Re:Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour
by jra_samba on Thursday May 26, 2016 @09:52PM
(#11783349)
A linearized network protocol is not an API. That distinction is very clear. Read the Microsoft protocol specs. They say nothing about API's used to send/receive the protocol - only how the protocol elements are encoded on the wire.
The API's that Samba uses to access that protocol are nothing like the Windows API calls (and are a completely independent implementation).
I don't believe that the distinction is that clear at all. Hence my comment:
Unless you are arguing that network protocol compatibility is a different thing? It seems to me that there is a lot of overlap, since Samba relies on re implementing the same behavior as a Windows file server.
I think it is pretty easy to argue that the pattern of network calls needed to make calls (eg authentication) is an API.
Is a WSDL SOAP definition an API? I think most would say yes. A REST endpoint and the definition of how to use it? Why exactly is the definition of the HTTP protocol different to the definition of the REST endpoint?
IANAL, etc. Which seems important these days.