I see a lot of people downplaying the impact of this, saying that it just means the defense falls back to "fair use" - but isn't that the point? Every single op

I see a lot of people downplaying the impact of this, saying that it just means the defense falls back to "fair use" - but isn't that the point? Every single open source project that implements any kind of API now has an individual legal threat that their work might not be "fair use" which can only be decided on a case by case basis. It seems to me like the worst case is that any large corporation, whether it be Microsoft, Google, Oracle or Apple can exterminate just about any open source project with a simple cease and desist letter that they are unable to afford to challenge. Without a crystal clear ruling that APIs are not copyrightable a great portion of open source and non-open source that is now out there seems to be essentially in an untenable position. I really wish Google had invested in the "nuclear" option and pursued a parallel development strategy to move Android entirely away from dependency on Java. If they had started 3 years ago and offered an alternative API (say, for example, based on Go, but it could be anything relatively efficient, even a brand new language), by now there would be a significant base of users and Google would be able to threaten Oracle with a wholesale migration away from Java. Even in their most delusional moments Oracle must know that losing Android would be a huge loss in terms of the mindshare and userbase. I think it's unlikely we'd be seeing Oracle pursuing this to the death if Google hadn't left themselves in such a weak position. (I have a secret hope that they have been doing this and will astonish us all by taking the wraps off it at Google I/O one day ...)