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If not BIOS, consider the operating systems themselves. If AT&T had strong copyright claims on the "APIs" that make up the system calls of UNIX, for example th

If not BIOS, consider the operating systems themselves. If AT&T had strong copyright claims on the "APIs" that make up the system calls of UNIX, for example there goes Linux (and essentially the entire GNU and BSD projects as well), there goes modern MacOS, etc, and the reverberations would be enormous even with fully closed sourced OSes like Windows... With strong copyright on APIs there, essentially, goes the Internet as we know it when there isn't a clear path of UNIX->BSD/POSIX->sockets for everyone to copy (and thus be interoperable with each other). And even if we shift the strong copyright event later into the 90s then consider the modern web, if Netscape (which at one point was a very different entity than today's Mozilla in terms of openness) had a strong copyright on the definition of JavaScript's APIs? Or if nobody dared implement their own XMLHttpRequest for fear of Microsoft's API copyright? This is something developers (and anyone who cares about technology, really) should absolutely be hysterical about.

pron 13y ago
Unless the reason those technologies spread is precisely because no one had strong claims, or no one chose to pursue protection. If Netscape had chosen to make JS proprietary, JS wouldn't have become a de-facto standard. I am not aware of any significant proprietary API today that is in widespread use, and is cloned by FOSS. But I could be wrong on that. If you know of such APIs, I'd love to know which ones are in danger.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Again I direct you towards all of the APIs that make up a UNIX-compatible system, which by the logic of this ruling is an API definition whose copyright is currently mostly owned by Novell (since they own the old AT&T rights) and yet is largely cloned in Linux, all the various BSDs, MacOS/Darwin, Android, etc, etc, etc. In a lot of ways the situation being defined by this ruling is way worse than patents given that copyright is essentially infinite these days (pseudo-time-limited, but constantly being extended due to the lobbying efforts of Disney, et al) whereas at least patents, as harmful as they are to overall software industry progress, run out after a couple of decades.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > I am not aware of any significant proprietary API today that is in widespread use, and is cloned by FOSS. On the web front, AWS APIs are significant, proprietary, arguably in widespread use, and cloned by FOSS (Eucalyptus).
  - eurleif 13y ago
    Amazon releases the client side of their API as open source. And none of their server-side code is available at all, so Eucalyptus is obviously not based on that. Seems different.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Since "proprietary API" is a concept invented somewhen about today, by this court decision, of course you know none. NFS is a corporative API developed by SUN, LDAP and Kerberos were also created by a corportaion (IBM), UNIX is a set of APIs created by Bell Labs, just like C.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  That's not really true, things can become de-facto standards even if they're proprietary, especially if the actual status is in doubt. Many developers don't think about the long term consequences of licenses when they start using stuff, especially if it is useful and free of charge. Linux is a perfect example of a proprietary API (Unix) which is in very widespread use, which was cloned by FOSS. Most of the Unix command line utilities were explicitly cloned by the FSF to be compatible with existing shell scripts on Unix. Adobe made Flash proprietary and it became incredibly widespread, so widespread that if you turned if off, many websites would break, despite the fact that it had numerous performance and security issues. Flash made it to something like 97% penetration of all Web clients (prior to Apple iPhone) People have cloned Flash (hAXE for example), but there was really no reason to do it, because Adobe offered the player free of charge. WINE is in widespread use. Samba is in widespread use. Lots of Website REST APIs have been cloned. Adobe PDF was proprietary and widespread cloned until in 2008 it became an open standard. Cloning APIs is a time honored tradition for "embrace and extend". Microsoft even cloned proprietary APIs, and DOS itself started out as an unauthorized clone of CP/M. Where would Bill Gates be today without Seattle Softworks? I hate having to resort to the tired ole idea of rich people having gotten rich by theft, but in many cases, it's quite true, that Gates and Jobs both freely copied, cloned, and modified other people's stuff, got stupendously wealthy off of it, but somehow, it's wrong for us to want to practice their methods?
  - pron 13y ago
    What happened in the past is irrelevant, because after this ruling, it probably won't happen again. The freedom to clone proprietary APIs is not essential to FOSS any more, because the FOSS ecosystem has become powerful on its own. Either proprietary vendors choose to license their APIs to FOSS, or risk being replaced by an incompatible FOSS implementation. My question was about how the current ecosystem will be disrupted. Now, with WINE -- I agree, but I don't think it's in widespread use, and I don't think Microsoft will go after them. AFAIK, Samba implements a networking protocol, not an API (but I may be mistaken). It really all comes down to Linux. If Linux is in danger, then obviously the ecosystem can be disrupted by this ruling; if not -- then probably not. I must say I don't know enough about the current legal status of Linux, and whether or not it's in real danger.

