Schmidt Testifies Android Did Not Use Sun's IP 239
CWmike writes "Google built a 'clean room' version of Java and did not use Sun's intellectual property, Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, testified in court Tuesday. Schmidt said its use of Java in Android was 'legally correct.' On this day seven of the trial, Schmidt gave the jury a brief history of Java, describing its release as 'an almost religious moment.' He told the jury that Google had once hoped to partner with Sun to develop Android using Java, but that negotiations broke off because Google wanted Android to be open source, and Sun was unwilling to give up that much control over Java. Instead, Schmidt said, Google created the 'clean room' version of Java that didn't use Sun's protected code. Its engineers invented 'a completely different approach' to the way Java worked internally, Schmidt testified."
We really need better names (Score:5, Funny)
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But it could just be the caffeine withdrawal too.
So, you're testifying that you also did not use Sun's IP?
fragmentation? (Score:3, Insightful)
If Oracle is so worried about the "Fragmentation of Java", why would they want to force Google to write a completely different API?
Re:fragmentation? (Score:5, Informative)
Google were going to use a completely different API anyway (the android application framework, rather than J2ME which Sunacle would have preferred). By "worried about fragmentation" what they really mean is "worried that people won't pay to license the patented parts of Java".
"Clean Room" implementation (Score:5, Insightful)
If what he says is true, there should be lots of evidence including a big stack of affidavits signed by the reverse-engineers swearing that they have never seen the original code. If he can't pull these out of his pocket, along with the Attorney who oversaw the project, I'd be.. erm... skeptical.
Re:"Clean Room" implementation (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the libraries? (Score:2)
There is a lot more to Java than the runtime engine and it's bytecode format -- like a few million lines of library code. Did they develop a clean room version of that as well?
While the source for those libraries was eventually released by Sun, it's not clear to me what license applies to the library source, and it's definitely not clear that the source was released before Google's work on Android. The issue may be water under the bridge as Sun did open source the vast majority of Java, but it kind of
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An affidavit from a developer about that developer's practices, or even the practices that that developer observed other developers using, is not hearsay.
Re:Registers vs. Call Stack = speed gain... apk (Score:4, Informative)
We're talking about an intermediate representation. Both Google and Oracle's virtual machines take their respective bytecode formats and convert them to a register-based machine language prior to execution. The only difference is that Google does this by translating from a different register-based language while Oracle translates from a stack-based language. This isn't about calling conventions, but compiler technology.
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We're talking about an intermediate representation. Both Google and Oracle's virtual machines take their respective bytecode formats and convert them to a register-based machine language prior to execution.
No shit - they run on an intel processor ... in fact any processor since the HP 3000 as far as I know.
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We're talking about an intermediate representation. Both Google and Oracle's virtual machines take their respective bytecode formats and convert them to a register-based machine language prior to execution.
No shit - they run on an intel processor ... in fact any processor since the HP 3000 as far as I know.
Maybe you meant the Transputer.
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We're talking about an intermediate representation. Both Google and Oracle's virtual machines take their respective bytecode formats and convert them to a register-based machine language prior to execution.
No shit - they run on an intel processor ... in fact any processor since the HP 3000 as far as I know.
Maybe you meant the Transputer.
Believe it or not the HP-3000 was still being sold up to 2003 [wikipedia.org], so though being introduced much earlier than the transputer it was produced later.
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So Schmidt might be right. It could have been 'legally correct.' But it sure wasn't a clean room implementation.
Re:"Clean Room" implementation (Score:4, Insightful)
If you look at docs, specifically java docs you will get variable names and description what it does. This is still clean room implementation.
Re:"Clean Room" implementation (Score:5, Insightful)
Typically, a clean room design is done by having someone examine the system to be reimplemented and having this person write a specification. This specification is then reviewed by a lawyer to ensure that no copyrighted material is included. The specification is then implemented by a team with no connection to the original examiners.
That's the proper way to do a clean room implementation. Once you start looking at copyrighted materials of the person you are copying, then it's no longer clean room. And yes, Javadocs are copyrighted.
Now, what you have done might still be legal. That's what I'm hoping for in this case. However, it certainly isn't clean room.
The clean room process is just a joke (Score:2)
The function foo increments the first ten arguments of the integer buffer passed in argument, without checking bounds or overfl
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Copyright doesn't protect functionality. Copyright only protects expression.
