
RIP Apache Harmony - DanielRibeiro
http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/11/apache-harmony-finale/
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ojosilva
Two large companies, Google and IBM, have invested a lot of money and have
built multi-billion dollar businesses based on Java: Android and the
Rational/Websphere Suite. They're probably losing a lot of sleep at night
knowing another large and independent player like Oracle owns the thing. I
would. IBM has even "joined" the new OpenJDK effort. But it's just a matter of
time until they resign over some $$ or licensing dispute.

I wonder why they don't seriously team up and do something about this. Google
has already many language and vm designers on board, with Python, V8 and Go
all increasingly popular. IBM too is no stranger to building languages,
runtimes and databases from the ground up.

Instead of setting up a true open standard for a cross-platform environment
and language, they choose to spend billions on patents and legal fees to
defend their status-quo.

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buster
Interesting in that Android uses some code from the Harmony project:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Harmony#Use_in_Android_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Harmony#Use_in_Android_SDK)

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clumsysmurf
As an android developer, this has me very concerned. I am worried that the
subset of Java that Android comes with diverges more and more over time from
the official implementation, and Android's subset becomes the new IE6.

Over time, i expect more and more libraries that I use which were not designed
specifically for Android, but work fine nonetheless - to begin having issues
with the java subset provided by Android unless Google works hard to keep
their subset up to par.

Already, Android seems like its own little island without much of an
ecosystem.

It seems both Mac and Windows' respective platforms are converging; this will
make it easy to share code between respective variants of those operating
systems, although there will be unique considerations to be made in terms of
the UI for each form factor.

Google does not communicate future plans about these things, and I'm not
convinced they have the resources and wherewithal to keep Android's Java
subset on par with official Java. Especially without the java compatibility
test tools. I feel as if Google has been limping along just barely enough with
Android to keep up with iOS and and soon, WP7/8.

Part of me wishes Google would just work something out with Oracle so that we
can use an official implementation of Java on Android … or just get rid of
Java altogether and use another language.

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DiabloD3
RIP? WTF? Android recycled a large portion of the Harmony code base (this is
why the Sun/Oracle Java case is both vs Google and Apache, even if not
explicitly).

The only thing Android does thats new is the Dalvik VM. The rest is Harmony's
classpath and friends.

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rbanffy
Had they used OpenJDK, wouldn't they be Oracle-proof?

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patrickaljord
OpenJDK is GPL, that would force all apps on the Android market to be GPL too.

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viraptor
That's not likely. The apps don't extend the JVM in any way - they just use
it. It's like eglibc and any app on the system. That specific libc is LGPL,
but that doesn't mean any application using it has to be using the same
license.

Edit: just realised it's not the best example because the apps are actually
linking and that's allowed by LGPL. Better one would be probably mono which
does use GPL.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Mono is multi-licensed, as shown here: <http://www.mono-
project.com/FAQ:_Licensing>

* The C# compiler is dual-licensed as MIT and GPL. * The tools are GPL. * The runtime is LGPL. * A few more interesting parts from Microsoft are Microsoft Permissive, with some dual licensed as Apache.

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firefoxman1
Too bad it's not "RIP ECMAScript Harmony"

