers of CP/M would presumably have had a field day.
- fpgeek 14y agoCould still have a field day... copyright doesn't expire (in practice).
- othermaciej 14y agoDoesn't the GPL rely on copyrightability of APIs, in that it claims even code linking to a GPL library is subject to the GPL? That's one reason this might be surprising; a finding against API copyrightability might be taken as undermining the GPL.
- VBprogrammer 14y agoI don't think so but I'm not an expert. The ruling in this case would be that no own could implement the same API without violating the copyright on the GPL code. For example you couldn't create a GPL free glib etc. I would be willing to bet that if that ruling would cause vastly more issues than it solves for the open source community.