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With 'Virgin' Developers, Microsoft Could Fork Android
colinneagle writes "Amid all the talk about Microsoft forking Android for a smartphone OS, one suggestion involves a look back to Microsoft's DOS days. Microsoft DOS was designed per IBM's specification to run exclusively on IBM's PC hardware platforms. Phoenix Technologies employed software developers it nicknamed 'virgins,' who hadn't been exposed to IBM's systems, to create a software layer between Microsoft's DOS system and PCs built by IBM's competitors. This helped Microsoft avoid infringing on IBM's patents or copyrights, and subsequently helped fuel the explosive growth of PC clones. Microsoft could use the same approach to 'clone' the proprietary Android components in its own Android fork. This would prevent copyright infringement while giving Microsoft access to Google Play apps, as well as Android's massive base of developers." Microsoft (or anyone) could generate a lot of goodwill by completely replacing the proprietary bits of Android; good thing that doing so is a work in progress (and open-source, too), thanks to Replicant. (Practically speaking, though, couldn't Google just make access to the Play Store harder, if Microsoft were to create an Android-alike OS? Even now, many devices running Android variants don't have access to it.)
...how. Same old story MS. legally "stealing" someone else's work if they fell like it. blah blah blah
The Phonix bios clean-room implementation was necessary because - d'oh! - Phonix couldn't legaly use the IBM bios implementation. However, Microsoft can use the Android implementation. It's open source for FSM's sake. They can even verbosly copy the various Google APIs, APIs are not copyrightable after all. Google fought that out with Oracle.
The author of this fine article has obviously no clue what he's talking about.
So is Richard Branson involved in all this?
The reality is that this is an opportunity for Amazon.....
Amazon has an app store, they could have the ability to sell Blackberry, IOS, Android apps all from the vendors so that when you buy an app it's device agnostic.
Then the app-stores that are phone specific now become ONE app store that allows you to take your apps with you. One App store that you can pick which version/compatibility to install.
Amazon just needs to be able to import your Play Store Sales, and Apple Sales so that you can get those apps from them.
All they would have to do is fork Android and replace all the proprietary Google parts with their own. There is nothing secret or shady about this. See: Amazon Kindle Fire.
Microsoft would just have to jump into it fully. I like the Amazon App market, but I've found apps in it are often several versions behind apps in the Google Play store. If something like that is going to work, app makers are going to have to support multiple app stores, and do so fully.
Even though I like Amazon giving Google the competition, I find I'm starting to get apps from Google more because they seem to be supported better.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
-- oh, to heck with it, WAY too easy.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Wait, aren't all devlopers virgins?
/ducks
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I'm sure that when Microsoft thinks about Android, it's first thought is usually: Fork Android!
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
... so that you can buy or try any app just like you would download apps for linux distros, without having to register or give an app access to all my stored info? Why does a calculator app need to access my contact list or location data? Will the results vary based on my contacts or location?
And while you're at it an open source version of Android. I'm happy to pay for apps that I really want but lets at least have a layer of security between applications and stored data, location, call history etc etc
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
yes they could. but it would make their google android(tm) licensing scheming a bit harder, having to keep access lists and all that - which they don't do now.
so umm.. is there some device now that's banned from the market? I mean some device that you just plain can not install google apps on and then access the market? (sure, plenty of devices and mods don't come with them but you could always install the play client if you wanted..)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In other news, Network World reports that the FSF and the GPL is not simply a mechanism to promote sharing, but *specifically engineered* by Richard Stallman to subvert restrictions (to the maximum extent possible under law) imposed via copyright and patent law! Who knew?!
Two things that are very important to the Microsoft philosophy are "generating goodwill" and "replacing proprietary bits." Why here's a clip (in Spanish!) from the Simpson's demonstrating this philosophy in action!
https://myspace.com/tanaso4/vi...
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
There could be fairy's on the moon too.
Where is the historical proof of Microsoft ever doing anything like this? There sure is lots of evidence of them ripping out parts of products and/or services which didn't run on Windows and attempt to get Windows running them.
Would Microsoft generate good will by replacing the proprietary parts of Android? The only proprietary parts are the Google services, which Google is under no obligation to open source at all. And if Bing has shown us anything, Microsoft's attempt at beating Google at their own game is laughably pitiful.
And if you think Google are just going to lie down and allow Microsoft to write a wrapper that sits between the Google Services and their own fork, you've got quite the shock coming.
