I am somewhat ignorant, so I would love it if someone could fill me in on what I'm missing.
* APIs are just as novel as implementations. API design is hard, and interesting, and it's code just as much as a library is code.
* While in this case it would be nice for Google to win because it's a case of a Proprietary software being used for Open Source, I see a far more daunting problem. I see massive companies like AWS reimplementing open source projects' APIs with proprietary solutions, and I'm not sure if copyleft licensing would be able to protect them if Google wins. That sounds far more dangerous to me than a company being able to copyright its API.
* People say this would be a disaster. Is it not the case that, if this happened, that new and novel APIs could be copyrighted? Why is that bad? The difference between a free/proprietary API is that you can't use a drop-in replacement, but we already avoid proprietary software, or overly restrictive software, all the time. So wouldn't we just continue doing so?
edit: From another of my posts, to put it this way:
To me, if I write a program under license X, it is strange to me that someone can reimplement my program's API under an incompatible license Y. To me, that violates my license, and software licenses are enforced via copyright protection.
* APIs are just as novel as implementations. API design is hard, and interesting, and it's code just as much as a library is code.
* While in this case it would be nice for Google to win because it's a case of a Proprietary software being used for Open Source, I see a far more daunting problem. I see massive companies like AWS reimplementing open source projects' APIs with proprietary solutions, and I'm not sure if copyleft licensing would be able to protect them if Google wins. That sounds far more dangerous to me than a company being able to copyright its API.
* People say this would be a disaster. Is it not the case that, if this happened, that new and novel APIs could be copyrighted? Why is that bad? The difference between a free/proprietary API is that you can't use a drop-in replacement, but we already avoid proprietary software, or overly restrictive software, all the time. So wouldn't we just continue doing so?
edit: From another of my posts, to put it this way:
To me, if I write a program under license X, it is strange to me that someone can reimplement my program's API under an incompatible license Y. To me, that violates my license, and software licenses are enforced via copyright protection.