| 7 Jan 2026 |
 eveeifyeve | I do get your augment, however me and Randy Eckenrode are a bit skeptical from a copyright POV could get us into trouble from apple. I am not a lawyer so again don't take this advice seriously. | 14:28:40 |
 emily | ok, I will not take it seriously :)
if you want a non-free licence marker on the SDK package I would recommend working on a way for Hydra builders to build packages without pushing them to the central cache - then it may be viable to do so. it would certainly reduce some headaches in stripping things out of the SDK
| 14:31:35 |
| emily | ultimately for a given struct or function there is only one true way to write its prototype with minor stylistic variation | 14:32:02 |
| emily | those definitions are required for interoperability | 14:32:41 |
| eveeifyeve | However this is just in the EU + US this is not international law correct? This could mean they could file a international lawsuit, however I am not a lawyer but I might be sure that is an option. | 14:33:18 |
| emily | there's little room for creativity within the bounds of a fixed system and a strong fair use justification for interoperating with a given fixed system | 14:33:23 |
| emily | the NixOS Foundation is in the EU | 14:33:39 |
| emily | we use cloud providers located in the US | 14:33:53 |
| emily | other jurisdictions don't really matter for us | 14:34:01 |
| emily | (we redistribute stuff that is encumbered by software patents in the US so in practice we just follow EU rules) | 14:35:02 |
 Randy Eckenrode | I have a different take on Google vs. Oracle. The court only ruled that Google’s use of the Java APIs was fair use regardless of whether APIs could be copyrighted. It didn’t address that issue. I’d prefer they not be, but the lower court did find they were, and I don’t trust the courts to make the right decision should that question come up again. | 14:55:36 |
| Randy Eckenrode | * | 14:55:53 |
| emily | OTOH I believe the EU is much clearer about APIs being uncopyrightable | 15:18:00 |
| emily | and we'd have to stop distributing FFmpeg if going by US rules | 15:18:23 |
| emily | (I agree Oracle v. Google didn't rule APIs either copyrightable or uncopyrightable - though it did adopt a very expansive definition for fair use of them that Nixpkgs would easily meet IMO) | 15:19:16 |
| emily | https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32009L0024 articles 1(2), 5(3) and 6 are relevant here | 15:27:40 |
| emily | https://kempitlaw.com/insights/apis-software-copyright-in-2021-a-view-from-each-side-of-the-pond/ has some commentary | 15:28:54 |
| emily | 6 legitimizes @reckenrode:matrix.org's disassembling constants too, too bad about his jurisdiction 😆 | 15:30:47 |
| emily | I think in the limit (6) would legitimize linking against the Xcode libclang and driving it to reproduce all the header declarations including the names required for interoperability | 15:33:52 |
| emily | which would be exceedingly silly but hey | 15:34:01 |
| emily | btw Mozilla explicitly tell people to copy declarations out of SDK headers and vend them in Firefox source: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/widget/cocoa/macos-apis.html | 15:35:50 |
| emily | although the author seems confused about TBDs | 15:36:17 |
| Randy Eckenrode | The problem with fair use is it’s a defense you have to assert. You’d still have to go through with the case if someone wanted to sue. | 15:42:07 |
| Randy Eckenrode | They fell off a truck. 🥸 | 15:43:24 |
| emily | applies even if we had a blanket "all APIs are uncopyrightable" ruling, right? they can always sue you and argue about whether the header file contents or Swift interface files or whatever constitute "uncopyrightable APIs" | 15:45:01 |
| emily | nothing you can do to stop anyone suing you ultimately | 15:45:30 |
|  @masrlinu:matrix.org left the room. | 15:45:55 |
| emily | I do think the fact that we treat the cache as being under EU law is more relevant though, yesh | 15:46:10 |
| emily | * | 15:46:15 |
| emily | Oracle v. Google mostly matters for American users doing weird stuff or mirrors | 15:46:42 |