The argument is predicated on the logic that microsoft no longer observes windows as a viable or competitive product. history tells us that through several iterations and permutations of the OS, microsoft considers the product sound and functional at any level of the integrated circuit from ARM to Xeon. it also fails to acknowledge that microsoft doesnt just want a slice of the android apps market, it wants a market completely of its own. its an incredibly lucrative ecosystem, as theyve seen from microtransactions and service subscription in their XBox product.
the problem of developers is a recent addition for microsoft. in the past, 'by hook or by crook' if you wrote code and expected users to be a part of it, you took your seat at Redmonds table and ate cake. theres also another big fact to face: the layered approach cannot work with UEFI, signed binaries, DRM and Trusted computing all of which werent prevalent or in existence when IBM saw clones emerge in the market. This in combination with ferocious litigation is the reason apple doesnt find mac clones to be very threatening.
open sourcing the proprietary bits of android is a nuclear option, and one i think redmond might consider, but only if it places them closer to an apps market.
Good people go to bed earlier.
We've got BlackBerry, Ubuntu using Qt/QML for native app development. Ubuntu is using Android's kernel. Developing a phone platform that can also run on iOS and Android would fix the problem of inertia with a lot less effort of re-inventing Android. And recent versions of Android have a no-forking provision. So there's no forking way.
I specifically mention Ubuntu Mobile because they are already aligned with WinRT's vision. Ubuntu Mobile uses android kernels, so there's no additional hardware porting effort.
The license(s) for Ubuntu / Qt5 are much more permissive. Microsoft could also just buy Blackberry, and get what they want. So many choices.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
In the last 35 years, copyright has become less of a problem. It's easy to avoid copyright infringement with virgin developers; however, too many patent trolls would make lawsuits for patent infringement (imagined or otherwise) almost guaranteed.
//TODO: create a signature
By replacing them with more proprietary bits?
Sorry, but if you want goodwill, you need to make them non-proprietary, otherwise you've just shuffled things around.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Clean room development is a good way to defend against copyright infringement, because you are able to demonstrate you did not have actual knowledge of the copyrighted material, and hence could not have copied it. With patents, it does not matter whether you copied it or not. If your product performs the same invention as described in the claims of a patent, you infringe, regardless of the absence of copying.
All I see is the usual Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Call me naive, but why is Google so protective of the Play Store? Don't they get a cut of every sale there? I can understand why they'd want to block the side-loading of apps onto other OS devices, but wouldn't they want EVERYONE to use the store?
What I see, is that they should work towards eliminating other stores. So the Amazon App Store is more of a threat than Microsoft making a phone that can point at Google's store.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
Amazon didn't create the proprietary parts of Google's services. This is why most apps will not run on Amazon's Kindle devices. Amazon hasn't cloned the Google Services Framework that many apps rely on (because it is updated on all devices automatically that support Google Play).
Google freely allows this. You can take their releases, which is mostly open source software, and build a product around it. If you want access to early releases, then you have to start playing by Google's rules, but even that is not so hard.
If you want to make a fork of Android and give it to partners you could do that with anything but the early preview releases. Fork Jellybean or KitKat right now if you want. If you want to stay on top of what Google is doing, you'll be integrating their future releases into your custom releases. Or you could ignore the work that Google does and go in your own direction. Add .NET support if you want, set the mail and search engine defaults to point to Microsoft. Most of the real proprietary stuff are the bits that various vendors provide and not too much around Google's, except some of the Java apps they bundle. Which I assume Microsoft would want to replace with their own version.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
My Windows phone (Lumia 920) runs faster and more fluid and it has significantly less power than my Android tablet (Nexus 7, 1st gen). Each update has added features without making it slower. There are less apps but I have yet to not find what I'm looking for and they generally feel more consistently designed. WP 8 brought native C++ programming. The only thing left is ditching their Direct3D stuff for OpenGL/OpenCL support to make porting games easier (which will admittedly probably never happen).
In terms of geek factor Android is of course far more customizable and rootable, but I and I'd assume the great majority of users are not interested in doing that.
There's so much focus on Microsoft forking Android, but I really don't see the point. They've got a long way to go to get to Android levels of market share, but it's by no means a failure that deserves to be trashed.
:)
Is spin off a team of younger devs to create an entirely new OS that runs on PC hardware, one that's trim, fast and compatible.
As Apple to BSD so should this team be to Windows.
The rule for deploying with this new OS, no 3rd party demo software allowed form OEM's, target gamers and music/vide/photo professionals, and a host of built in apps that are actually pleasant to look at and useful.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
... Microsoft would love this idea, because they could create a "clean" product, while paying the developers less by angling that they don't have Android experience.
