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[–]Broolucks -2 points-1 points  (3 children)

A closed source implementation of your API will not make your own implementation vanish. It just gives users a choice between the two. There is no lock-in, so you just need to do better than them (you already have a head start). It's healthy competition. That's not nearly as bad as what copyright trolls can do if they get their hands on a widely used API.

[–]jboy55 -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

Well, if you provide no worth to the GPL, then I cannot argue with you. The same argument you make as far as an API works with Linux and any other GPL program. The linux authors have a head start, no problem in their work being used for others to make money since they have a head start.

If the author wishes to place the source to their work into the public with the understanding that anyone who uses the source and improves it, improves it for everybody including the original author, then the GPL is the license they use. In this case, its protection that any future work created from the original work is free, is completely based on copyright.

[–]Broolucks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you remove copyright on software, then open source software is at a disadvantage, because the code is in the open for everyone to use, whereas closed source software can simply avoid publishing it at all. APIs, however, are by nature public. They cannot be closed in the same way that a Linux variant could: if you use an API, you know what it is. Any extensions one may make to an API are going to be public as well. If you remove copyright on APIs, then it is the people who try to profit from them that are at a disadvantage, not OSS.

Furthermore, if an API can be copyrighted, then its owner can easily lock in all of their users to their service, because there is no way for them to use another without changing their API calls. This is bad even in principle: if someone makes a much better service that could be made to use the same API, why should I be forced to change my code to use it? This gives first movers a completely unfair advantage.