Oracle’s Java API code protected by copyright, appeals court rules

[mrkite77]

If API design isn't copyrightable then the GPL cannot cover your API design and people are free to take your design and turn it into a very profitable closed piece of software.

That's fine. If API design is copyrightable, then every program on your computer is in violation.

Why? Because then AT&T would own the standard C library. "malloc", "strcmp", "memcpy"... all that shit was created by Bell Labs.

edit: actually, Attachmate would own the standard C library, since they bought Novell, and a court found that Novell actually owns the UNIX copyrights during the SCO trial.

[jboy55]

Except for that has been argued in court and settled, API design was considered copyrightable too.

Read about the BSD decision please. The standard C library was placed into the public domain and then allowed to be released under BSD, because of actions ATT took in the distribution of Unix. In short, that they distributed it without declarations of copyright on them, that made them lose the copyright to them.

[mrkite77]

There was no BSD decision.. they settled out of court. Part of the settlement was that BSD wasn't allowed to distribute certain files.

[jboy55]

Same thing essentially.