... so that you can buy or try any app just like you would download apps for linux distros, without having to register or give an app access to all my stored info? Why does a calculator app need to access my contact list or location data? Will the results vary based on my contacts or location?
why don't you just buy a calculator app that doesn't require this access? there are hundreds. or do you always have to have the new shiny?
The Phonix bios clean-room implementation was necessary because - d'oh! - Phonix couldn't legaly use the IBM bios implementation.
Its useful to point out to readers that IBM published the source code to their PC BIOS. If you programmed for DOS and used BIOS calls it was common to look at this source code to get details about parameters to be passed in. This would make you ineligible for the clean room rewrite.
However, Microsoft can use the Android implementation. It's open source for FSM's sake.
Not all of it. The summary is clearly referring to the non-open proprietary components of Android.
Clean room implementations do nothing at all to protect from patent infringement. Patents are like nuclear submarines, hiding and striking very hard when you least expect it. Copyright, sure, but that is irrelevant since the GMS is closed source and the source code is not available anyway.
So what the OT is suggesting is that Microsoft makes a WINE style implementation of the GMS, moving target and all, and allow Google to take the lead and Microsoft to follow.
Sounds likely.
Seriously this is not flame bait and I am not trolling here.
Just speaking as a Windows Phone user who is happy who switched. Windows Phone does have some features. It is very light and responsive on lower end hardware and has neat features with battery and data saving, and the best cut and paste support on touch around compared to IOS and Android (speaking as an ex android user). The view on this site is that MS is years behind and it is all soo buggy, slow, and crappy compared to the coolness of Android from people of course who actually never even used it before?!
It is not perfect as it lacks a notification center and voice support is less than with other platforms. But it does not mean it is crap either.
I am a former Android user and use a Nokia. Really Windows Phone is not a bad OS and if it was not made by Microsoft it would not be soo bashed here.
Android has issues. It is partially opensourced where AOSP is the proprietary part that locks developers and Microsoft to Google similar to MacOSX being partially open.
I think Ms will destroy its brand name and turn it into another OS/2 as developers will just target Android and with AOSP it means compatibility problems will arise often for Windows Phone users.
Windows 9 will have a unified modern apps that run on the phone and desktop if rumors are true. This will put a dent into both.
http://saveie6.com/
Anoither "Hey here is a idea for Microsoft so they can be relevant again" article.
Copying others isn't a long -term business plan -- when you copy, it is action without thought or imitation without intelligence.
If Microsoft wants to get positive press, they need to kill Metro and demonstrate competence in their primary product.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Can you filter by permissions on a Google Store search? Genuinely curious.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"This helped Microsoft avoid infringing on IBM's patents..." Erm... No. Patents can be infringed in a clean-room implementation.
Instead of just a cut and paste job the poster actually added something for discussion in an even handed way.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Amazon has an app store, they could have the ability to sell Blackberry, IOS, Android apps ...
An iOS app has to be digitally signed by Apple, if not a device running iOS will decline to run the app.
Amazon app store is supported on all 9 of my android devices. Play store is supported on 2 of them. It is already the first place I look for an app.
I think you mean the open source release is easy to get from Google. Which I believe was the starting place for CryogenMod.
open source android: ... then it's the normal build steps. export TOP=$(pwd) ; source build/envsetup.sh ; ...
$ curl http://commondatastorage.googl... > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo
$ mkdir dev
$ cd dev
$ repo init -u https://android.googlesource.c... -b android-4.4.2_r2
$ repo sync
So MS is thinking about Android. Is this the same piece of shit MS that extorts a patent fee from every Android device sold? I can't think of a single reason that I would buy anything from MS. Just say no.
So you are advocating iOS? Because if you are going Android you are buying, in part, from Microsoft.
> Practically speaking, though, couldn't Google just make access to the Play Store harder, if Microsoft were to create an Android-alike OS?
Sure, just make it a requirement that the transaction be signed in some fashion, and then make the credentials really difficult to get.
Waaaait, that sounds familiar...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I am not saying it would be impossible, but I highly doubt anyone in Redmond is going to suggest a serious fork of Android in an effort to replace Windows Phone. They just finished rewriting the OS recently so that they essentially have a unified platform between desktop, tablet, and mobile (with the obvious incompatibility between x86 and ARM hardware versions). This was a good move strategically, and one that Apple will likely need to follow (and has already made some effort, to a degree).
