Re: "There's a long history of API's being *outside* of the bounds of copyright"
@LDS
You are being downvoted because you correctly understand copyright. That is discouraged here. Only posts which misrepresent the law receive many upvotes.
It is important for all developers that Judge Alsup’s mistakes are corrected, and that Oracle prevails here. Open source software needs strong copyright to protect it from abuses such as you describe. I cannot comprehend how any supporter of open source wants to change the law to make abuse of open source easier, which is the consequence of a Google victory here.
The APIs issue is a misdirection. Google created this to distract poorly informed people from the facts of the case: which is that Google used a lot of Java code (tens of thousands of line), Google knew it needed a license, and should probably go and get a license (all documented in emails). But instead it decided to chance it. It has now run out of road.
