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Comment by meddlepal | Hacker News Reader

Could Mongo or other companies use the Oracle v. Google precedent regarding API copyright to extract money from competitive vultures like Amazon?

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I hope like hell that horrible precedent doesn't stand; if you find yourself on Oracle's side you may want to rethink some of your priors. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of this specific issue, some solutions are worse than the problems they solve.

No, because the API was made open source as it’s just part of the MongoDB source code. Future changes to the API made under Mongo’s new license would in theory be eligible for such protection - but what that means in practice is anyone’s guess. For starters they would need to be “substantial”. I can’t imagine Mongo going down that road.

Oracle are the good guys in this scenario?

They always were the OK guys in that argument. Google invented a whole new VM and bastardized the language just to get out of a $1/device licensing fee for mobile uses. The Java ecosystem has been irreparably harmed by Dalvik and its lack of support for more modern versions of Java.

On another note, anyone that doesn't think API design is a creative endeavor and worthy of protection probably has never made a great API before. It may be OK to accept that and also let other people use the API for free but I think ruling that it isn't is BS.

I also always found it amusing that people thought API design was not creative and protectable.

Like, “how many ways can you do a date api”, and then turn around to look at the original java Date api, the Calendar api, JodaTime and JSR310.

An API is just a collection of facts of the form, "if the system gets input X, the system produces output Y". And facts shouldn't be copyrightable.

You could describe inventions as "facts" too, are you saying that inventions shouldn't be patentable as well?

Maybe the fundamental properties of the universe aren't copyrightable/trademarkable/patentable, but what you CHOOSE to do with those - what API you design or what widget you build out of it certainly is.

Patents and copyrights are two very different things, though. I don't know if APIs are patentable, but that's a very different question. Has anybody ever successfully patented an API?

> The Java ecosystem has been irreparably harmed by Dalvik and its lack of support for more modern versions of Java.

So if ReactOS gets popular but doesn't support Windows 10 APIs, will it be harming the windows ecosystem? If popular implementations of a tool exist that don't chase other (official or not) implementations' features but still get lots of users, that probably means that the popular implementations provide other benefits.

> API design is a creative endeavor

I agree with that.

> and worthy of [legal] protection

But not that.

With current copyright law you basically can't agree with both of those statements as they are mutually exclusive.

Not likely because the Apache 2 licence version they are compatible with includes an explicit copyright and patent licence grant.

I don't think so, isn't the API version they're using still covered under an Apache license?

Even if true this would not be a win for open software.

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