Windows Phone is a solid platform with a great interface for mobile phones and tablets... not saying that it is ready for desktops and such, but it works well in this niche. To say it is horrible (which it certainly isn't... even if it isn't your cup of tea) exposes you as a zealot. The issue with the platform is the lack of apps. That can be fixed independently of the OS.
1. A general shift to HTML 5 apps - this would be good for developers in general as these apps could work on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. This is probably the best thing that could happen, but it is a "cultural" shift and those don't happen just because some company wants it.
2. Encentivize developers to build the platform - MS has done this to a degree already... and this may become less of an issue as adoption of Windows 8 slowly increases, which it will. Maybe Windows 9 will be necessary. Honestly, the problem I see with Windows 8 is that it may just be ahead of its time... it was a risky move and it appears to be painful, so far.
3. Get Google Play on Windows Phone (et. al.) - This doesn't seem like it should be that big of an issue. Google Play works on Windows when you install Chrome, so who knows. This is merely stopped because of politics.
F-Droid. That's the thing you want. It already exists.
... so that you can buy or try any app just like you would download apps for linux distros, without having to register or give an app access to all my stored info? Why does a calculator app need to access my contact list or location data? Will the results vary based on my contacts or location?
And while you're at it an open source version of Android. I'm happy to pay for apps that I really want but lets at least have a layer of security between applications and stored data, location, call history etc etc
You could always install xPrivacy, which can be set up to selectively feed false info to apps.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The calculator app was just an example. The point is, why do apps that don't require location, contact lists, browsing history need access to them? We know why they do, so why isn't there built in security to automatically prevent access?
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
From the article
. However, Google’s verification is not needed for an individual consumer to download and install a Google-signed version of the Google Play app store and then download the full inventory of Google proprietary apps to an unverified Android version.
That's quite wrong. The Play app is copyrighted, proprietary and is tightly coupled to Google's cloud. They even sent a Cease and Desist to CyanogenMod a few years ago and stopped them from distributing it. They don't go after individual users, but those users are still infringing Google's copyright and are essentially pirating the software. So this advice is like suggesting that Ubuntu make VM software that makes it really easy to pirate Windows to run Windows apps since MS does not go after individual personal home users for pirating their software.
Not to mention that even if all this manages to happen, Google can just tweak their servers and store app to reject connections from Android forks(see iTunes).
If you want read a better article about why forking Android does not make any sense, this article is way better:
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
Even if MS wants to do something like that, it makes a bit more sense to make Windows Phone able to load Android Apps, which they were/are supposedly exploring.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2...
This space for rent.
Uh, well there is built in security to deny access by default - thats why you have a screen showing you all the permissions an app wants and you have to manually agree to it. ~You~ grant permissions to apps on your device - if you dont, the app wont be installed and/or work properly.
Why does a calculator app need to access my contact list or location data?
I have written a calculator app and I did consider using location data. In addition to scientific, statistics, business and hex functionality it also offers bill / tip functionality. The later could use location data to estimate sales tax if you had not defined it in settings. That said, I have not implemented such behavior.
I suppose I could also use locality to automatically choose whether I am converting US fluid ounce or Imperial fluid ounces to ml, rather than rely on a definition in settings. Again, I have not implemented such behavior.
Now I do use internet access which is not something that a calculator obviously needs. However I allow users to import statistical data from the web.
I understand that some apps are abusive. I am just trying to point out that advanced behavior is not necessarily an indicator of an abusive app. We now have quite sophisticated handheld computers and we are not limited to the legacy functionality that legacy devices offered.
Look, M$ is obviously NOT interested in Android. Why would they be?
Consider this, they just went to great lengths to rip apart the user interface of literally every desktop OS they sell in order to sell their surface hand held/laptop devices. You don't think this was about the touch screen stuff? No, this was a *clear* commitment to their hand held device strategy which boils down to, hey we OWN the desktop/laptop market, so let's leverage that and see how much of the hand held tablet market we can capture by making the UI's the same.
Now somebody comes along and suggests M$ fork android? Why? Are they fixing to change horses in mid stream on Windows 8? Have they realized that their horse has drowned months if not years ago? I don't think so. There is no "we are abandoning Windows 8" announcement, no "The chief architect for Windows 8 taking another job" or mass changes at high levels in the development team in the news. Seems to me they are still fully committed to riding the Windows 8 horse. So why waste time and resources on Android? There is no upside for them.
So where they *could* if they wanted, M$ doesn't want to. They might throw dollars at people trying it, just to poke at Google, but they are not interested in doing anything to compete with Windows 8 and surface.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
android has nothing proprietary in it. see cyanogenmod. google has a bundle of proprietary add-on apps. story is based on a wrong premise.
