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Android DOES interoperate with Java. | 361 comments | Create New Account
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Android DOES interoperate with Java.
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 21 2012 @ 02:17 PM EDT
You're right it's a competitor to the Java VM, but it runs Java programs.
The subset of Java programs running interchangeably on both platforms is a null set. That is not "interoperable". Unsurprisingly, as I'm sure you've read here, Google's own expert witnesses said Java programs do NOT run on Android and vice versa.
Given that Oracle doesn't seem to have a clue which Java it's talking about, and flip-flops between whatever definition seems most convenient at that particular moment, you can't complain when we take a leaf from Oracle's book, and use whichever of THEIR definitions we find convenient at any given moment.
I know you know this, but: "Java" is an ecosystem comprising a language, the bytecode it compiles to, an API, a JVM, and specifications related to these, and promises portable binaries ("WORA"). To be compliant, you must be compliant with all the specs and pass the TCK, which is approximately as fair and transparent a test as the Android Compatibility Test (look it up, especially in context of SkyHook). Basically, the TCK is Snoracle's way of controlling the "open" Java ecosystem. The way I see it, Snoracle means "Java" to includes all of this, because if you don't follow all this, you're breaking the WODE... er... WORA promise.

Well, Google re-implemented the JVM in their own image, but wholesale ripped off the language and the bytecode (both not copyrightable), as well as a bunch of the API (may or may not be copyrightable) and few trivial snippets of code (copyrightable), and generates binaries that run only on devices with the Dalvik VM and not on compliant JVMs. And of course, since they did this all by themselves and nobody by Snoracle knows what the TCK really is, they've not passed the TCK. As such, they have an incompatible, unlicensed version of Java, which they try to escape by calling it "Android" instead. Oracle claims (and Google agrees) that Android programs use Java the language, bytecode and APIs, but is not interoperable with the rest of the Java ecosystem, breaking Java's WODE -- WORA, dammit! -- promise, thus fragmenting it. Oracle has made a pretty clear case out of this, and most of the case was on whether they had legal standing to sue. I don't see the flip-flopping here.

On the other hand, "flip-flopping" could be said for pro-Google commenters here. In this very same thread you'll find people claiming "Android is not Java".

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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