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Yes! Finding the people with the required skill sets and background across the many disciplines withing the larger umbrellas of Computer Science and Computer Engineering needed to implement something like Davlik in reasonable is no small feat. It certainly can be done if you have Google's money for payroll but searching successfully for the above who have also never seen a Java doc? The may be beyond the power of even the Google the search king!
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Why do you have a strong opinion for google or oracle in this case? I don't have a horse in the race, and I hope truth will out.
I don't have a strong opinion. I hope it will turn out that Google doesn't have to pay because that will increase the price of Android for everyone, for no good reason. Or if it doesn't, then I don't care.
Also, depending on the exact nature of the infringement, this has important implications for open source software, since Sun DID make Java open source.
And finally, if it comes down to patents, I hope Oracle loses miserably, because I hate software patents. But I don't think Oracle will lose miserably.
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It didn't cost me anything, it's on HP!
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Why do you have a strong opinion for google or oracle in this case? I don't have a horse in the race, and I hope truth will out.
Incidentally, the bias on Slashdot against Oracle, and for Google, is so strong right now, that if you aren't careful, you can get modded down for pointing out a way Google can lose, even though your post is 100% accurate. It's ridiculous.
Mentioning that you think it's better if Google wins is a way to let those people feel good without needing to mod you down. Sad but true.
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The problem with your statement is that they are implementing an SDK, so the code they produce has to have the same behaviour as the original. For instance, making a sandwich - without having the original recipe and reverse-engineering it, it'll end up being (virtually) identical, as you're trying to produce the same output. And even if this wasn't the case, there are some functions that need to be the same - if they're not, breakage happens.
It's not clear to me you understand what a clean room implementation is. It is perfectly possible to make a clean-room implementation of an SDK, or a chip, that implements the behavior accurately, without looking at the original code. There is no reason to believe Google did this (except for the sketchy testimony by their CEO).
Re:"Clean Room" implementation (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not clear to me you understand what a clean room implementation is. It is perfectly possible to make a clean-room implementation of an SDK, or a chip, that implements the behavior accurately, without looking at the original code. There is no reason to believe Google did this (except for the sketchy testimony by their CEO).
And the fact that a very large majority of the non-trivial portions of the code clearly do what they do in different ways to Oracle's implementation. And the fact that the developers of the code (in this case Apache, not Google) have stated several times that it is clean room. And that it was an open source project where the practice was to obtain a signed statement from developers providing complete details of exposure to Sun's IP prior to accepting patches from them (see http://harmony.apache.org/auth_cont_quest.html [apache.org] ), so it seems to be pretty clear that either it was clean room, or there is a developer who lied to them in a written warranty and therefore *that developer should be liable*, not Google.
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And the fact that a very large majority of the non-trivial portions of the code clearly do what they do in different ways to Oracle's implementation.
That's nice, but it's not evidence of a clean-room implementation. It is a good way to avoid copyright infringement.
And that it was an open source project where the practice was to obtain a signed statement from developers providing complete details of exposure to Sun's IP prior to accepting patches from them (see http://harmony.apache.org/auth_cont_quest.html [apache.org] [apache.org] ),
OK, that is evidence of a clean room implementation. How did Sun code end up in Android then?
Also, what was this guy doing working on Android? [electronista.com] Having one of the original developers work on Android is certainly not a clean room implementation.
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OK, that is evidence of a clean room implementation. How did Sun code end up in Android then?
I see no clear evidence that it did. All the code examples I've seen that are supposedly copied code seem trivial, and likely to be accidental duplication.
Also, what was this guy doing working on Android?
He wasn't. http://www.zdnet.com.au/google-oracle-get-technical-in-court-339336340.htm [zdnet.com.au]
He was working for Google in an entirely different capacity, and wrote the code as a translation of a Python implementation. The code was then copied into Android by a second Google employee, who was possibly unaware of its source. But as the code in question is trivi
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Humm... If the purpose of that function is to check that the interval fromIndex:toIndex is valid within an array on length arrayLen then there is another sensible way to implement that function.... without a bug:
This code does not throw ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if toIndex == arrayLen
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If this is intended for Java String operations, the toIndex is one more than you'd expect. From the String.substring() javadocs, emphasis mine:
"public String substring(int beginIndex, int endIndex)
Returns a new string that is a substring of this string. The substring begins at the specified beginIndex and extends to the character at index endIndex - 1. Thus the length of the substring is endIndex-beginIndex."
