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Wrong | 451 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Wrong
Authored by: pem on Thursday, May 03 2012 @ 07:58 PM EDT
It wasn't "we reused the parts we liked."

It really was about functionality, e.g. "we reused the parts that are used
a lot that make sense in this environment."

In other words, everything that (a) was useful in a mobile environment and (b)
was defined in such a way that it could be implemented efficiently.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Compatibility
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 03 2012 @ 08:16 PM EDT
Google remade large parts of the Java API so you could reuse
existing code. That allows you to use an already written
XML-parser.

If Google had made their own API this old code would not
have been portable to Android.

I think they kinda missed that in the trial. It is not just
about developers "mind". It is about reusing existing code.

They do not need to be 100% compatible and they are not. But
the more compatible they are, the less you will need to
modify the code you want to reuse.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Compatibility
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 03 2012 @ 11:25 PM EDT
Copyright law does not grant you the right to prevent compatible
implementations. Strangely enough, the classic case for this was made by
Oracle attorney Michael Jacobs two decades ago (30 Jurimetrics J. 91 (1989-
1990) "Copyright and Compatibility").

IANAL (just an academic), but it seems that this is consistent with existing
case
law. Matthew Bender v West Publishing says you cant copyright page numbers if
they are necessary for compatibility of reference and SCOTUS has at least twice

ruled reverse engineering is protected activity not covered by IP law (Kewanee
Oil
v. Bicron, and Bonito Boats. v. Thunder Craft)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

IBM's Open32
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 03 2012 @ 11:43 PM EDT
I don't see how it is any different than IBM's Open32. Back in the OS/2 days,
IBM decided to make it easier to port Windows 9x/NT applications by creating
Open32 which implements the most commonly used Win32 APIs. Of course, Open32
code would eventually make it's way into the Odin (Wine for OS/2) and Wine
projects.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • IBM's Open32 - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 03:18 AM EDT
Compatibility
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 01:43 AM EDT
Google however seems to have come down in the middle.... they have reused some APIs and not others. "We re-used the parts that we liked" doesn't look like a very good defense to me.
It's only repeating history:
Richards created BCPL by "removing those features of the full language which make compilation difficult". [Caveat Lector]
Which is similar to "I left out the parts that I didn't like," which is the same as "I re-used the parts I liked."

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Compatibility
Authored by: kuroshima on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 03:29 AM EDT
In fact, and here I'm speculating, it may be possible to
port a compiled library that you don't have the source for
to Android, simply by using the dex tool on the jar file, as
long as that library uses only the parts of Java that
Android implements, and it was produced with Sun's javac.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

No
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 04:42 AM EDT
Your argument, that reuse of an OS is optional for another OS and forced for
applications, is wrong.

If you write an application you have no intrinsic need to use a particular API.
There are API adaptor libraries, like WineLib or Cygwin, that allow you to run
applications written for other API, not native in your OS.

Also, it's not obvious that the fact that you want to write an application for
certain API grants you the license for use said API.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • No - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 11:18 AM EDT
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