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Can Android Without Dalvik Avoid Oracle's Wrath?
jfruhlinger writes "Despite the fact that Oracle is suing Google over claims that Android violates Java IP, Android is roaring ahead in the marketplace. Still, some groups are wondering if they can implement Android without incurring Oracle's current or future wrath by avoiding the Dalvik VM. A project called IcedRobot aims to create a GNU-compatible version of Android, and rumors abound that RIM is planning on putting an OpenJDK-version of Android on its upcoming PlayBook tablets."
Java is easy to use and highly portable. There are also legions of very low-cost Java programmers available in any number of countries like India and China. Moving to a different language would be highly painful for most companies, especially in the highly competitive world of mobile software where speed to market and cost are key, and 99.9% of your users don't give a damn what language you're using or what Oracle thinks about it.
Embedded/Mobile Java requires licensing that regular Java does not. Basically, Oracle claims that the Dalvik VM violates their IP because it is used on mobile devices.
Might as well use MeeGo. At least then contributions from the community and improvements to various parts of the operating system would benefit more than just one platform.
But cellphones are about to be as powerful as desktop PCs and laptops.
Not really. They're already as powerful as desktop PCs were in, I don't know, 2002. But by the time they're as powerful as today's desktop PCs, desktop PCs will be faster too -- if only because you can stuff a lot more cores in a PC with a 200W power budget than you can into a phone with a 1W power budget.
But I agree on the convergence. Somebody needs to come up with a docking station-like thing with a ~50W CPU, several gigs of RAM, a TB of disk, GigE and a 22"+ screen which will transition the OS instance from the phone to the dock, server VM style, when you plug them together.
Then the 'dock' can stay connected to the internet even while they're not together and act as a 1TB+ remote storage and backup device and home server which the phone can access (e.g. over an ssh tunnel) using the internet or 802.11. The storage on the phone becomes essentially a local fast-access cache of the most recently used data in the larger data collection at home. This is probably how the wheel of reincarnation is ultimately going to kill off cloud computing in this iteration -- people will start using their own PC remotely instead of somebody else's server, then as phones get more powerful they start to take on more of the load as between the phone and the PC because local is always faster, until the remote PC is pretty much just a remote backup device which allows you to play high end video games and have a bigger screen and full size keyboard when you dock with it.
Going to Python won't automatically solve Google's problems. The issue is patents, not copyright, and the patents in question are about how to make a virtual machine environment run quickly. If the Python interpreter does things like Just-in-time compiling or whatever, then it could still fall under the patents, and Google could still get sued. Microsoft had to pay sun a lot of money to license the patents for C#.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
>> But cellphones are about to be as powerful as desktop PCs and laptops.
> Not really. They're already as powerful as desktop PCs were in, I don't know, 2002. But by the time they're as powerful as today's desktop PCs, desktop PCs will be faster too -- if only because you can stuff a lot more cores in a PC with a 200W power budget than you can into a phone with a 1W power budget.
You're correct on the hardware end, but you're missing the meatspace implications.
Most people don't need a computer any more powerful than a 2002-era machine that has hardware accelerated video (unless you're a gamer, of course, or someone with a hobby or profession that requires something more). This is why so many people CAN still get things done with old machines. Stick a modern browser on a Windows 2000 box, and you can do basically everything most people need, as long as the video stuff is offloaded into a modern video card.
Cellphones are approaching that stage _rapidly_, and will most likely be there with the upcoming quad core SoCs coming out by the end of this year. The implementation as a desktop for the masses is a trivial exercise. A dock that lets you use your cellphone AS your primary Websurfing/emailing machine is all most people need at home. Game on your console or have a gaming rig set up if you need something more, but we're just about to the point of having all the computing power non-specialists need, all in a cellphone.
The new quad-core SoCs can drive 2560x1600 panels (and more), full Blu-Ray level 1080p HD video (multiple streams, even), etc. There's honestly just not that much LEFT that people need, from a practical standpoint.
Do you hear that? That is the sound of inevitability.
Java the language is not being sued about, so lets move on from this shall we? The patents are regarding Virtual Machines that most likely affect any language using dynamic code optimization. The copyright claims are regarding apparent line by line copying which if true is just a big fck up by Google, and not a slant against the language.
Bye!
... what are you kids TALKING about? It seems like most of the replies on this branch of the thread are about convergence between phones and PC's, and eventually using productivity apps on your phone. Who on earth wants to use a 3-inch phone to manipulate a spreadsheet, type in a word processor, or anything beyond the most specialized niche of data-entry for any extended period of time? Even tablet devices are poorly-suited for such tasks.
The intended purpose of a smart phone is not content generation or productivity. Their purpose is to read stuff (e.g. important email, directions to the restaurant, etc), and to play Angry Birds... until you've finished your car trip or boring meeting, and can return to your PC. You might tap a one-sentence reply to an email (with crappy grammar and capitalization), or enter the name of the restaurant, but that's about it for productive data-entry.
The limitation behind this is not the number of CPU cores in the device, nor its power budget. The limitation is the form factor! Duh! You can cram a supercomputer into the thing... yet even with the most clever swipey-typing system, it will still suck compared to a keyboard and full-sized monitor screen. Now, the idea of docking stations for your phone (or perhaps a standard docking port for phones on your PC) does sound like it could be useful in some circumstances... but I'm highly skeptical of full-blown "convergence".