On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 17:40, TK Chia <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Is it? By whom? > > The whole discussion around the recent Google v. Oracle court case? Hmm. Good point. > If anything, it should show clearly that there is _nothing_ _nefarious_ > whatsoever in writing a system which implements a similar API --- or > even the exact same API --- as some other system. All right, I have to concede that point. > It only "sounds" nefarious in the MS-DOS 1.x case, because Microsoft > "The Great Satan" happens to be involved. Well, to be fair, MS wasn't a great or especially nefarious company (yet) back then. Google didn't go into business offering its own JVM in competition with Sun or Oracle. (Although Microsoft did!) Google was targetting a different market that Java was barely present in. J2ME had significant presence in featurephones, before smartphones appeared, but they were dying when Android switched target from being a Blackberry-knockoff to being an iPhone-knockoff instead. > I am pretty sure that _any_ interface for interacting with an OS _has_ > to be public information at some point. Otherwise there is no way for > third parties to actually, well, write applications for it. > > Thank you! :-D That is a compelling argument, I have to admit. OK, you have me. I still maintain there is a bit of a difference between copying a rival's API in order to launch a competing product, and copying a rival's API in order to do something completely different with it. WINE is not a competitor to Windows, any more than Sun's WABI was. Android is not a competitor to the JVM. AIX was not a competitor to HP-UX or Solaris, say, except inasmuch as their manufacturers had rival hardware product lines. Solaris was of no interest or relevance to IBM RS6000 customers, and AIX was of no interest to Sun customers, and so on. Each only ran on their own proprietary hardware until late in the era of proprietary RISC workstations. But I must concede your overall point. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: [email protected] – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
