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The big fallacy with your argument is that IMHO Oracle is trying to extend copyright to a place it can’t go. They are trying to get the judge to extend coverage to APIs which here-to-fore has ALWAYS been considered outside of copyright.

So they are trying to make you take a license on something they have no right to claim a license too!

(Oh - that is essentially Google’s theory - and I happen to agree with them.)

Let’s take a similar example - I program in C - it’s like most any other modern programming language. It has program flow syntax , arithmetic, storage class definitions, etc. However, without the APIs - say “stdio.h” you can’t do anything useful with the computations - no I/O. The APIs are a basic extension mechanism to the definition of the language. Without it - you haven’t implemented the language. Making these non-functional interface definitions copyrightable is illogical, and would be horrible for the industry at large. Copyright wasn’t intended for non-functional descriptions like this. Oracle only BARELY got the judge to grant them a trial on the subject because they argued that the Composition as a whole, and it’s organization took creative effort. It still reduces down to an interface description and shouldn’t be copyrightable.

There was a case 20 years ago between Intel and NEC. Intel claimed that NEC had created a derivative work, i.e. violated copyright to make a compatible product - they claimed copyright on the Instruction Set architecture of the 8086. The ISA is VERY much like the API for a computing language - the court found you couldn’t copyright this.

Then there is the SONY V. CONNECTIX case that the court is asking for a brief on - they came to the same conclusion relative to a clean-room implementation - very much like what Google did.

So - if you want to outlaw reverse engineering - we can go your way.

Finally - there is a defence that Sun invited everyone into the pool and asked them to create competitive products to entrench the language. Now - Oracle wants to change the rules of the game after so many years. That isn’t fair either.

Take your pick as to which defence you agree with.

They are trying to get the judge to extend coverage to APIs which here-to-fore has ALWAYS been considered outside of copyright.

Say I have a website where people can log in and post comments, and I write a library that I port to both Windows and the major linuxes, and the function of the library is to allow people to make client applications that can reads items from my website and post comments to my website.

Here's the header file, myweb.h

/* (c) 2012 myco, inc. */

int myweb_login(char * userid, char * pwd);
char * myweb_get(int sessionid, int itemid);
int myweb_save(int sessionid, char * text);
int myweb_logout(int sessionid);

and I have a download that:

1) has the user accept the terms of a license or reject it
2) the terms say they can't modify it, reverse engineer it or use it in any derivative works, etc., they simply can link with it and call the functions from their compiled, end-user application programs, then they can sell those compiled programs or give them away, whichever they prefer. Open source licenses would be incompatible with this, because I'm not releasing my source, just the headers and library files.
3) if they accept, they can download
4) they download either a windows or linux shared library and the corresponding header .h files so they can compile and link with the library

then...

the header files are exactly the thing that is copyrighted.

Say I have 1,000 customers.

I want that copyright to avoid people (say Billy Bob) creating other libraries and distributing them widely, where they create a bunch of functions that rely on my functions and sell their library as an add-on to mine to tons of my customers. Even if they offer to pay me a royalty, I politely reject the offer.

Billy Bob is customer #46. All other 1,000 of my customers are using the software themselves. I have just enough hours in a day to support them; if they contact me with issues, I send them a debug version and diagnose the problem. If the latest and greatest will fix it, I tell them to download the latest headers, libraries and docs and recompile. If not, I fix the problem, include it in the latest and greatest and get them to download.

Billy Bob has 37,492 developer customers that use his library compiled in with their software. Billy Bob creates his own copy of myweb.h where he includes my code and adds his own and redistributes myweb.h to his customers with my library files, myweb.so, etc., along with his library file, billy.so, etc.

In my next release, I may make changes to my functions; say I add some parameters to existing functions.

Now all of Billy Bob's 37,492 customers who are using HIS library are calling ME and bashing ME on the internet saying my library doesn't work. But it's because Billy Bob called the new parameters everywhere in his code but his install wound up calling my old shared library instead of the new one.

Regardless of pay or no pay, copyright means I have right to control what copies are made of works that I create.

It certainly covers obvious ripoff copies where there was a trivial change made to an obvious copy, like this:

int my_web_login(char * userid, char * pwd);
char * my_web_get(int sessionid, int itemid);
int my_web_save(int sessionid, char * text);
int my_web_logout(int sessionid);

Why would we not want this type of work not protected, when another author could work on his own easily enough to make something like this:

handle * site_open(char * userid, char * pwd);
int site_find(handle * mysite, int thing_id);
int site_create(handle * mysite, char * text);
int site_add(handle * mysite, char * text);
int site_end(handle * mysite, char * text);
int site_close(handle * mysite);