On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 11:49 AM, Ralph Corderoy <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Thufir, > >> My understanding is, and I know Luke disagrees violently,
... i neither disagree nor do so with violence. this statement has made things unclear by being untrue. > I doubt he's the only one; perhaps the others, like me, just can't be > bothered to entertain that an API can be copyrighted, and calling it an > SSO doesn't make it any more sensible. > >> is that SSO is a *useful* shorthand for API. > > No shorthand is needed. They are distinct concepts. Both three letters > long. :-) :) my take on the original case (where SSO came up... in the 1970s?) is that it was between two myopic ham-fisted giants fighting over a quail farm, not caring if they killed the quails, crushed the eggs and destroyed the farm itself for both themselves and their descendents in the process. in other words it was two (otherwise highly educated in their field of law) lay-people trying to get to grips with how software works; they failed to educate themselves on even the most basic of software concepts, inventing their own terminology in the process, and, being so utterly clueless about software, have made it incredibly difficult for anyone in the software industry to follow or discuss. regarding SSO and API: the ridiculous over-simplistic and general TLA "SSO" as i understand it, it *very broadly* encompasses the concept of what programmers understand APIs to be, and, unfortunately, covers a hell of a lot more in a way that is completely unclear. by complete contrast, the language of the EU 2009 Copyright Directive (very grateful to the fsfeurope team for bringing it up) is not only clear but also uses terms with which both the computing industry *and* lay-people can get to grips with [*1] l. [*1] if they are prepared to be gasping for mental breath at the end of reading each section because of the lack of full-stops, that is.