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Awww, you posted it! You goin to jail!
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Re:"Clean Room" implementation (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the weird part of this trial, there doesn't seem to be a formal decision paper/memorandum saying "Okay, we are doing a clean room, and these are the measures we need to be sure we enforce, here is the manager in charge." [Cravat: Maybe there is and Oracle simply didn't want to present it. But that seems unlikely] It seems more like Andy Rubin was shooting the shit over email and some engineer said that he could write his own byte-code interpreter, and some others piped up that maybe rewriting everything would be fun. And then 2 years later they had it done and Rubin was just like, "Oh, cool, let's build our business on this then."
But really this entire phase of the "trial" is bizarre. Oracle spent hours and hours and hours proving.... Google implemented the methods in java.lang et al. And Google is saying.... they implemented those methods. What exactly is the jury supposed to decide? Isn't whether or not Google can implement those methods be a matter of law? if the jury is supposed to say its fair use or not, why wasn't Oracle's presentation filled with examples of what things are fair use and what things aren't?
Oracle's lawyers are so focused on saying that Google should have got a TCK license, but they never presented WHY Google should have gotten that license. They just asked the Google people, "Hey, did you know you should have got a TCK license?" Then they ask the Sun people, "Hey, should they have gotten a TCK license?" But they never seemed to explain why the TCK was needed beyond avoiding fragmentation of the language. Fragmentation of the language isn't against the law AFAIK.
I guess things will become clear when the judge gives his instructions to the jury, but I am completely puzzled.
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I'm equally puzzled. They may actually have a case if they say that the API is copyrighted. Yes, it is a collection of facts, but I think there's a strong argument that it is a creative collection. The API was actually designed with an asthetic purpose. Like you say, whether or not reimplementing the API is fair use would seem to be the key issue (I hope to hell that it is, or even better that APIs can't be copyrighted).
But they are confusing the issue with this TCK stuff which seems blantantly obvious
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I don't see anything that supports this claim. Hopefully you know better than I do. If so, please post something. The Berkeley vs. AT&T case clearly established that *those* APIs could be implemented. I have been unable to find references, but based on my memory of the time (which is likely faulty), I think there was an explicit statement before the split that the API would be open. This may actually have been before source code was considered copyrightable so they would not have really referenced
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Copyright doesn't protect functionality.
Since an API is all about functionality, it's pretty hard to see how it can be protected by copyright.
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Because the copyright does not apply to the functionality of the API, it applies to the format and organization of the function calls.
You can't copyright a number, and you can't copyright the idea of looking someone's phone number in a list. But you can copyright an ordered collection of numbers as an artful expression of of such a list.
An API is more than "all about functionality"; it is an artful expression of the collection of function calls, and their parameter signatures, needed to implement such func
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In other words, they don't expect to win, but just want to confuse stuff as much as possible for as long as possible. I'd be looking for a money trail from MS in that case, though...
Normally I'd be with you on that, but this is Oracle we're talking about. It's fairly reasonable to assume that MS's hands are clean on this one, only because there's no value in trying to convince an entity to do something they would do anyway.
Re:"Clean Room" implementation (Score:4, Interesting)
Their second, and to them very important, goal is to prove that Google willfully infringed, and benefited a lot from it. They want a big payment as a result of this.
I believe the focus on the TCK license is an attempt to get bigger damages.
Re:"Clean Room" implementation (Score:4, Informative)
Everything Google 'copied' (really, re-implemented) was released under the Apache license as project Harmony.
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It is a defense against the "willful infringement" part of it, which I believe does have extra penalties associated with it. If Google said that Harmony presented itself convincingly as being able to offer the code/apis/docs legally without a license, there would be cover for calling it unknowing infringement. They'd still have to pay, but it would be much less.
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I don't think it will, because it's clear that the infringement was willful. They WERE trying to copy Sun. The only question is whether they were able to do it in a way that infringed or not.
Re:"Clean Room" implementation (Score:4, Interesting)
Equitable and promissory estoppel: Sun helped project Harmony and was deeply involved in it's creation, to the extent that it infringed, it had permission to do so. Sun definitely received benefit from this arrangement as parts of Sun's own implementation were contributed, as a result of Harmony, by Google.
