Google Confirms Next Android Version Won't Use Oracle's Proprietary Java APIs

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @01:28PM from the on-our-own dept.

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.”

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Re:Good time to be an Android developer! by stephanruby · 2015-12-29 16:52 · Score: 5, Informative

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.