Why does a calculator app need to access my contact list or location data?
They do that so if you want to compute the sum of all the phone numbers in your contacts, you won't have to waste a bunch of time manually typing them all in.
I'd love an open phone as much as anyone. Unfortunately, the proprietary bits of android aren't our only problem. The baseband firmware is regulated, proprietary, and mysterious in virtually every phone on the market. So, unless you want to use your phone exclusively on WIFI, it's never going to be truly open.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The app makes money by violating your security and privacy in all sorts of ways. This is how they can offer a free app.
Google wants the developers to be successful when offering free apps because it's good for their android ecosystem. So they look the other way when developers violate their users' security and privacy.
This is why they won't allow you to approve or deny specific permissions or allow you to go back to shut off different permissions after installation.
We have that -- at least for the "like for linux distros" part, if not the "store" part. It's called F-Droid.
That's being worked on too; it's called Replicant.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So we will see Microsoft phones an tablets somewhere else than just on 'The Dome' or 'Intelligence'?
They should build the Windows API on top of unix or Linux. Much like OS X is built on BSD.
That would finally give MS a stable secure industrial grade OS. They could start server side and move forward to the desktop. Seriously think they could save their OS business this way. I would even consider running windows again.
Imagine .NET and C# and their office suite and database products on a stable platform, they couldn't lose.
I love how bashing libertarians has become common place. If you believe that most libertarians think its ok to use your freedom to impinge on another's freedom, or that a more free society will be absolutely perfect; than its you that has the problem.
...simply by providing the pieces of the J2SE API that are missing from the Android API. And the door is wide open for them to "embrace, extend, and extinguish" Google's Android while lowering the bar for developers and raising the quality of apps. Google has a bizarre obsession with making Android run in an ever-smaller footprint when phone and tablet hardware is obviously trending in the opposite direction. The decisions Google made to allow the OS to aggressively limit its memory use require Android developers to carefully adhere to a complex API that forces you to manage a lot of tedious details yourself. And the platform punishes faulty MVC separation more than any other I've encountered. It's a platform for expert developers, which seems contrary to the concept of Android as popular, open, and accessible.
Microsoft can't get access to the Google Play Store, and thus doesn't have any real access to Android developers, without Google's express approval. Microsoft can of course fork it completely and attempt to build up their own developer base, in the same way Amazon has. But this is a greenfield effort, which is exactly what Google planned all along. Android devs have too many places to submit their apps as it is, many just ignore the smaller sites, which is exactly what would happen to Microsoft if they forked Android.
And the second biggest is that everyone knows Microsoft makes it.
People want phones that are chic. Microsoft are about as chic as homophobia. Looks, both of the phone and of the UI, are even more important.
Apparent price/performance is another factor. Probably the main reason Android is doing so well is because those phones look good value in comparison to Apple (not hard with their 200% markup). The fact that interpreted Android apps make those quad cores as slow as dual cores doesn't come into the equation.
Lastly, some people really believe they need 100,000 apps.
Look I know Slashdot is all about Linux-love no matter how atrocious the implementation (Face it Android is the worst version of Linux out there.)
Microsoft can re-implement a wrapper for the crappy parts of android on their on Windows Phone OS, and the applications written not using Dalvik cruft will run much faster than it's Android implementation if it can avoid those java-like parts.
Android would be a much better development target if it was less fragmented. Here's Microsoft's golden opportunity, create an Android target that doesn't suck and stays up to date better than Samsung.
Theres really no money in Android users, so no reason Microsoft is going to waste its time on them.
Just because some slashdot users buy a few Android apps doesn't mean you represent the medium. If they were going to put forth that much effort to run on shaky ground, they'd go for iOS compatibility first. Actual profit potential in those users.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
They also need "virgin" users who haven't been exposed to Microsoft, so they won't see an obvious trap. Oh look, they're embracing and extending.
i wouldn't want that bloody job.
Besides, a clean room implementation doesn't get around patents.
It CAN get around copyrights, but only the copyrights.
You don't need sales tax information to calculate a tip. Tips are easy: you take your entire bill (tax and all) and multiply by 10, 15, or 20% (your choice, depending on the quality of service/how much you like the server). That's it. The restaurant will calculate the sales tax for you.
