Actually, it didn't. If you are referring to Apple vs. Microsoft in the 1980s, then that wasn't the reason Apple lost--although it is popular to say so.
Apple granted Microsoft a license to use certain elements of the UI, and Microsoft exploited this license by using such elements in their own GUI system.
Apple lost some of their claims because apparently the license was broad enough to cover most anything. Note that they did win some copyright claims.
That is true. However, they are not asserting copyright over the functionality to which the API gives. They are asserting ownership over the structure, sequence, and organization of the API.
Think of it as a copyright on a telephone-book. The copyright is not on the numbers, the names, nor on the utility provided by such a list in searching for someone. The copyright is on the structure of the book itself.
No, you are the one who can't seem to comprehend my response.
You said,
We already know that covering the damned planet in windmills wouldn't be a problem, because it is supposed to be covered in trees.
That argument assumes that a windmill would serve as an exact replacement for a tree, as if surface area covered is the only factor that influences the environment.
Your personal attacks and demands that I refrain from responding, do not magically make you know what you are talking about.
But what else can one expect from a Slashdot discussion?
Your argument falls apart by the fact that trees do a lot more to the environment than rob it of wind or energy. Plus, by being part of the natural state of the environment, they interact in much more complex ways in a feedback loop with the rest of the system.
As opposed to a tree, a windmill sequesters the wind energy and transforms and transfers it outside the system. It also does not participate in beneficial gas exchanges, or provide food for other organisms within the system.
Finally, a windmill most definitely does not have a lifespan dictated and controlled by the environment, that allows it to recycle and refresh the system.
Not to mention, who will decide to just switch off the turbines once we build a system large enough that our population depends on it as its primary source of energy?
If it's big enough to cause climate change, it's probable that enough has been invested in it.
Of course, duh! Who in the world ever imagined that producing energy at the scale needed for modern global consumption would not have an impact on its source or environment. The type of source is of little consequence.
The same, I'm sure, holds true for bio-fuels, fusion, and even solar power. $DEITY only knows what extreme changes will occur to the surface temperature of the planet if we ever figure out how to absorb large quantities of solar light as our primary energy source.
Well, that's just the thing: you can have copyright on APIs and still have interoperability.
Consider something like patents on a particular technology. If you want your invention to take hold in the marketplace and serve as a standard (de facto, or certified), then it is in your best interest to offer agreeable terms for access.
Likewise for copyrighted APIs: If your intention is for your API to serve as a model and standard for the industry, then it is incumbent on you to release it under an applicable license that ensures interoperability and limits or eliminates liability.
Otherwise, people won't adopt it. It's that simple.
What, you think that allowing copyrights on APIs all of a sudden will cause all software architects to release APIs with the express purpose of not allowing interoperability? Why would they do this?
They should have control over their rights, just as implementors have control over which technologies they chose to adopt.
Wow, check out your timeline. Nintendo came out with the Famicon in 1983. Their distribution contract for America was cancelled due to the video game crash here, but the device was released successfully in Japan and other parts of Asia.
To say that "without the gaming crash of the 1980s, we never would have had Nintendo," is to miss the fact that Nintendo was thriving before, during, and after that crash; and that the NES that USA saw in 1985 was actually developed and produced years before.
You also misunderstood the reasons for the crash. Sure, there was plenty of crap titles, but it was more an overestimation of demand for what turned out to be largely a fad. The gold rush ended up being a bubble that popped. Some accounts even suggest that video games were superseded by another popular fad, MTV.
Nintendo wheathered out the storm by producing for other markets, and then came back after the smoke had settled. The industry that flowered after that, avoided overestimating demand. However crap titles continued coming up. Fly by night developers looking for a quick buck have always been there and in every industry.
Reading statements like the recent comment by an Apple exec about how great Foxconn's ability to get people up in the middle of the night to make a change to a product design reminds me that this attitude is still alive in senior positions.
Wow! You, sir, win the Godwin Award of the Interwebz. Not only for your analogy, but for the sheer temerity of trying to divert the discussion into an Apple-hate direction--a discussion about Nazis, no less!
Not to disagree with your overall point, or to condone book burning, but part of the intellectual defense for open publication and freedom of the press is the idea that sharing thoughts via written words empowers individuals by exposing them to external ideas, possibly contradictory or controversial ones.
Either that is true, in which case books may affect large numbers of your populace, or they are absolutely inert and useless. You can't have it both ways.
The scary part is not that they may affect the population--that should be expected, for better or worse. The scary part is when the populace is prevented from accessing information (whether that information is good or bad), shrouding the topic in mystic, and inadvertently depriving them of the tools of reason that could help them avoid the mistakes of the past; or of contrary arguments or context that could allow them to frame their understanding accordingly.
