In reply to KTS915.

Just shows how correct is my main point, developers should not have opinions about law and leave it to lawyers which they hire :)

Still while the initial ruling was about the copyrightability of API, google lost a court case which is about re-implementing an API, and not about the usage (invocation) of API. Btw it is too early over here and not enough coffee but it seems like there are very nuanced reasons that contributed to google losing the case (they copied 7000 lines as they were, oracle developers testified about the creative process of the API), which might be relevant for other similar cases, and again if it was simple MS might have sued the wine or samba projects which re-implement win32 API without its blessing (they did give the blessing to the .net reimplementation)

What you can learn from that case and rulings is that this kind of things are far from being obvious. Now the re-implementation of API at least has some guidance from the court - reinplementation of a full stack of API might get you in trouble, but the jury is out about usage of API as there was no specific case about that. Matt can find a new lawyer that will say again the same things he was told before and I can find a different one that will say otherwise (and they both might belong to the EFF as the EFF do not like the copyrightable API idea https://www.eff.org/cases/oracle-v-google) and both can present a good arguments, but it would be just legal masturbation. If Matt and the foundation think they are right, there are more then enough non GPL plugins and themes around they can sue to create a legal guideline, until then all this "all your plugins are GPL" claim is no more then FUD.