There's no way your little calculator app can properly calculate sales tax. I'm located in NJ, for example, and I'm buying a coat at a clothing store. Quick, what's my sales tax? Answer: 0. Clothing is tax-free here. I'm buying a car, quick, what's my sales tax? 7%. I'm buying a jug of milk, what's my tax? 0. Ok, I just moved to TN, and I'm buying a car; what's my tax? IIRC, it's some percentage (7 or 9%) on the first $1500 or 2500, and the rest is tax-free. Don't forget, many localities have their own add-on sales taxes. Are you sure your app can get all those too, and accurately determine whether you're standing within the town limits, and not in a store that sits just beyond the town line? There's almost 10,000 sales tax jurisdictions in the US, and the rules are constantly changing (what the tax is, what items are tax-free, etc.). How do you hope to keep up with all that?
Why bother with clean-room techniques? According to Microsoft's own Blackmail Division, they already *own* Android, along with Linux!
"Microsoft (or anyone) could generate a lot of goodwill by completely replacing the proprietary bits of Android;"
Peter Bright at Ars Technica already said that Android is unforkable... but even if it wasn't, to expect from Microsoft to substitute the propietary code in it for free code is just foolish. Please, don't make me lose my time.
It is Microsoft that is fighting...
Thus if we win, Windows will not be the choice...
No shortage of virgin software developers...
Remember IBM? Remember what happened with OS/2? Yeah, this will end up the exact same way.
You don't need sales tax information to calculate a tip.
The bill / tip functionality goes way beyond merely calculating a tip. It can be used for such a simple task, simply enter your total as an item and a tip will be calculated using your default tip rate. However it can also be used for more complicated tasks. Optionally specifying the percentage of an individual item that you are responsible for provides functionality that simply splitting the total does not. You may calculate the actual portion of a bill that you are responsible for. For example if you shared an appetizer with three friends, had an entree and two drinks simply enter the full price of the appetizer and your percentage of 25, the price of your entree and then the price of your drink and a quantity of 2.
There's no way your little calculator app can properly calculate sales tax.
Untrue. If the cash register can do it then an app can do it. It is however terribly complicated in some cases. Yet in many cases it is not.
Thanks for your discussion. It suggests a new feature, identifying a bill item as non-taxable.
That said, the larger point is that a calculator app could legitimately use location information to initialize the default tax rate to be used in its calculations. Use of location is not inherently an indicator of an abusive app.
But why do apps request such absurd permissions? I have a flashlight app that wanted full access to the network on an update. I wish developers would stick to the least amount of privileges but that doesn't seem to be the case.
I'm located in NJ, for example, and I'm buying a coat at a clothing store. Quick, what's my sales tax? Answer: 0. Clothing is tax-free here.
Since the calculator app keeps track of individual items it just needs an indication that a particular item is tax free.
Ok, I just moved to TN, and I'm buying a car; what's my tax? IIRC, it's some percentage (7 or 9%) on the first $1500 or 2500, and the rest is tax-free.
No problem. If the car is at or under the limit enter the amount as in a "normal" bill. If it is over then it is essentially a flat fee. Calculate that "fee" and enter it as the dollar amount of tax. The app lets you set a percentage and calculates the dollar amount, or you can optionally just enter the dollar amount.
There's almost 10,000 sales tax jurisdictions in the US, and the rules are constantly changing (what the tax is, what items are tax-free, etc.). How do you hope to keep up with all that?
There are subscriber based services that provide such information. Various online retailers use them.
If the cash register can do it then an app can do it.
A cash register only has to calculate it for 1 tax jurisdiction. Your app has to do it for 10,000, and it needs to know a mountain of rules about what is and isn't allowed to be taxed. The cash register also only needs to know the rules that apply in that single jurisdiction.
But they built their own app store. Microsoft is free to do it as well. Yandex just released kit for using their services and app store too http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/19/yandex-kit/ , so if Yandex can do it, so can Microsoft.
Now, if they want access to Google Play Store they will probably have to go through the same process as any other Android phone vendor and sign and agreement and go through testing and certification. Virgin developers or not, if you want to access Play Store you need an agreement.
BUY an app? That's crazy talk. Seriously, the whole fad around apps seems so strange, but I'm probably too old to understand the appeal.
Why would Microsoft want a phone OS that steered users to the Google Play Store? The whole point of a company like Microsoft wanting a bigger share of the smart phone market is so they can get people to spend more money at Microsoft's own app store. If Microsoft didn't care about their own app store, then they wouldn't need to fork Android; they could just make a normal Android phone. The only reason to fork Android would be if you intentionally wanted an Android-like OS that didn't work with the Google Play Store... but how much of a market would an OS like that even have? Probably not much more than what Windows Phone gets already.