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Note that "cravat" is a form of necktie.
Perhaps you meant "caveat"?
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It is even higher if the lines were contributed to Java by a programmer who then contributed to Android.
That wouldn't be a clean-room implementation then, would it.
Clean room is irrelevant (Score:2)
As I understand tje JAVA lic, and perhaps I'm mistaken, but it seems pretty clear that Sun lic the programming language for free but retained the lic and copyright on the implementation of the language itself. That copyright would clearly include the interface and methods needed to implement any java compatible compiler or interpreter. As long as one agrees that SUN had the right to copyright that then I don't understand why google has a case on this. maybe someone can explain?
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My take on the case:
Sun requires licensing to ship their JVM and SDK with a commercial product.
Google claims their wrote their own without using any Sun code.
If that is true, there's Google's case: they're not using the parts requiring licensing.
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reverse engineering from the language itself might be reasonable but as I understand it Dalvic actually implements all the java VM header profiles. You can't specify those without passing along copyrighted information. So how does one explain that? it's not a clean room and it is something that I beleive their lic forbids. maybe I'm wrong.
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For those of us who are not familiar with Java's internals, what are Java's VM header profiles and how are they subject to copyright protection?
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I'm not sure what you mean by "header profile", but would you also consider Wine [wikipedia.org] to not be allowed? I'm not sure you understand what clean room means -- simply that a specification is built by one person examining an existing system, and passed to another for implementation. You certainly can produce an API this way, and Apache has documentation that they claim supports the notion that Harmony (the API implementation Google used) was produced this way.
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Trouble is BSD didn't establish any case law. It was eventually settled out of court. Settlements don't establish precedent.
So while indeed it's a relevant case, and the decision may be of interest it is only possible for Google to refer to it as evidence that these kinds of practices are common in the industry and can be resolved with agreements between the parties - it does not give them any legal maneuvering beyond that since there was no judgement made about the case.
An out of court settlement is basica
Like Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Stand back I'm going to try SCIENCE!"
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Kaffe was a clean-room Java, so yes it can be done.
Re:Like Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
Linux is written to the POSIX standard. The POSIX standard is copyright IEEE and the Open Group. They have been clear that they won't sue people for implementing the standard (though, they also own a trademark which is a separate issue...). Additionally, the ability to implement this was pretty much covered by the BSD lawsuits in the 80s, which said that *this* API could be implemented (not that *all* APIs could be implemented).
I don't know for sure, but I don't think that the issue of blocking the implementation of APIs has been tested. POSIX is a special case. SCO was *clearly* full of shit. It is much less clear wrt to Oracle and Java from my position. The strange thing is (as others have mentioned) that Oracle seems not to be pushing the API copyright issue and are instead claiming that Google needed a TCK license. Things may change later, though.
Re:Like Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
IEEE holds the copyright to the documents describing the POSIX standard. It doesn't necessarily apply to the particular items being standardized (APIs, utilities, etc.).
Re:Like Linux? (Score:4, Funny)
As a contributor of code to IEEE documents, I always found it necessary to release the code to the public domain before I submitted it to the IEEE, so their unashamed copyright grab would not apply.
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. The strange thing is (as others have mentioned) that Oracle seems not to be pushing the API copyright issue and are instead claiming that Google needed a TCK license. Things may change later, though.
it's not that strange. isn't that after all the license they require from all j2me and mobile implementors? you got any idea how many hundreds of millions of those devices have been sold under license?
crappy part is that because of that same stranglehold on j2me, j2me is dying.
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Isn't this basically what Linus Torvalds did with Linux? If it can be done with an OS couldn't you do it with a compiler or an interpreter? I'm not a programmer, so the likeliness of this story being true is beyond my ability to judge.
Both general GNU and Linux developers were very careful to avoid infringing copyrights and a lot of work started after the original Unix patents expired.
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Isn't this basically what Linus Torvalds did with Linux?
Yes & no. Torvalds was implementing POSIX. There are two advantages he had here:
1. POSIX is defined in a document that is separate from any implementation of it and is published by a group that is not a single copyright holder of a particular implementation. It was specifically intended to be a vendor-neutral standard that anyone could implement.
2. There were already free implementations available (BSD, and the out-of-copyright-due-to-error older versions of System V) that he could use as the basis f
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Isn't this basically what Linus Torvalds did with Linux? If it can be done with an OS couldn't you do it with a compiler or an interpreter? I'm not a programmer, so the likeliness of this story being true is beyond my ability to judge.
