While I am not a lawyer and I admit that my previous comment was too legal in nature for my own comfort, it is not any more harmful than Google&#x27;s agitprop shrieks over a software apocalypse. I am familiar enough with the software industry to conclude that the ruling, for non-legal reasons, is likely to have little or no impact on the industry, which, aside from a few notable cases (each with their own very special circumstances) has not been in the habit of replicating proprietary library APIs wholesale for any purpose (let alone for purposes other than freedom from vendor lock-in) for quite some time. Others, of course, may have other opinions.<p>While I myself have simplified some of the points regarding fair use defense, I also linked (in this comment: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10851052" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10851052</a>) to a more nuanced discussion. The bottom line is that both interoperability and commercial use will play a central role in the debate over Google&#x27;s fair-use claim (and any debate over API implementation).<p>I also know that Google was encouraged to use OpenJDK for Android precisely in order to prevent the very predictable lawsuit (as well as for other reasons) long before it happened, but Google refused to use GPL software for that part of the Android runtime.