"Phoenix Technologies employed software developers it nicknamed 'virgins,' who hadn't been exposed to IBM's systems, to create a software layer between Microsoft's DOS system and PCs built by IBM's competitors."
During the 1980s most of the software developers were virgins. Why do you think movies like "Animal House" and "Wargames" were massively successful theatrical releases? There was even a television series called "The Whiz Kids" featuring a computer hacker with a girlfriend.
> Microsoft DOS was designed per IBM's specification to run exclusively on IBM's PC hardware platforms.
Complete nonsense.
What became 'Microsoft DOS' started as a project by SCP to get their 8086 based S100 boards to run a CP/M like system on their Zerba computers. This turned into SCP-DOS or 86-DOS which ran on a variety of system types well before the IBM-PC was released. Microsoft licensed this to IBM and then got a license from SCP. Later MS bought the whole thing (for $50,000)*.
MS-DOS ran on a large number of completely different systems from S100 bus to embedded. Most software of the time could be configured for the various terminal configurations. For example Turbo-Pascal was available for 'PC-DOS', or 'MS-DOS' (or CP/M). The MS-DOS version could be configured for dozens of different serial terminals such as VT-100 or ADM-3a, or ANSI if you used that on an IBM-PC with ANSI.SYS.
What required IBM-BIOS and IBM-PC compatibility was Lotus-123. That is why Compaq and others wanted to emulate an IBM without having to pay royalties to IBM.
The first version of MS-DOS that would not run on non-IBM-PC Compatibles was version 5, 10 years after the IBM-PC first appeared.
* This purchase allowed SCP as many free copies of MS-DOS as required as long as they were sold with a 'computer'. After the fire SCP sold MS-DOS with a V20 or V30 chip which was a faster clone of the 8088. MS settled by giving them a $million or so to stop doing that.
If you read the Ars article closely, you will see that Google only controls the applications and services that they produce. The rest is still GPL. From this article:
http://www.zdnet.com/debunking-four-myths-about-android-google-and-open-source-7000026473/
"Google Services are very handy. Maps, Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, and Search are all great, but you don't have to use them. Android is a fine mobile operating system in its own right, with its built-in home screen launcher; contacts directory; dialer and phone app; and camera and gallery. You can, if you want to, add your own services to it.
Indeed, that's exactly what has happened in China. There, 270-million Android users use Android, but, thanks in part to China and Google's continuing feud, 70 percent of them don't use Google services."
Existing vendors like Samsung have put their own "skin" and custom UI apps on top of Android, while still relying on the Android core.
What would Microsoft possibly want to do with Android that couldn't be done the same way? Even if Microsoft did fork Android, so what? It would be a customized distribution of the Android core, with whatever additions Microsoft wanted to make.
How is that different from what existing smartphone and tablet vendors do with Android? You can't just redirect your Samsung to use Google's update servers -- you need to wait for Samsung to deliver an upgrade that's compatible with their hardware. Is that not the very definition of a "fork" -- a distribution that is sufficiently different to be incompatible with the "base" release?
The whole theory of the article seems to be based on paranoia, not any kind of business or technical savvy.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
what compaq/phoenix did back then would likely infringe patents today.
The fact of the matter is that microsoft, IBM, and the PC clones got their start in a world with vastly less IP restrictions, and the conotation that intellegence could be property was not born yet.
Heck, if Bill Gates grew up today, doing half of the things he did, he'd never have the chances he did, and would most likely be in jail. He got caught hacking his local computer's time share about a decade before it became this high crime to humanity. A decade later he would have been Kevin Mitnick.
So getting back on topic, what would have been OK as a technical work around back in 1979 is now a gross jail landing violation.
Its the reason google needs to pay microsoft so much money for every android handset, despite everything being developed in house, with no exposure to any similar, at the time non-existant microsoft product.
So there's the company that already forked android and made it not free FireOS (amazon's fork of android).
Oh wait, then there's this open handset alliance that forbids its members using android forks, except when it conflicts with the mother ship's desires...
Is that an acceptable use of something "free"? (trick question)
Regarding taxable/nontaxable items, that can be handled in an app by a "no tax" button. Just the way sales clerks rang things up as taxable or not on cash registers for many decades.
There are subscription services that provide state, county and city rates on demand. Their sum would constitute a pretty good default value if the user has not manually configured a rate. Again, the point of this discussion is to show why a calculator app might legitimately use localization data.
