Slashdot Mirror
Oracle's Newest Move To Undermine Android
GMGruman writes "Oracle's decision to shift focus from the Harmony Java open source project to OpenJDK seems innocuous enough — but InfoWorld's Josh Fruhlinger explains it's part of an effort to derail Google's mobile Android OS by gutting the open source project that Android has been driven by. IBM has signed on, apparently in return for getting the Java Community Process reactivated, leaving Google in a bind."
Google is full of smart people. I'm sure they saw this move - and the entire assault on mobile Java and derivatives thereof - coming long before Oracle started their anti-Android crusade. I'd be willing to bet that Google has something new 'brewing' for Android 3 that will leave this whole mess behind. You just don't get that many programmers together without a few being paranoid enough to have planned an 'escape module'.
Did this surprise anyone?
Let us all remember that ORACLE stands for "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison"
This is the company that buys out someone else and does not even bother to offer the customers a migration path. Nor any form of support other than letting you fill out a bug report they close as the product is EOL.
Can someone explain why Oracle cares about the success/failure of Android? I honestly don't know.
The success of Android means a potential 'licensing fee' from every Android install. They don't care about Android per se, they just want to charge everyone to be able to use it.
Sun started OpenJDK as the project from which the GPL'ed version of Java would be created.
It stands to reason, that Sun had planned to discontinue supporting Harmony when OpenJDK was formed.
Don't mean to spoil a good conspiracy...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
J2ME is not free, if your phone uses that VM you owe oracle money.
So you're expecting a big, collective gasp as suddenly thousands of people realize Google is a company? You might want to prepare yourself for disappointment.
On a different note, Google's model seems to be more interesting than simply controlling data. They don't want control; they want visibility. They want data to flow through their systems. And they want systems that will make better use of that data. All the free services produce advertising eyeballs, to be sure. But they also provide massive amounts of test data on which Google can try new ideas and tweak useful tools. GOOG411 is a great example. Google presented the service and used it to collect voice samples and feedback to tweak their voice recognition. Now that they're to a certain point (and perhaps Android devices are providing a cost-effective alternative), GOOG411 is EOL.
And Larry Ellison's good buddies with Steve Jobs. Coincidence? I think not.
Of course it's not a coincidence. Pompous douchebags like other pompous douchebags. :)
Not to derail the conspiracy angle, but sometimes it's better to bet on people being self-promoting jerks than people being Evil with a capital E.
Perhaps you ought to turn yours in. The suit isn't about destroying Android. The suit is about the fact that Google is using an incompatible VM with the Java language and trying to pass it off as Java. Which it isn't. Java is supposed to be compatible between the various VMs, even if not always perfect.
It can only be incompatible if they actually claim to be java compatible. They don't. They claim to be able to parse the java byte code, which they do. This is like ARM complaining that you can run ARM binaries in an emulator on another platform - only once more removed.
Java syntax -> java compiler -> java byte code -> compiled to dalvik byte code -> dalvik VM.
The magic happens in the byte code to byte code recompilation. Basically this means Android uses java's byte code as an object format. So unless there is something magical about providing interoperability and compatibility, which are absolutely, legally allowed, I'm not sure what Oracle is complaining about.
Hell, according to the die hard nutjobs in most IRC #java, they completely deny Android has anything to do with Java and a statement to the contrary will result in a kick/ban. Obviously, that's not legally binding but given how far removed Android's Dalvik is from Java, its difficult to understand the confusion when even Java's supporters don't recognize Android/Dalvik.