> P.S. The law of the land is now that when you create an API it is copyrighted.
I look forward to the extinction WINE and PostgreSQL, and the resurrection of the SCO corpse for another tilt at Linux vendors, he said sarcastically.
I look forward to the extinction WINE and PostgreSQL, and the resurrection of the SCO corpse for another tilt at Linux vendors, he said sarcastically.
That point on Microsoft is just their revisionism, though; the documents and emails gathered by discovery at the time show they weren't excited about Java, but actually trying to "kill cross-platform Java by growing the polluted Java market" (direct quote from their internal strategy docs).
Instead, for the APIs it supports, WINE was designed to interoperate with Windows programs (binary and source) in same kind of way the Android Java environment interoperates with Java programs (again both binary and source) for the APIs it supports. There are some minor differences (e.g. WINE works with binary applications directly, Android requires that Java bytecode be compiled to Dex bytecode, etc.) but the overall structure is the same.
Sure, Android only supports few Java APIs and WINE supports tons of Windows APIs, but that's the distinction fair use hangs on, how does any re-implementation of a proprietary API ever get off the ground (legally anyway)?
Its not like there is some central corporate entity behind Wine - Codeweavers sells its own proprietary fork and could be sued, but upstream free software Wine was founded by a guy from Switzerland (outside the jurisdiction of the incredibly barbaric IP around software in the US, at least until the TPP passes and spreads that plague through the Pacific rim, but even then Europe remains safe and sane for now). They could sue any individual contributor to Wine who lives in the US, but there is no way to extract royalties from the Wine project itself.
Wasn't one of the central issues that Google copied Java headers verbatim? Wine doesn't copy windows.h [1]; it seems to be a clean room reimplementation.
[1]: https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/blob/367b30d8278684aaff3...
I reached out to Collard, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney, who specializes in intellectual property... "In my opinion, the biggest problem for Google is the commercial nature of its use [of the APIs]," he said. "That is generally a strike against finding fair use. Its best argument is probably interoperability -- in other words, it should be fair use because Google must use the APIs in order to make its products interoperable."
[1]: https://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/cps182s/fall02/cscopyright/C...
[2]: https://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2015/07/google-java-api...
why, which API does that infringe?