Re: The devel is in the details
I think that you'll find that the border between "language" and API is fuzzier than you are making out. Not all programming interfaces exist just as function prototypes in a C-like syntax: some syntax is api. Every word in forth, smalltalk and lisp/scheme "languages" is a function API. Whether access to an API is by changing an instruction pointer value or a dialog in a particular serialised protocol (say, HTTP, or CORBA) is unlikely to make any significant difference to the principle at stake here. Sure, Matlab and SQL are languages, but they're also the APIs to a database and matrix engine, and within them there are both procedures and functions that have specific meanings. Now SQL has been standardized, but it originally belonged to IBM, and not all standards (even ISO standards) have free terms, let alone RAND, especially where patents are involved.
That OpenGL was open-sourced by SGI themselves may or may not be pertinent. Java was open-sourced by its creator too. Clearly the details do matter, but I think that reasonable people can disagree about the significance and meaning of specific details.
I'm not saying that there are impending court cases in any of these examples. Just pointing out that the activity in question is, on one form or another, common practice and has long historical record.
If we're really, really lucky, the ruling on the current case will be narrow enough that we (other than google and oracle specifically) can go about our business as before.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