I was using the classic interface, and when clicking a story I get beta, I go back and try it again, what the fuck?
I did not ask for this and I am still getting it
If Microsoft wanted to be awesome they'd make all their dev tools work for Android. Visual Studio for Android (meaning runs on Windows, targets Android) would be orders of magnitude better than the crap tools that Android developers currently have to put up with.
They're definitely come to the right place with this article!
That any implementation of Android taken over by Microsoft will be completely forked.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
"Microsoft DOS was designed per IBM's specification to run exclusively on IBM's PC hardware platforms. Phoenix Technologies employed software developers it nicknamed 'virgins,' who hadn't been exposed to IBM's systems, to create a software layer between Microsoft's DOS system and PCs built by IBM's competitors"
..
That's a novel revision of the actual historical facts which are: Microsoft bought DOS from Seattle Computer Products and hired on Tim Paterson rewrite it for the IBM PC. IBM owned the copyright to the original BIOS as such anyone who tried to make and sell a PC CLONE would have to use the IBM BIOS and pay IBM for the privelage. Columbia Data Products were the first company to clean-room the BIOS enabling them to sell their own PC CLONE without violating IBM claims. Subsequently Compaq and others went into the PC CLONE market. Because of a clause in the Microsoft-IBM agreement, Microsoft were allowed to sell versions of DOS to third parties. IBM tried and failed to claw back contol of the PC market with OS/2 and hired on Microsoft to write the code. Microsoft instead ivested most of the effort in writing Windows NT. Subseqently IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo
A million monkeys at computers furiously typing until android is recreated. all paid by license fees paid by android hardware manufacturers. We shall call it (in my best Gene Wilder impression)....!!!..FRANKENSHTEEEEEEN!
at it again.. the way everyone had to code everything twice.. once for explorer and once for netscape.. well its going to be even more fun for android and android-like devs.. then droid will fracture, leaving a more coherent market for ios dev.. allowing ios to hold on to 30% longer than it would.
maybe it works out w each of the big three (google, apple, microsoft) with a third of the market - with incompatible clouds and digital thunderstorms - more fun ahead! ;-)
2cents from toronto island (snow and thunder tonight)
jp
The problem is actually not that Microsoft can fork it. After all Microsoft using free software is a good thing. The bad thing is however that Google made a crucial mistake when they created Android. By using a non-copyleft license they have made it possible for Microsoft to not only fork it but also making it non-free.
In doing so they will only drive more people to keep using open source. MS never learns its lesson, for a supposed the genius, Gates seems to be that of a programmer and hacker that couldn't quite cut it in the real world. There pretty much doing what they've been doing, there going to hack apart other phone OS's, steal it, then patent it and call it there own.
Gates use to be a programmer with Amiga, and apparently not a good one at that. And the Amiga was the first to have a UI, instead of having to type in everything to run a program, you could just click an Icon, ect, ect...
if I use your open source code, and write my application on top of, you say I own the code I wrote.. but then, if that's the case, why do I have to release it as GPL as well
"Blah", meaning idle or wasteful talk, appears in dictionaries decades before "I Love Lucy", and the repetition "Blah blah blah" was well-known in the US at least as early as the 1940s. (Originally "Blahhhh blahhhh" mimicked pompous or repetitive speech, and "feeling blah" (meaning bored/listless) came from the French "Blasé" and dates to a similar time, it may be the ultimate origin.)
And the first use on the show was not the context you are implying. (Lucy wanted to buy something. Ricky said no. Lucy asked why. "Because I said so." "But Rickyyy..." "You have to understand that no means no!" And Lucy replied "Blah blah blah, no means no". There was no prior discussion in the episode which introduced the word "Habla", which would be necessary in the 1950's for the non-Spanish-speaking audience.)
They've been doing it as part of their business model since PC-DOS and MS-DOS.
Just let'em do what they do and use the good stuff.
In most countries, you do not own the code you write if you are writing it under contract or through employment. It's not really a novel thing. For instance, builders don't own the house they build, their employer/client does (assuming they pay them).
...funny - according to the picture, the MS developers are doing all the work using Macintosh computers.
Nothing in Android prevents Microsoft just taking the existing core and putting it on as many phones as they want. There is no restriction, you can do what you want with it.
However, getting access to the play store and many of the "standard" apps requires signing an agreement with Google - that doesn't get you android, just the play store access and apps. No amount of cleanroom re-implimentation of android core will entitle MS to connect to google's play store - that's not a "feature" of android, its a contractual agreement with Google.
-=DaveHowe=-