Wow, talk about missing the forest by the trees. Did you even read that article? The point was not to single out the small piece of code as a smoking gun, but as an example of a lack of discipline in setting up the so-called "clean room" environment, which seems to cast the entire endeavor into question:
While the amount of code unto itself may seem trivial, it does hold implications for Google's assertions that it used a "clean room" when creating Android -- in this case, ensuring that engineers working on the project didn't have access to copyrighted code from Sun or Oracle.
Nice ad hominem attack there, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
Because the copyright does not apply to the functionality of the API, it applies to the format and organization of the function calls.
You can't copyright a number, and you can't copyright the idea of looking someone's phone number in a list. But you can copyright an ordered collection of numbers as an artful expression of of such a list.
An API is more than "all about functionality"; it is an artful expression of the collection of function calls, and their parameter signatures, needed to implement such functionality.
I am sure that the process you describe could be automated, except for the lawyers who has, as we all know, a magical ability to understand how to make the difference between two copyrightable work and decide they are different (a process that, as far as I know, is non-computable for a lack of coherent definitions)
Except that the first step starts with the analysis of the fully built system, as a black box, not its source code. In essence, you write the specification based on empirical data obtained by observing the behaviour of the system.
It is not computable, since by definition you do not know what is the behaviour you will observe before doing so, and so you cannot account for all its variables until you start.
A programming language is not an idea; it is a creative product, like a novel or a song or a software program. It has rules and symbols. You cannot copyright the idea of a programming language, but the invention of a programming language is a specific manifestation or expression of that idea.
You can't copyright the English language because it has existed for centuries and nobody owns it specifically (plus, it's the de facto medium of expression of a mass of people), but you can copyright Elfish, or Klingon, or whatever language you happen invent.
It may not be adopted as a standard means of expression if you do so, but you can.
Slashdot Mirror
To put it in terms that the parent poster can understand, Coca-Cola has a patent on curved bottles.
Now he can go on to rage about one more indignity on innovation imposed by the patent system.
-dZ.
Actually, it didn't. If you are referring to Apple vs. Microsoft in the 1980s, then that wasn't the reason Apple lost--although it is popular to say so.
Apple granted Microsoft a license to use certain elements of the UI, and Microsoft exploited this license by using such elements in their own GUI system.
Apple lost some of their claims because apparently the license was broad enough to cover most anything. Note that they did win some copyright claims.
-dZ.
You do know that the iPhone was extremely popular before Angry Birds and DropBox, right?
Also, if a user searches for apps in the Apple App Store, then buys one, how is this not Apple bringing the app developer clients?
It cuts both ways: do you seriously think DropBox would have been as popular if it wasn't available on one of the most popular phones?
-dZ.
That is true. However, they are not asserting copyright over the functionality to which the API gives. They are asserting ownership over the structure, sequence, and organization of the API.
Think of it as a copyright on a telephone-book. The copyright is not on the numbers, the names, nor on the utility provided by such a list in searching for someone. The copyright is on the structure of the book itself.
-dZ.
No, you are the one who can't seem to comprehend my response.
You said,
That argument assumes that a windmill would serve as an exact replacement for a tree, as if surface area covered is the only factor that influences the environment.
Your personal attacks and demands that I refrain from responding, do not magically make you know what you are talking about.
But what else can one expect from a Slashdot discussion?
dZ.
One should wonder why it doesn't work in the case of getting Linux more widespread.
It did, which is why it is so common among the geek community.
The problem is that the average person doesn't really listen to his geek friend.
Don't forget that if there is enough ambiguity in the cause of the crash, it was probably shot down by aliens.
Your argument falls apart by the fact that trees do a lot more to the environment than rob it of wind or energy. Plus, by being part of the natural state of the environment, they interact in much more complex ways in a feedback loop with the rest of the system.
As opposed to a tree, a windmill sequesters the wind energy and transforms and transfers it outside the system. It also does not participate in beneficial gas exchanges, or provide food for other organisms within the system.
Finally, a windmill most definitely does not have a lifespan dictated and controlled by the environment, that allows it to recycle and refresh the system.
-dZ.
Not to mention, who will decide to just switch off the turbines once we build a system large enough that our population depends on it as its primary source of energy?
If it's big enough to cause climate change, it's probable that enough has been invested in it.
Of course, duh! Who in the world ever imagined that producing energy at the scale needed for modern global consumption would not have an impact on its source or environment. The type of source is of little consequence.
The same, I'm sure, holds true for bio-fuels, fusion, and even solar power. $DEITY only knows what extreme changes will occur to the surface temperature of the planet if we ever figure out how to absorb large quantities of solar light as our primary energy source.
-dZ.
Actually, he was imagining the ChromeBook, if such a device were locked into Wikipedia as its only resource.
Slightly cheaper, very convenient, but whose content is largely apocryphal.
