Re: Lilypond \include statements and the GPL

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 04/03/2013 12:01 AM, Anthonys Lists wrote:
> But as I understand it, the lawsuit as actually sued said "apis are copyright"
> and you would have needed a licence to use the apis - to use Oracle's Java.

That's exactly in line with what David said.  Google were providing a clean-room
re-implementation -- the only thing it had in common with Oracle's Java was the 
API.

Oracle couldn't sue on the basis of code duplication, so they tried to stop
Google distributing their implementation by claiming copyright violation on the
basis of duplication of the API.  And (rightly) lost.

That's a different situation from the one we have been discussing here, which is
code that _uses_ (not implements) functions whose only existing implementation
is in a GPL-licensed program.