He had Posix to guide him.
"Google wanted Android to be open source"?! (Score:3, Interesting)
"Google wanted Android to be open source, and Sun was unwilling to give up that much control over Java."
What?! Java already was open source, GPLv2. Since 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Java_implementations#Sun.27s_November_2006_announcement [wikipedia.org]
It must be something else then, or what am I missing here?
Re:"Google wanted Android to be open source"?! (Score:5, Informative)
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Java ME (a version of Java for mobile phones) doesn't include the classpath exception, so ALL Android software would have had to be GPLv2.
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Yeah, that statement doesn't really capture it very well. Google wanted (actually, needed) Java to be open source under a permissive license, not GPL. This trial is in an interesting way, an examination of the difference between the GPL and Apache licenses and how incredibly important they are. However both of them certainly qualify as open source.
Re:"Google wanted Android to be open source"?! (Score:5, Informative)
In 2006, only javac, the java compiler, was open source. Android doesn't even use this compiler, so this was irrelevant to them. It took until 2007 for a GPL release of the class library, and Android was basically finished by this point in time. The first android phone launched only weeks after Java's GPL release. The decision to pursue an open source Java implementation was taken in 2005, shortly after Google acquired Android, and long before Sun began open-sourcing anything.
Re:"Google wanted Android to be open source"?! (Score:5, Informative)
You are mixing things.
OpenJDK is the GPLv2 licensed reference implementation for Java SE. This is important because it includes crap like Swing and AWT that have no place on a modern mobile phone or tablet, amongst countless of other fat that's not needing. The virtual machine itself is way to heavy, doing optimizations that can be afforded on a desktop, but that are too expensive on a mobile phone.
But Java ME (mobile edition) is an entirely different matter. It does not have an open-source implementation, so you have to license it from Sun/Oracle. And if you do that, you cannot modify it to suit your needs, unless Sun/Oracle agrees, which is very unlikely because historically they've been quite religios about their TCK.
So the thing left to do, if you want to use "open-source Java" is to fork OpenJDK. But the problem here is that the patents grant in GPLv2 is implicit and this means for derivate works it does not hold in Europe (for example) as the "implicit patents grant" is an artifact strictly related to the US patents office only.
Apache begged Sun for years to license them the TCK for Apache Harmony (the most complete third-party open-source implementation), but the license of the TCK says that distribution of the implementation for mobile devices is subject to licensing, a clause which is incompatible with Harmony's APL license, therefore Sun disagreed ... but at least people assumed that a clean-room implementation is fine, even if it does not pass the TCK, as long as you don't use the Java trademark. And now Oracle wants to prove otherwise.
So no, for mobile devices Java is closed, unless you go with a clean-room implementation, which Google did.
Dalvik is a virtual machine optimized for mobile phones. The latest version is pretty good too. Android has its flaws, but it's overall pretty good and this is in part because Google went the extra mile with their own VM implementation, which wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
Re:"Google wanted Android to be open source"?! (Score:4, Interesting)
..One point if the GPLv2 does not cover US Patents in Europe but it does cover US Patents in the US ... what is the problem?
US Software patents are covered in the US - but implicitly granted
US Software patents are meaningless in Europe
Europe does not have Software Patents ...
So this is about Copyright and not Patents ...and nothing was copied?
Re:Google did not develop Android to be open sourc (Score:4, Funny)
Where do you get the shit that you smoke?
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... and where can I get some?
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Re:Google did not develop Android to be open sourc (Score:5, Funny)
Oh come on, just saying a name is harmless. It's like Candlejack - I say "Candlejack" all the time, and nothing bad ever ha
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Why did you click on both 'Preview' and 'Submit' before attempting to comple your sentence?
Re:Google did not develop Android to be open sourc (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess why Google doesn't use it or create their own? Because that would be much more work to do.
1) What's wrong with saving yourself work?
2) Isn't that the whole point of OSS?
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And so the myth that Steve jobs is still alive begins!...is that you Steve? Knock once for "yes" and twice for "God wants an iPad!".
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If you say "Steve Jobs" three times to a mirror he appears and smashes your Android phone.
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Because the Samsung clone of it isn't out yet.
