[License-discuss] Copyright on APIs

[Lawrence Rosen]

Hi Pam,

 

I want to credit you for being far more familiar than I am with the pleadings in the Oracle v. Google case between those two huge software vendors. You are a more competent attorney than I at such things. Perhaps, as you suggest, the Supreme Court will take a narrow view of the issues and resolve this case on the basis of fair use and functional compatibility for software used only in similar software ecosystems. 

 

Nevertheless, I retain some hope that Justice Ginsberg, the copyright expert on the Supreme Court, will convince her colleagues that copyright should not be allowed on functional APIs, in accordance with 17 USC 102(b). 

 

But my current issue is with OSI. Several weeks ago, when you started touting the ambiguous term "software freedom," I argued that Principle #5 in my book required that "open source licensees are free to combine open source and other software." My comments were then ignored by the OSI board. 

 

I again plead with OSI, regardless of what the Supreme Court does with the Oracle v. Google case, that OSI never again approve an open source license* that  purports to impede in any way by copyright infringement the freedom to copy and use any functional API in any open source software. This should be OUR requirement for software freedom. You should educate the public that this is OUR goal for open source.

 

/Larry

 

* Like the GPL and the AGPL!

 

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