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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-more-apis-for-you dept.

From TechDirt: Top Oracle Lawyer Attempting to Gaslight Entire Software Community: Insists APIs are Executable:

Last week, the Solicitor General of the White House weighed in on Google's request for the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit's ridiculously confused ruling in the Oracle/Google case concerning the copyrightability of APIs (and whether or not repurposing them is fair use). Not surprisingly, as the Solicitor General has been siding with Oracle all along, it suggests that the Supreme Court not hear the case. Of course, it does so by completely misrepresenting what's at stake in the case -- pretending that this is about whether or not software source code is copyright-eligible

[...] Except... that's not what this case is about. Even remotely. Literally no one denies that software source code is subject to copyright. The question is whether or not an Application Programming Interface -- an API -- is subject to copyright. As we've been saying from the beginning, the most frustrating thing about this entire case is that you have non-technically savvy lawyers and judges simply refusing to comprehend that an API is not software. It's not executable code. It's not "source code" for software. An API is a set of specifications for allowing the access of data, an application, or service. It's a "method of operation," which is simply not subject to copyright law. Indeed, back in 1996, the Supreme Court ruled in Lotus v. Borland that a user interface to a computer program is not subject to copyright under Section 102(b) as the interface is a "method of operation."

Whew! At least the .h files in C/C++ would never be considered an API and are thus safe.


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  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:07PM (1 child)

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:07PM (#901354)

    So just to please Oracle, in Android 8 (I think), Google switched from Apache Harmony to genuine open source GPL OpenJDK.

    During the takeover Oracle lawyers specifically interviewed James Gosling about this.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:18PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:18PM (#901360) Journal

    Very soon after the acquisition, Gosling left Oracle. He didn't agree with something they are doing. Then came the lawsuit.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.