On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 11:25:32 +0100, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
>> The FSF is ok with, in the words of not just the appeals court, but the >> original trial judge, stealing the SSO of a computer program? > > Is it your view that an API defines the "structure, sequence and > organization" of computer programs if they're implemented in a manner > that isn't deliberately trying to be perverse? Yes. However, on page 37 they use the phrase "SSO of the Java API". In terms of an API "expiring" due to time or usage (or being forked?), they say, no, that Scenes a Faire doesn't apply to Java. Just because it's widely adopted and is "standard, stock, or common to a topic" that there's no copyright protection. That being said, if you can diagram the decades over which a standard evolved, I think that would be a convincing argument for a specific SSO to a particular API. Maybe Google just didn't argue this point well, or it's a bad example and dbm.h would have a different result, which goes to the larger question of intent. Why copy, and the appeals court says Google copied verbatim (p 10), a flawed API? The intent wasn't to implement the API but to ride the coat-tails of Java (page 51). I think it starts and ends with intentions. -Thufir On Sun, Oct 19, 2014 at 3:25 AM, Ralph Corderoy <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Thufir, > > > The FSF is ok with, in the words of not just the appeals court, but > > the original trial judge, stealing the SSO of a computer program? > > Is it your view that an API defines the "structure, sequence and > organization" of computer programs if they're implemented in a manner > that isn't deliberately trying to be perverse? > > That seems wrong to me. See the many key-value stores that descend from > dbm.h over the decades. The API has been the same in many cases, in > order the new implementation be adopted by the old's users, but the > new's implementation has been novel in order to give benefits over the > old. > > (Please try and be succinct in answering; I find the lengthy replies > that rebut every paragraph are too much noise when all of our time is > precious.) > > Cheers, Ralph. >
