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Originally Posted by rkomar
I think you're going to have to go into more detail before convincing me it's not a relevant comparison. If you are allowing copying in one case, I think that is relevant to the other case.
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Well, think of it the other way. Lets say the api is determined to be protected, copyrighted, patentened, and no one could ever make a system that exposed an identical api. That would not prevent or affect the Official Owners ability to publish those headers or docs or sdk and for people to write apps that interface with it. That's what Its for. Being able to make another system that can be inerfaced the same way, or not, doesn't change that.
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As to the second point, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are source code based. Perhaps you're thinking of ABIs (Application Binary Interfaces)?
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I was thinking more of a web service that offers only it's wsdl, or an enterprise system that integrates only by importing xml files. Those mechasims would be their APIs. And sadly i can confirm that even large systems from major vendors sometimes offer amazingly little in the form of sdk or documentaion.