Reply to post:

White House forced to wade into Oracle vs Google Java bickerfest

Indolent Wretch

I've written APIs too.

The API is a list of function calls.

They are 99% functional and anyone who thinks the naming of the functions or parameters is expressive enough to require copyright protection thinks too highly of themselves.

As they are not expressive they should not be copyrightable. As copyright is to protect expression.

Most people felt the law on that was quite specific. Unfortunately it wasn't.

This is a barrier to market issue. Lets say you come up with a brilliant innovative way of doing some mathematical analysis.

You release a library with an API. The API has 20 or so function calls for doing the mathematics.

It's a huge success everyone doing X starts to use your library/API. You make a fortune. Life is good.

5 years later I come up with another way of doing it. Maybe it's as brilliant, maybe more, maybe less, maybe it's almost as good, maybe I'm selling it cheap. Regardless I want to compete with your product.

This ruling means my API has to be entirely different, this creates a massive barrier to competition. As anyone who is currently using your API has to either (A) rewrite their code or (B) perform their own copyright violation by writing an abstraction layer.

This is a bad thing. Especially for the small to medium developers.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon