While we definitely are concerned by the response from the federal court in the Oracle v Google case, but for us at API Commons nothing has changed—it just turns up the heat. The precedent for applying copyright to web APIs is far from settled, this will be a long legal road that will play out over years, during which the mission of API Commons remains the same—encourage as many API providers as possible to publish API definitions into the commons, accompanied with a liberal creative commons license.

The API sector and all derived areas (which is huge), would be better off without copyright being applied to a technological area that depends on re-use and interoperability, but if companies like Oracle want to be able to add yet another layer of control and monetization to APIs—let’s beat them to it and openly license the best API patterns in a way that acknowledges API designers, but also encourage the widest re-use possible. There are seven separate Creative Commons licenses to choose from, and we encourage putting it into the public domain, which despite popular belief still gives you copyright control over your designs.

Join API Commons and the entire API community in taking a stand on the API copyright issue. Publish your API definition into the commons, choose a creative commons license that meet your business and organizational goals. We have faith in the API communities belief that APIs designs are meant to be interoperable and reusable, and our ability to stay ahead of those who believe otherwise, by generating the best possible API design patterns and making sure these definitions are accessible by everyone!