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by Martin Fowler.
Original Post: Bliki: API_Copyright
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Feed Description: A cross between a blog and wiki of my partly-formed ideas on software development
Yesterday the Electronic Frontier Foundation released an amicus
brief for a lawsuit on the topic of copyrighting APIs. The brief is
a statement on behalf programmers who oppose the copyrighting of
APIs. I'm one of the signatories to the amicus brief.
The software industry has long had a complicated relationship with
intellectual property law. It's long been held that source code can
be protected by copyright, preventing someone from just copying
someone else's program without their consent. On the whole I'm in
favor of using copyright in this way - as one who writes a lot of
prose describing software development, the mechanism seems to fit
well.
But that fit breaks down when it comes to interfaces of software
components. The whole point of components, as I see it, is that they
represent software elements that are independently replaceable and
upgradeable [1]. Breaking down software
systems into components allows competition to develop, as different
groups compete with better or cheaper components. For this to work,
components need to have common interfaces, which raises the question
of how such interfaces can develop.
So far common interfaces mostly appear by interfaces becoming
widely used and then widely copied. This can be intentionally, with
component authors documenting their interfaces, or
by reverse engineering of closed interfaces. Reverse engineering of
closed interfaces has played a vital role in the development of
software systems we use today - the amicus brief describes examples
such as various elements of Unix, the BIOS of the IBM PC, and the
SMB protocol for network sharing of hard drives.
This background was challenged recently by a case
brought by Oracle against Google's use of Java for Android. There
are a number of
parts to this case, but a key question was whether the API to
core java libraries was copyrightable. Last year a federal
district court ruled that APIs were not copyrightable. Oracle is
appealing against this, the amicus brief that we signed was
organized by the EFF to uphold the district court's ruling.
I am not opposed to intellectual property in general, or the use
of copyright for software. I do think it's reasonable for software
developers to be able to protect their hard work through the course
of an admittedly imperfect legal system. Nor do I deny that
designing a good API is significant intellectual work. But like
everything else in property law, it's about balancing interests.
Copyrightable APIs would erect considerable barriers to innovation
and competition, further limiting the ability of new entrants to
disrupt markets and improve the software ecosystem. This threat is
not a small one, and I'm happy to pay a small part in opposing
it.