Classpath Exception not included in the mobile edition [LWN.net]

Classpath Exception not included in the mobile edition

Posted Aug 20, 2010 11:32 UTC (Fri) by mjw (subscriber, #16740)
In reply to: Classpath Exception not included in the mobile edition by dgm
Parent article: A very grumpy editor's thoughts on Oracle

> But again, JavaME is NOT covered by that exception. Thus the only way for Google to stay in the clear would have been to use the _full_ JavaSE, not a subset.

You seem to be confusing the "specification" with the "implementation" and what Android/Dalvik actually supports.

The full GPL implementation that Oracle/Sun distributes is called PhoneME: https://phoneme.dev.java.net/ https://phoneme.dev.java.net/source/browse/phoneme/legal/

The OpenJDK implementation under GPL (+ exception) that they distribute is an implementation of JavaSE.

Some of the specified libraries overlap (although there are some subtle differences in behaviour) but neither is a full subset or superset of the other.

An example of usage of both PhoneME, OpenJDK and GNU Classpath, JamVM or Cacao derived implementations on embedded devices is the Bug: http://community.buglabs.net/kgilmer/posts/45-BUG-OpenJDK

Another example that blurs the lines between SE and ME (and happily combines code from various free implementations, PhoneME, OpenJDK, GNU Classpath, Cacao, etc.) is MIDPath http://midpath.thenesis.org/bin/view/Main/

Android/Dalvik resembles the Java SE variant the most. It doesn't reall resemble any java variant directly. But it doesn't include anything in ME that is not in SE. It can be seen as a subset of the SE libraries, with specific Android libraries added. The implementation is designed to run well on small devices, but isn't JavaME like.

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