ChairmanZach

Why should they? Microsoft has nothing to gain from doing so and reverse engineering interfaces or implementing them under fair use is already allowed.

Wine is also something done explicitly to create compatability, Google made sure Android was not compatible with "regular" Java.

Not only do APIs resemble the chapters and headings of a book, they aslo include the contract that the content under those headings have exactly the same behaviour.

Google didn't just copy the "heading" java.lang.Math.max() they also copied the contract that calling this method should always return the bigger of the two arguments. Ergo, the "content" under the heading is the same, or rather the any differance between the content of Oracle's book and Google's book is irrelevant

As any programmer knows, you code against interfaces not implementations. And if you don't realize that declaring those interfaces take both effort and creativity then you probably aren't a very good programmer.

If they are done by copying someone elses work without permission then by copyright infringement. If done by implementing a standard or through a license etc. then no harm is done.

Do you think that I should be allowed to steal the declaring code of someone elses proprietary solution and pawn of as my own?

Yet Google claims that the implementing code should be protected by copyright. How is "return a > b ? a : b;" not a method of operation if "public static int Max(int a, int b)" is...

If the implementation, CODE(!), is of course a formalized description of methods of operation, the declaring code (or API) is providing a means of access to it. Something that takes quite a bit of thought and creativity to do well.

The .NET standard libraries are part of the CLI which is a part of ISO/IEC 23271:2012, a standard. I have no idea when it comes to the EC2 API.

Should it be legal for me to copy all of the declaring code of my employers product and after writing my own implementation selling it as my own product/work under a different name?

Finding non-shill opinions on this whole issue is quite hard. Once you check the facts of the case it's really quite open-and-shut in Oracle's favor.