[License-discuss] Copyright on APIs

[Kevin P. Fleming]

As a software developer I have a hard time accepting that designing an
API is not a 'creative' process. If a library to provide a service
offers a function which needs a dozen pieces of information from its
caller, for example, making a choice between accepting all of those as
parameters to the function or creating a structure of some type to
hold all the information and then accepting an instance of that
structure is a decision made by the API designer. This decision will
influence the ease of use and understanding of (and possibly the
ability to extend) the API, and is not a random choice. There are many
other examples of API design decisions which make the API 'hard to use
properly' or 'easy to use improperly' and a well-designed API is
anticipated to avoid these results.

On Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 5:43 PM Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd.de> wrote:
>
> VanL dixit:
>
> >You just put your finger on the issue: Are APIs creative in a copyrightable
> >sense? You assert, without argument, that they are not.
>
> Hmm.
>
> I still think they aren’t creative, but have nothing to back that up.
>
> With them being not under protection from copyright laws as necessary
> for interoperability, I did not worry much about that part (also, still
> no lawyer here, but maybe others can find something out). With this
> exception, my argumentation still stands (I believe).
>
> Google should not have copied ☻
>
> bye,
> //mirabilos
> --
> I believe no one can invent an algorithm. One just happens to hit upon it
> when God enlightens him. Or only God invents algorithms, we merely copy them.
> If you don't believe in God, just consider God as Nature if you won't deny
> existence.              -- Coywolf Qi Hunt
>
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