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More reality distortion | 394 comments | Create New Account
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Oracle's Reality Distortion Field
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 25 2012 @ 05:24 PM EDT
IIRC there has been a lot of testimony of repeated and regular discussions
between the companies, and attempts by Sun to sell licenses *and* control the
terms of those licenses WRT control over the code.

No way he didn't know what android is/was.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Oracle's Reality Distortion Field
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 25 2012 @ 05:24 PM EDT
But even after the release of the SDK, Sun had years to complain about it and
never did. Android and Java were good for each other, serving different markets
but the programmer skills needed to work with them were transferable. You make
it sound like Google had somehow "stabbed Sun in the back" but that is
obviously not true. Both companies were happy.

It was only after Oracle bought out Sun (promising to the EU that they would
look after Java) and then got blinded by visions of beeelions of dollars in
imaginary damages. Sound like another BS&F client we know of?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

More reality distortion
Authored by: jbb on Wednesday, April 25 2012 @ 06:50 PM EDT
I don't think it was clear until the SDK release the extent of the changes and how far from Java TM Android was.
While this is true, the implication that Schwartz just assumed the APIs were identical is utter nonsense. The idea that he thought Sun was going to get a royalty from an independent implementation without any license for Sun IP is even more preposterous. That is not how any business operates. If you had any actual facts or evidence to support your story then you would not have had to resort to such absurdities.

The alternate reality you propose doesn't make any sense because it implies that Sun thought they had copyright protection for the APIs and could use that copyright protection to enforce some of the technical compatibility parts of the TCK and also use it to get a royalty fee for Android's use of the APIs. Sun's actions are in direct contradiction with your fanciful tale. Sun already knew that a mobile Java platform would have to break API compatibility with Java SE. That is why they created the JaveME spec back in 2000. You are saying that Schwartz published public ecstatic praise for Android's use of Java because he assumed that Google either:

  1. Used a nearly TCK-exact copy of the APIs of some Java*, or
  2. Used a brand new set of APIs that would destroy all compatibility.
Both branches are absurd unless you assume Jonathan Schwartz was an idiot and a technical nincompoop. If Sun had copyright control over the APIs and if TCK compatibility was important to them for implementations that didn't use the "Java" trademark then their actions, their words, and even their contracts would have been radically different.

Here is the Oracle-reality road map you seem to be following:

  1. Have everyone assume Jonathan Schwartz was a blithering idiot
  2. ...
  3. Profit!
Back in the real world, outside the effects of the Oracle Reality Distortion Field, Jonathan Schwartz is actually a very bright guy. If TCK-like compliance was required for him to be happy with a re-implementation then he would have acted very differently. He would not have assumed nearly TCK-like compliance in a mobile platform like Android. He certainly would have notified Google, letting them know he would not be pleased if Android's APIs deviated significantly from a TCK standard. Perhaps you mean it is Oracle's lawyers who are idiots because they forget to use any of those communications in the trial.

Also, Schwartz would not have been so stingy in letting people use the TCK. His entire rationale for making the TCK incompatible with all open source licenses was that people (such as those in the Apache Harmony project) were free to use the APIs however they wanted as long as they didn't call it Java. He was telling Apache Harmony that they were free to use the APIs and there was no reason for them to have to worry about the TCK unless they wanted to call it Java. So I guess you are saying that not only is Jonathan Schwartz a bumbling idiot, he is also a two-faced conniving liar.

---
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 | # ]

Didn't Sun intend to make money from Java development tools?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 25 2012 @ 07:22 PM EDT
The language was free ... selling tools to developers was a business.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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