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Mongo was open source. They copied the api under that license.

My understanding, and I’m not a lawyer so don’t consider this legal advice, is that you can’t copy a commercial api or it’s infringing on their intellectual property.




The copyrightability of APIs (specifically Oracle’s APIs, even!) is at the heart of a lengthy and still-ongoing legal battle, with several decisions in both directions.


The mongo example is a bit odd since the open source license was AGPL. Sounds like you can copy an AGPL API signature without releasing your own source?


I thought the copyright law had an exemption for compatibility?


See https://www.eff.org/cases/oracle-v-google

Oracle won the last round, Google asked the Supreme court to look at it in January. Guess we'll know some time soon.




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