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Google Confirms Next Android Version Won't Use Oracle's Proprietary Java APIs
An anonymous reader writes: Google is ditching the Java application programming interfaces (APIs) in Android and moving to only OpenJDK. The news first came by a "mysterious Android codebase commit" from last month submitted to Hacker News. Google confirmed to VentureBeat that Android N will rely solely on OpenJDK. “As an open-source platform, Android is built upon the collaboration of the open-source community,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. “In our upcoming release of Android, we plan to move Android’s Java language libraries to an OpenJDK-based approach, creating a common code base for developers to build apps and services. Google has long worked with and contributed to the OpenJDK community, and we look forward to making even more contributions to the OpenJDK project in the future.”
All the apps continue to be developed for iOS. That's where the money is, less theft, less radically different OS's.
OpenJDK is under the GPL, which means there will be a lot more GPL in Android now.
Here is the commit message. Right now they are just copying files over, so it's not entirely clear what they will be doing with the OpenJDK stuff, but it's in there. Presumably Google will modify it to use Dalvik (or whatever VM they are using now).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Wow. Longtime Java programmer here. Switched to OpenJDK a few years ago to make deployments on Linix easier (many distros stopped providing Oracle JDKs through their package managers). Not a single thing broke. Not even a little.
So many many mane projects are likely to continue to work after a switch from Oracle to OpenJDK. Basically, as long as you don't directly use any com.sun.whatever or sun.misc.whatever code directly (like everyone used to do for base64 encoding, or writing JPG files), then you should be fine. Basically, if you have been doing what both Sun and Oracle have been telling Java programmers to do for about 10 or so years, now, your code should move from one JVM to another without blowing up.
But isn't Android "not Java"? *ducks*
The difference between OpenJDK and Java JDK is meaningless (In Android), so nothing will break
If that's true, why haven't they been using it all along? The first commercial Android phone was unveiled in late 2008. The OpenJDK class library was pretty complete by then.
The answer was Eclipse. Eclipse didn't work very well with the OpenJDK.
I had a 770 too, and I remember just how badly the UI sucked. Most of the apps that weren't part of the standard install weren't designed for touchscreen input and were clunky (most of the ones that were designed for the touchscreen were still clunky). It had a resistive touchscreen, so couldn't take advantage of multitouch and came with a stylus because you needed to tap very accurately to be able to hit controls on a lot of things. Great screen for the era though.
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They never used Oracle/Sun Java but Apache Harmony due to the " no GPL in userspace" rule in Android. My guess is that this has nothing to do with Oracle and everything to do with that Apache harmony isdead and it is annoying to maintain a fork. Using OpenJDK could increase quality and security thanks to more eyeballs.