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Microsoft entered into an contract with Sun specifically agreeing that any Java implementation they shipped would be fully compatible with Sun's version. Now i
by orangecat 14y ago
Microsoft entered into an contract with Sun specifically agreeing that any Java implementation they shipped would be fully compatible with Sun's version.
Now it's effectively true of Android; no program written in Java not specifically for Android can possibly be expected to work.
The large majority of existing Java code and libraries will work on Android without modification.
- flomo 14y agoThe relevant point being that Google didn't want to license Java under the standard terms because they wanted control over the platform, and certainly partially because they saw what happened to Microsoft. It certainly wasn't just the technical matter of reproducing "166 APIs", there was the whole political angle of putting Android under control of Sun/Oracle's committees. (And just on a trivial note, Microsoft eventually created their own 'clean-room' Java called "J#". It died in obscurity, but Google wasn't the first.)