pron 13y ago

Unless the reason those technologies spread is precisely because no one had strong claims, or no one chose to pursue protection. If Netscape had chosen to make JS proprietary, JS wouldn't have become a de-facto standard. I am not aware of any significant proprietary API today that is in widespread use, and is cloned by FOSS. But I could be wrong on that. If you know of such APIs, I'd love to know which ones are in danger.

georgemcbay 13y ago
Again I direct you towards all of the APIs that make up a UNIX-compatible system, which by the logic of this ruling is an API definition whose copyright is currently mostly owned by Novell (since they own the old AT&T rights) and yet is largely cloned in Linux, all the various BSDs, MacOS/Darwin, Android, etc, etc, etc. In a lot of ways the situation being defined by this ruling is way worse than patents given that copyright is essentially infinite these days (pseudo-time-limited, but constantly being extended due to the lobbying efforts of Disney, et al) whereas at least patents, as harmful as they are to overall software industry progress, run out after a couple of decades.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> I am not aware of any significant proprietary API today that is in widespread use, and is cloned by FOSS. On the web front, AWS APIs are significant, proprietary, arguably in widespread use, and cloned by FOSS (Eucalyptus).
- eurleif 13y ago
  Amazon releases the client side of their API as open source. And none of their server-side code is available at all, so Eucalyptus is obviously not based on that. Seems different.
marcosdumay 13y ago
Since "proprietary API" is a concept invented somewhen about today, by this court decision, of course you know none. NFS is a corporative API developed by SUN, LDAP and Kerberos were also created by a corportaion (IBM), UNIX is a set of APIs created by Bell Labs, just like C.
cromwellian 13y ago
That's not really true, things can become de-facto standards even if they're proprietary, especially if the actual status is in doubt. Many developers don't think about the long term consequences of licenses when they start using stuff, especially if it is useful and free of charge. Linux is a perfect example of a proprietary API (Unix) which is in very widespread use, which was cloned by FOSS. Most of the Unix command line utilities were explicitly cloned by the FSF to be compatible with existing shell scripts on Unix. Adobe made Flash proprietary and it became incredibly widespread, so widespread that if you turned if off, many websites would break, despite the fact that it had numerous performance and security issues. Flash made it to something like 97% penetration of all Web clients (prior to Apple iPhone) People have cloned Flash (hAXE for example), but there was really no reason to do it, because Adobe offered the player free of charge. WINE is in widespread use. Samba is in widespread use. Lots of Website REST APIs have been cloned. Adobe PDF was proprietary and widespread cloned until in 2008 it became an open standard. Cloning APIs is a time honored tradition for "embrace and extend". Microsoft even cloned proprietary APIs, and DOS itself started out as an unauthorized clone of CP/M. Where would Bill Gates be today without Seattle Softworks? I hate having to resort to the tired ole idea of rich people having gotten rich by theft, but in many cases, it's quite true, that Gates and Jobs both freely copied, cloned, and modified other people's stuff, got stupendously wealthy off of it, but somehow, it's wrong for us to want to practice their methods?
- pron 13y ago
  What happened in the past is irrelevant, because after this ruling, it probably won't happen again. The freedom to clone proprietary APIs is not essential to FOSS any more, because the FOSS ecosystem has become powerful on its own. Either proprietary vendors choose to license their APIs to FOSS, or risk being replaced by an incompatible FOSS implementation. My question was about how the current ecosystem will be disrupted. Now, with WINE -- I agree, but I don't think it's in widespread use, and I don't think Microsoft will go after them. AFAIK, Samba implements a networking protocol, not an API (but I may be mistaken). It really all comes down to Linux. If Linux is in danger, then obviously the ecosystem can be disrupted by this ruling; if not -- then probably not. I must say I don't know enough about the current legal status of Linux, and whether or not it's in real danger.