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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.)
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.
-- 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
I think that'd stand up in court for all of about four seconds. Telling your engineers not to do patent searches in case they come across something similar to what they are working on that they didn't already know about is one thing; setting your engineers to deliberately copy someone else's work is rather another. At any rate, ignorance is no defence to patent infringement, it just helps you avoid the triple damages for wilful infringement.
The whole story is a horrendous beat-up, though. Android is open-source and MS are free to copy it any time they like. There are no proprietary parts of Android that Microsoft would have to replace. The Google Play store *is* proprietary and some Google apps are only (officially/legally) available through it. So Microsoft would have to supply their own implementations of maps (hint: they already have one) their own app store (hint: they already have one, albeit not for Android) and, erm, any other Google apps they thought they couldn't survive without. Since most of the money in Android comes from the Play store and ads in the search and maps apps, I don't think Microsoft are going to be too upset about this revenue going to them and not to Google.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
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.
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.
Telling your engineers not to do patent searches in case they come across something similar to what they are working on that they didn't already know about is one thing; setting your engineers to deliberately copy someone else's work is rather another.
Developing an equivalent app is not copying someone else's work, and reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability is still an explicitly protected right under US law.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You mean copyrights, clean rooms dont get around patents, they get around copyright.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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.
If that rule is universal, Windows 8.2 will be the OS of choice for Slashdot by year's end.
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/
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.
> 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.
So 7 out of your 9 android devices are Kindles - got it.
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.
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.