4 ms·
I wonder if you could clean-room most of this. Person A reads the declarations and writes down what they do, without mentioning any function names or argument
by danielweber 13y ago
I wonder if you could clean-room most of this.
Person A reads the declarations and writes down what they do, without mentioning any function names or argument names.
"This function returns the index of a character in a string."
Person B takes person A's work and writes
int findIndexOf(String s, char c);
A team then writes all the functions to do what Person B wrote up.
Now, at this point, what you have is something functionally the same as Java's String object. Do this for all classes. Call this bundle something like AlterJava. (Or YerksDiddy if you really worry about the name.)
Then someone writes a tool that translates Java into AlterJava. It's an easy thing to put into the compiler chain.
I'm skeptical of these "just hop through this hoop and you aren't breaking the law" ideas when other people make them, so feel free to tell me I'm missing something.
EDIT minor edits
- rayiner 13y agoI was thinking of exactly this, and I'd love to hear an explanation of why it wouldn't work. I think Oracle's win here is pretty "thin" in that regard. You could attack the translation tool, but it's just a directory mapping Java names to AlterJava names. What those Java names happen to be called are, under Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co., uncopyrightable facts.
- jpollock 13y agoThe hardest part in any clean room implementation is finding people with no prior knowledge of the source to make the clone.
- danielweber 13y agoIs it that hard to find people who haven't looked at the Java source code?
- dctoedt 13y ago> I wonder if you could clean-room most of this. ... This was much discussed in the early days of the PC; if memory serves, it's basically the approach that was taken by the first successful cloner of the IBM PC BIOS [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_the_IBM_PC_BIOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_th.... Also http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/33839.html http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/33839.html