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I wonder if they could just add a "a_" tag to all the classes: | 393 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Different APIs?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 25 2012 @ 12:22 PM EDT
From Oracle's brief:
Google selected the interfaces it wanted to copy. Google’s failure to implement all of the interfaces
Oracle’s exception count shows Google again copied almost all, but not all, of the throws clauses exactly, further confirming that compatibility requirements did not drive its extensive copying.
Surely if you are really copying an API then you must exactly copy all the interfaces and all the exceptions for all public and private methods. Otherwise it is incorrect to say that the complete SSO of an API was copied - there is a differences in the way these things are expressed (highlighted phase from the US Copyright FAQ that may be covered by copyright). That means that at least one of the structure, selection and organization is not being copied for all those 150 interfaces identified to be in common between Android Froyo and J2SE 5.0.

"what to put where" and "logical" arrangement of ideas are a problem for both sides. Java does not support named arguments or keyword arguments, Java API calls must be in the required order. So API is fixed forever once the items are decided and order of those items in the API is set (changing either items or order is really a new or 'broken' API). That provides a creative component that can only be expressed one way provided that the API has more than 1 item. (Actually you probably need more than 3 items before implying creativity as two is 50/50 or has natural order). But that API is also includes methods of operation that is not copyrightable.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

I wonder if they could just add a "a_" tag to all the classes:
Authored by: cybervegan on Sunday, May 27 2012 @ 03:55 AM EDT
e.g. a_System.a_out.println

Would that be enough to defeat the argument?

However, you would then need to run java programs through some sort of
pre-processor (or sed) to rename all the calls.

I don't think Oracle would have been happy whichever way it was done - seems to
me its just a case of Oracle finding some way, any way, to attack Android,
possibly as a proxy from the grave.

-cybervegan

---
Software source code is a bit like underwear - you only want to show it off in
public if it's clean and tidy. Refusal could be due to embarrassment or shame...

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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