> What other alternatives are there ?.. How could they seriously think > of ripping out java from Android and replacing it with something > else ? Wouldnt this have been the dumbest move in history, after > everything that they and the public have invested in growing the > platform ?
Doesn't that just boil down to a cost-benefit decision? When Oracle purchased Sun, the equation changed radically; Google would no longer potentially be up against an engineering-at-heart (much like like themselves) company in financial trouble. Given this change of the equation, what other choice is there if Google wants to be stewards of their own ship and provide a free mobile OS? That target can simply not be met if Google has to abide by the JME, JSE or JEE definitions and require adopters to pay licensing fees! Unlike Java, the C# language is a public specification under the standards organizations ECMA and ISO. Given that all Google really needed was a language, a medium of expression, it's not a far cry to imagine them embracing it. Google's biggest problem here probably was with the negative stigma surrounding C# within the typical Java ecosystem they were used to navigate. In other words, politics and religious issues above technical ones (Let's not forget that Neal Gafter, now working on C#, used to work on Java for Google). I'm thinking Google's best plan B move is to branch out and provide official support for more languages than just Java. Then, if a court later decides that using elements of Java [the language] violates X, Y or Z, Google may simply halt support for Java much in the same way as Microsoft was forced to back in the day (although that was a different issue where Microsoft was forced to rename their implementation to J++ rather than halt it, essentially giving birth to the truly independent language C#). However, it would matter less to Google, as they would've already capitalized/bootstrapped on the ecosystem. Indeed, one wonders if a completely new language wouldn't fare fairly well now, given 1) how many are attracted to Obj C due to the iPhone, 2) how Google are more than capable of providing their own development tools and 3) the massive 550K Android activations daily. Of course we all know that what's *really* under attack here really has nothing to do with the language, but is all about the platform. And at the end of the day, the platform matters more than the language, the iPhone has proven that. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
