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>The Harmony VM is a cleanroom VM and spec-compliant VM. Dalvik is a cleanroom VM. I'm not quite sure what you're saying with this? The OpenJDK comes with a p

• jfager 16y ago
  Why is this getting upvoted? You're wrong. Spec-compliant jvms get a patent grant. Dalvik isn't spec-compliant, so it doesn't get the grant.
  • koenigdavidmj 16y ago
    And his point was basically that any VM implementing any bytecode language might very well violate the patents in question. Anyway, Dalvik does not even claim to execute Java bytecode, but its own language. Does that not mean that it is in pretty much the same legal footing as, say, the Python bytecode interpreter? And there exists plenty of prior art on the VM, all the way back to 1966 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine ), so I am not so easily convinced that the patent is going to survive the trial.
  • ergo98 16y ago
    http://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html http://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html To my knowledge Harmony has never been given a patent grant. When they tried to obtain the blessing, Sun responded by releasing the OpenJDK, which they bound (with conditions) their patent grants to. If something else happened that I am ignorant of, please tell me, but to my knowledge Harmony has zero patent protection. As an aside, the reason Sun refused to grant Harmony a patent grant was that there was the open possibility that it could cannibalize J2ME (at the time Sun was fairly successful in that space, so they were deeply protective, whereas they were failing on the desktop)
    • davidw 16y ago
      You are correct, I think. The official test suite is not some thing anyone can go and run: http://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html http://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html
    • jfager 16y ago
      Most of that is true, but is not what you said in the comment I replied to, and is not what I disagreed with. Apache Harmony isn't spec-compliant only because it hasn't been blessed by the TCK, and the only reason it hasn't been blessed by the TCK is because Apache disagrees with the licensing terms of the TCK on principle. But the intent of Harmony is to be fully-compliant, the code is something like 99.5% there, and Apache believes that other agreements from Sun around Java back up its position on the TCK issue, so if it came down to it, Apache would be in a very strong position if Oracle ever came after it. In the worst case scenario, they could simply grudgingly accept the TCK license and get the patent grants. Dalvik, otoh, makes no claim or effort to be spec compliant, and there's no reason to expect they should get the grant. I'm not defending Oracle here, btw. I think the suit is ridiculous, but on the more general grounds that software patents are inherently a bad idea that stifle innovation. I just don't think it helps anything to distract from the core issue by spreading FUD about Apache's exposure.
      • ergo98 16y ago
        > Apache Harmony isn't spec-compliant only because it hasn't been blessed by the TCK, and the only reason it hasn't been blessed by the TCK is because Apache disagrees with the licensing terms of the TCK on principle The Sun patent license grant is completely incompatible with the Apache License. As is it is impossible to combine the two. Apache isn't just grandstanding -- the conditions made it impossible for the patent grant to apply. There is no FUD about Harmony. Harmony has zero patent protection. Any other cleanroom implementation has zero protection, exactly as I said, until you essentially bow to Sun cum Oracle. My original statement is factually correct.
        • pvg 16y ago
          As it is, you are a clueless, ranting idiot. And I'll happily take the downvotes for it.