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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 26 2012 @ 05:48 PM EDT |
My reading of it is that Sun GPL'd java too late in the day for Google to
deviate from its plan to use harmony.
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Authored by: jbb on Thursday, April 26 2012 @ 06:16 PM EDT |
As anon says above, Google had already started down the Harmony path
before OpenJDK was even started. Sun didn't start working on OpenJDK
until 2006. Rubin (I believe) testified that switching from Harmony to OpenJDK
would have caused extra delays in the development of Android.
Please
update your talking points. You might even want to be so bold as to read the
coverage provided by Groklaw so you can keep up with what is going on.
Anon
opined:
Sun/Oracle's OpenJDK is open-source. Whether or not
it's
"free" or free enough for your taste is a matter of
preference.
That is simply not true. For example, see
this talk from
almost a year ago about the IP perils of making an OpenJDK fork. The only way
you can get a license for the patents that cover OpenJDK is to use the TCK.
When you do that then you violate the GPL. This is not about personal "taste"
or "preference", it is about respecting Sun/Oracle's intellectual property
rights.
Even if OpenJDK had been available when Google started designing
Android, it would have been an idiotic choice because there is no way to respect
both the GPL and Sun's patents without getting a license from Sun. Testimony now
shows that Sun steadfastly refused to give Google a license that was compatible
with open-source software. Therefore using OpenJDK was not
possible.
--- 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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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 26 2012 @ 07:00 PM EDT |
Also not only was the GPL version not available at the time - BUT the TCK has
field of use restrictions - cant use on mobile devices. It aint free and couldnt
be used for phones ANYWAY....
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Authored by: PJ on Thursday, April 26 2012 @ 10:37 PM EDT |
You are not reading all the articles, then. Google
testimony yesterday, I think, was that by the
time Sun released under the GPL, Android was
ready to be released. They may well have
wanted the APache License anyway, but that's not
why they didn't go with the GPL. They'd already
finished the first Android.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 27 2012 @ 06:24 AM EDT |
It's none of what you have talked about [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: sciamiko on Friday, April 27 2012 @ 08:22 AM EDT |
My reading of this has always been that Google wanted to use what might be
called Java, but wanted modifications to it to make it suitable for the mobile
market. They probably thought that the Sun-defined APIs were not exactly right
for their expected targets. The language syntax was fine.
But Sun were not
willing to compromise to the extent that Google required. So they split and
Google went their own way, not calling the result Java, because it
wasn't.
This is the only thing that makes much sense to me. Sun have always
been zealous in defending the exact meaning of "Java" and the standard it
defined for it. Confusion has arisen because a Java compiler can still translate
Google's version of Harmony; the syntax is still the same, and the only
differences are in the meaning of the APIs to the "library" functions. It's just
that the result of the translation is not Java as Sun defined it.
It has
little or nothing to do with whether Google wanted a particular type of
license.
I'm not a Java or Android expert, so my understanding may be
wrong.
s.
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