Well, that's just the thing: you can have copyright on APIs and still have interoperability.
Consider something like patents on a particular technology. If you want your invention to take hold in the marketplace and serve as a standard (de facto, or certified), then it is in your best interest to offer agreeable terms for access.
Likewise for copyrighted APIs: If your intention is for your API to serve as a model and standard for the industry, then it is incumbent on you to release it under an applicable license that ensures interoperability and limits or eliminates liability.
Otherwise, people won't adopt it. It's that simple.
What, you think that allowing copyrights on APIs all of a sudden will cause all software architects to release APIs with the express purpose of not allowing interoperability? Why would they do this?
They should have control over their rights, just as implementors have control over which technologies they chose to adopt.
-dZ.
Wow, check out your timeline. Nintendo came out with the Famicon in 1983. Their distribution contract for America was cancelled due to the video game crash here, but the device was released successfully in Japan and other parts of Asia.
To say that "without the gaming crash of the 1980s, we never would have had Nintendo," is to miss the fact that Nintendo was thriving before, during, and after that crash; and that the NES that USA saw in 1985 was actually developed and produced years before.
You also misunderstood the reasons for the crash. Sure, there was plenty of crap titles, but it was more an overestimation of demand for what turned out to be largely a fad. The gold rush ended up being a bubble that popped. Some accounts even suggest that video games were superseded by another popular fad, MTV.
Nintendo wheathered out the storm by producing for other markets, and then came back after the smoke had settled. The industry that flowered after that, avoided overestimating demand. However crap titles continued coming up. Fly by night developers looking for a quick buck have always been there and in every industry.
dZ.
Wow! You, sir, win the Godwin Award of the Interwebz. Not only for your analogy, but for the sheer temerity of trying to divert the discussion into an Apple-hate direction--a discussion about Nazis, no less!
I'm impressed.
-dZ.
Except in Slashdot. This thread seems to be immune to the mention of Nazis in the summary.
By definition, shouldn't the comment thread been stopped and locked the moment the summary was posted?
Not to disagree with your overall point, or to condone book burning, but part of the intellectual defense for open publication and freedom of the press is the idea that sharing thoughts via written words empowers individuals by exposing them to external ideas, possibly contradictory or controversial ones.
Either that is true, in which case books may affect large numbers of your populace, or they are absolutely inert and useless. You can't have it both ways.
The scary part is not that they may affect the population--that should be expected, for better or worse. The scary part is when the populace is prevented from accessing information (whether that information is good or bad), shrouding the topic in mystic, and inadvertently depriving them of the tools of reason that could help them avoid the mistakes of the past; or of contrary arguments or context that could allow them to frame their understanding accordingly.
-dZ.
Sure. Go ahead, let us know how it goes.
Wow, talk about missing the forest by the trees. Did you even read that article? The point was not to single out the small piece of code as a smoking gun, but as an example of a lack of discipline in setting up the so-called "clean room" environment, which seems to cast the entire endeavor into question:
Nice ad hominem attack there, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
OK then, Mr. Anonymous Coward, what makes you any less of a "loon," and your statements any less "full of shit"?
Which "law and precedence" are you talking about, and why should I believe you over another random Slashdot user?
-dZ.
Because the copyright does not apply to the functionality of the API, it applies to the format and organization of the function calls.
You can't copyright a number, and you can't copyright the idea of looking someone's phone number in a list. But you can copyright an ordered collection of numbers as an artful expression of of such a list.
An API is more than "all about functionality"; it is an artful expression of the collection of function calls, and their parameter signatures, needed to implement such functionality.
Or it could be. Only a judge can decide that.
-dZ.
>> [Cravat: Maybe there is and Oracle simply didn't want to present it. But that seems unlikely]
Psst! I think you mean "caveat," which means a warning or statement of caution. A cravat is a sort of fancy neckerchief. Or else, I missed a pun!
-dZ.
Except that the first step starts with the analysis of the fully built system, as a black box, not its source code. In essence, you write the specification based on empirical data obtained by observing the behaviour of the system.
It is not computable, since by definition you do not know what is the behaviour you will observe before doing so, and so you cannot account for all its variables until you start.
-dZ.
Also don't forget that some of those "Google engineers" were "Sun engineers" not too long before.
-dZ.
A programming language is not an idea; it is a creative product, like a novel or a song or a software program. It has rules and symbols. You cannot copyright the idea of a programming language, but the invention of a programming language is a specific manifestation or expression of that idea.
You can't copyright the English language because it has existed for centuries and nobody owns it specifically (plus, it's the de facto medium of expression of a mass of people), but you can copyright Elfish, or Klingon, or whatever language you happen invent.
It may not be adopted as a standard means of expression if you do so, but you can.
-dZ.