I'm not sure how you reconcile your sweeping
generalizations.
Google
certainly disputes whether the documentation of their
APIs copied from the Java
documentation. Laid side by side
even as to the identical declarations of
class/methods,
Oracle presented only three examples, none very compelling
as
to literal copying.
The modern practice is to generate documentation from
the
code's comments, and this is done by automated tools as part
of the build
process. When trying to do comments for this
purpose, the emphasis is on
clarity, not creative
expression.
Because of that some degree of common
terminology (as well
as agreement in meaning) goes a long way to explaining the
loose similarity in expression.
Further note that Oracle bears the burden
of showing
substantial similarity (at least; virtually identical seems
wholly
out of reach as regards the documentation). They
have done little with the few
examples presented to pitch
such a conclusion as to the "work as a whole"
however that
might be scoped.
--- "Prolog is an efficient programming
language because it is a very stupid theorem prover." -- Richard O'Keefe [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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