If Google had wanted to, they could have built Android on top of
the open-source OpenJDK. But they didn't, because they didn't like the OSS GPL
license.
That is not true. The Android project was already well
under way before OpenJDK was started. Someone (Rubin, I think) testified that
switching from Harmony to OpenJDK would have cost them more time.
In
addition, even if OpenJDK were available when Android was started, Google could
not have used it without
violating Sun's
intellectual property rights. If they used the TCK in order to get a
license for Sun's patents then they would be in violation of the GPL. If they
skipped the TCK then they would have been violating Sun's patents.
We
also have testimony that shows the negotiations for a deal between Sun and
Google to work on Android together broke down because Sun steadfastly refused to
give Google a license for an open-source version of Java.
Sun claimed (or at
least implied) they have patents that are practiced in OpenJDK. Sun refused to
license those patents to Google to use with OpenJDK. So even if OpenJDK had
been available it was still not a viable option.
--- Our job is to
remind ourselves that there are more contexts than the one we’re in now — the
one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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