Re:Google did not develop Android to be open sourc (Score:5, Funny)
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You appear to have been the victim of several (-1, I disagree) mods.
Re:Google did not develop Android to be open sourc (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's just wrong.
In fact, despite the fact that kernel and userland programs in Android require it to be open source, Google is making it as hard as possible for it to be any use for others.
This is wrong - only the kernel is GPL. They have no obligation to release the rest of the source, which is either Apache2 or BSD licensed. In fact, they didn't for a version (Honeycomb?).
Bionic, Dalvik, they could've kept all of that closed and they didn't.
You need to be registered partner and pay hefty sums just to officially use Android.
This is a red herring and slightly wrong. You can call your device "Android" if you pass the compatibility test, which is free (as in beer and speech). If this is enough to call Android not open, then Firefox isn't either (see Iceweasel).
You have to get a license to get access to Google Play, which isn't software but a service provided by Google and not really part of Android.
In fact, they have basically used the work of countless amount of volunteer programmers without giving much back.
That's called open source. We all use much more than we contribute back; in fact, that's the whole point!
But the fact is that the Android software is open, and Linux 3.3 included contributions from Android's kernel.
Guess why Google doesn't use it or create their own? Because that would be much more work to do.
They have created a language (Go), they pay for the development of Python (check who employs Guido van Rossum) and they have developed a full compiler and VM (Dalvik).
The reason they chose Java has nothing to do with it being more work, but with the fact that developers already know the language.
Re:Google did not develop Android to be open sourc (Score:4, Insightful)
FTFY
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I did. All I get is a series of articles that suggest he probably didn't "steal" anything.
Re:Schmidt cannot be trusted or believed. (Score:5, Insightful)
He should have excused himself from the board the moment Google started working on Android.
That would have been silly because Google started working on Android when Apple was a company that made portable music players and pretty much nothing else. But even so, he did in fact recuse himself from all discussions involving the iPhone and resigned not long after its release. Since Google purchasing Android was very publicly known there is no excuse for the rest of the board for not removing him if they thought it was a problem. There was absolutely nothing secret about it, so if it was a problem as you seem to believe then that is a testament to incredible stupidity of the Apple board room and not much else.
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Nice nearly universal copypasta there.
Name any market Apple has created? Tablets? Smartphones? MP3 players? It's all polished implementations of other peoples well proven ideas. Their finest and purest idea was their first one: computing accesible to masses.
Name any market Microsoft has created? Operating systems? Database servers? Directory services? It's all polished etc. etc. etc.
Re:mod up (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though - I love the irony in someone saying
"Name any market Google has created [...] It's all polished implementations of other peoples well proven ideas."
in response to a comment about Google "stealing" from Apple
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That's the irony though. Apple did exactly the same thing. There's no innovation there. MP3 players? There were many before the iPod existed. Desktop computers? Even computers with a GUI. Those existed. Microsoft had been pushing tablet computers for years before the iPad came out. Smart phones running Windows Mobile were out there.
So what did Apple do? They created, in the words of the grandparent post, "polished implementations of other people's well proven ideas."
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By that definition, there's been very little innovation in the computer industry in the last thirty years. After all, there were touch-screen driven computers around years before Microsoft started pushing their tablet idea, and there were also laptops around long before then.
Innovation does not have to mean "implementing a 100% brand-new, never been done before, never even something similar been attempted before idea". If it did, then we've had no innovation since the days of Charles Babbage.
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well that's the point, there hasn't been real innovation going on in ages.
just marketing older innovations and faster cpu's. and battling over those non-innovations in the courts.
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Re:mod up (Score:5, Interesting)
Schmidt has dirty paws. I would not be surprised if this behavior is why Sergey Brin had to oust him. Name any market Google has created? Search? Mail? Maps? Online Docs? It's all polished implementations of other peoples well proven ideas. Their finest and purest idea was their first one: search ranking by citation.
AdWords. I'm unaware of any prior system that did automatic auctions for specific search terms. As far as Google's success, AdWords was equally as important as search, since it's the financial basis for the entire company. If you read some of the early history of Google their original sales methods were human centric, slow and no better than anyone else. AdWords started the flood of cash.
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Adwords was technology developed by a company originally named Boingo, later renamed to Applied Semantics, and which Google purchased in 2003. Google did not develop Adwords itself.
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Surely the jury figures out who is telling the truth.