Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 16th Sep 2012 16:53 UTC
There's a bit of a story going on between Google, Acer, and Alibaba, a Chinese mobile operating system vendor. Acer wanted to ship a device with Alibaba's operating system, but Google asked them not to, and Acer complied. The reason is that Acer is a member of the Open Handset Alliance, which prohibits the promotion of non-standard Android implementations - exactly what Alibaba is shipping. On top of that, Alibaba's application store hosts pirated Android applications, including ones from Google.
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Member since:2009-06-16
Member since:2006-06-12
Member since:2008-06-09
Except that it is ok to fork android.. But if you do you can not be a member of OHA, did you even read the article?
Acer didn't fork Android. They wanted to release a phone based on another vendor's OS. Like they release Windows Phones and Android phones. Did you read the article?
Alibaba is not a member of OHA. So telling Acer they will revoke any Android ecosystem privileges when they release a phone that is not branded as Android is dubious. Especially since Acer makes 100% compliant Android phones as well that would ship along side the one running Aliyun OS.
Google is using their Android OHA membership as a tool to add a barrier to entry to a competitor's OS based on an Open Source Project.
Edited 2012-09-16 21:16 UTC
Member since:2007-03-26
So it is OK for Google to take Java and make it incompatible and call it Dalvik. But it is not Ok when some one else does the same to one of Google's projects.
Double standards much?
Double standards much?
People who make this argument are people who don't understand what Java is.
Google took the Java language and made their own runtime (which is akin to taking a French and writing a French novel). Google did not fork nor do anything else to Oracles Java runtime (which is what you're implying with the Android fork comparison)
Member since:2006-03-12
Google took the Java language and made their own runtime (which is akin to taking a French and writing a French novel). Google did not fork nor do anything else to Oracles Java runtime (which is what you're implying with the Android fork comparison)
This is completely wrong.
Java is not a natural language, and Google did not simply write something in Java. They engineered an incompatible implementation of Java's underlying design. They used Sun's work to create a functional clone because they didn't like Sun's licenses.
It's all right here: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/opening-slides-1592541....
I especially like page 50, where freedom-defending Google talks about how the GPL version of Java is unacceptable because it would infect all their proprietary add-ons (we certainly can't expect the OHA to be stuck producing actually-open phones), and page 81, which shows lines of code fully copied and pasted from Java to Android.
Much of the rest of the document consists of e-mails expressing the need for Java and their unwillingness to use it on Sun's terms, and a deposition in which a programmer is unable to deny accessing and copying Sun's code.
In short: Google forked Java, called it Dalvik, and put up a policy of not mentioning the J-word, and not even demoing Dalvik around Sun employees and lawyers. Yeah. They know full well what they did.
Member since:2008-06-09
Google took the Java language and made their own runtime (which is akin to taking a French and writing a French novel). Google did not fork nor do anything else to Oracles Java runtime (which is what you're implying with the Android fork comparison)
Your analogy is deeply flawed. What Google did would be akin to writing novel based on french that no one who is fluent in French can actually read or understand.
Code written for Davlik won't run on a Java JVM. There fore making it incompatible Java.
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Member since:
2008-06-09
So it is OK for Google to take Java and make it incompatible and call it Dalvik. But it is not Ok when some one else does the same to one of Google's projects.
Double standards much?