[staticassertion]

> ou want people to build on top of it rather than making up a new and utterly foreign thing every time, so you want people to copy the exact things about it that make this possible, correctly.

As the copyright holder you are free to grant that right to anyone. In fact, if Google wins, you just won't have a choice in the matter. If Oracle wins it's far more inline with how licensing currently works - the developer chooses who and how their code is used.

Ironically enough, Oracle winning gives developers more power over their code. Google winning will allow any large company to replace open source software with proprietary software with no ability for devs to protect themselves.

[dbtx]

> if Google wins, you just won't have a choice in the matter.

> Google winning will allow any large company to replace open source software with proprietary software with no ability for devs to protect themselves.

Can you back this up? What should I be reading if I wanted to convince myself that this is true? What if I'm not releasing a FOSS library (and necessarily publishing the API) which I hope people will use if only to justify the time I spent designing and implementing it?

[staticassertion]

> Can you back this up?

This is just the way licensing works today. So just take the existing rules for a software license and apply them to an API.

> What if I'm not releasing a FOSS library (and necessarily publishing the API) which I hope people will use if only to justify the time I spent designing and implementing it?

If Oracle wins you are the copyright holder of that code, including the API. So feel free to let anyone use it if you would like.

Oracle winning means you get more control over your code. Google winning means you have no control over the API.

[dbtx]

> This is just the way licensing works today.

I remain unconvinced.

> If Oracle wins you are the copyright holder of that code, including the API.

I said "what if I'm NOT", as in, "how will this ruin everything for me in the most common case, that of being only a user?"

But I am planning a library and it is meant to be free-as-in-sunlight if it ever gets there. I'm not worried, I just find it easier to agree with those who are saying the opposite. They seem to think Oracle winning will be precedent for an incredible amount of control to be exercised by software publishers, especially regarding operating systems... this would basically throw a bucket of sand into the proverbial gearbox, for everyone, down to the last user.

Not everyone wants more control. On the flip side, not everyone wants more users just for the sake of proving they made a more useful thing.

IIUC Google winning means I have to be mentally prepared for someone to someday take advantage of my work, which is what I wanted from the very beginning. Whether or not that feels "fair" depends entirely on my definition of "fair", not the court's. Anyone who decides to do that will have paid me a compliment, unless of course someone reuses my work to do something specific that I happen to really dislike. But people are very different from me, so that's almost inevitable, and I might not even learn about any of it, and anyway I accept the possibility.