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Confusion about what is in contention in this case | 438 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Confusion between free, proprietary and open-source
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.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Apache's Harmony is open source too!
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 | # ]

Confusion between free, proprietary and open-source
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....

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Confusion between free, proprietary and open-source
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 | # ]

Confusion about what is in contention in this case
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 | # ]

Why did Google not take Java as Sun defined it?
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.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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