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Misleading answer | 451 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Misleading answer
Authored by: Gringo_ on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 08:12 AM EDT

This is not helpful. The question implies that with a few tweaks, like changing the names and SSO, Android might be able to come into compliance - ie: not infringe Oracle's precious anymore. So if you say...

"You _can_ obviously do this, you would even have the same functionality, but nobody would expect it."

"You _can_ obviously do this" ...is not a good answer, because you cannot do that. You cannot tweak Android by simply changing the names and SSO.

"but nobody would expect it." ...is not a good answer. "nobody would expect it" is a trivial side effect that misses the point.

The real effect is you would have to write a whole new language and rewrite Android from scratch. You will not have the same functionality, because one of the functions of Android as it is now is compatibility with Java. This was one of the fundamental design choices - "Create a language that is compatible with Java". Your new language will be no longer compatible with Java. It will be a different language.

"But if you want to provide a java language, you better provide the basic classes/APIs otherwise programming would be very confusing."

Again - "very confusing" is a trivial side effect. Not just confusing - programming in Java would be impossible! Without the basic classes/APIs, whatever you use is simply not Java.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Judge Alsup Asks Oracle&Google To Brief API/SSO Issue in Light of EU Ct of Justice Ruling on APIs ~pj Updated 2Xs
Authored by: Wol on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 07:54 PM EDT
What you say is simply that "if we change the names then existing java
programs would simply stop working on android. Oh, by the way, the Church-Turing
theorem says any Turing-complete language can be mechanically translated to any
other Turing-complete language (70-year old maths theorem) so asking us to
translate it to any other computer language doesn't actually get round any
copyright implications!".

I'm not quite sure of my detail, but seeing as Alsup is a maths graduate,
telling him about Church-Turing, telling him it's maths, and telling him it
*proves* you can't get round the copyright problem by changing the API is pretty
much *sure* to pique his interest...

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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