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Value of being compatible | 152 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Value of being compatible
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 10:28 AM EDT
Yup, SUN was relying on people wanting to use the Java trademarks, and hence
needing to pass the TCK, in order to maintain control.

Dalvik and Harmony seem to be saying something along the lines of: "You
don't want us to play with your toys? OK then, we'll leave you alone
then." And now Oracle are crying that they're being abandoned.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Value of being compatible
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 11:03 AM EDT
The bet Sun made would be important if their original intentions where at stake.
That a java program would run on your refrigerator letting you know the beer is
now cold.

This is not the case and so Oracle is not in a position where it needs to impose
itself on another using the tools of patents and copyright.

There are very very fundamental differences between the stack based Java
implementation and Dalvik's register based design. They both happen to process
bytecode that is substantially similar.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Value of being compatible: Last century, yesteryear, and tomorrow
Authored by: mbouckaert on Thursday, April 19 2012 @ 03:42 PM EDT
If I understand well, "Java" sourcecode as typed by a
programmer *must* be translated to Java-bytecodes using a
Sun compiler.

There are other compilers; but the Sun one currently issues
some "bytecode idioms" that the Dalvik translation process
relies on.

All of which is OK as of today. The Sun Java commpiler is
free for all to use, and for any purpose.

Looks like Oracle can change the situation looking forward,
by restricting the use of the compiler to whatever subset
of "everything" they please.

This does not constitute an infringement at the time Dalvik
was designed: the compiler was freely usable then.

And it doesn't yesterday either, even if some unmarked
patents are implemented by the compiler. The compiler comes
from Oracle, not from Google; they can implement their own
patents (assuming they do.)

It can tomorrow, unless Google dispenses of using that
compiler and creates its own, or modifies the bytecord
optimizer/translator to be idiom-independent.

My $0.02

---
bck

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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