bem’s blog

Oracle has filed a lawsuit against Google, charging that its Android phone software infringes Oracle patents and copyrights related to Java, Oracle said Thursday.

"In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement," Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement.

It seems like the many people that have worried about Java being a company controlled language as opposed to a community controlled one are correct, especially those that suspected that Oracle would be much more closed about it than Sun was... This is a great way to kill the language and make people afraid to use OpenJDK in any commercial software.

It's too bad that working for HP doesn't give me the opportunity to play with neat toys like this. Yes, I know it has some issues with the form factor (the display doesn't swivel around to make the thing a convertable tablet?), but it would be lots of fun to play with. And of course, they're not releasing it in the US, which tends to be the way that HP goes with non-Microsoft powered devices. This HP-MS buddy buddy thing is kind of annoying at times.

This thing looks really impressive on paper, if the specs at engadget are correct. If it works as well in practice, something like this with a 3G cellular radio would be a pretty awesome device.

Some developers have asked about the support for copy-protected apps on developer devices, and indeed there is a limitation you should be aware of. Many developers are concerned about the unauthorized redistribution of their applications, so they make use of the copy-protection feature (known as "forward locking") which prevents applications from being copied off devices. However, developer phones like the ADP1 allow for unrestricted access to the device's contents, making it impossible to enforce copy protection. As a result, the Market application on such devices is not able to access copy protected apps, whether they are free or paid. If you choose to add copy protection when you upload your application to the Android Market, then you won't be able to test it on the ADP1's Android Market client. Your application will always be accessible to users who have standard configurations though, and if your application (whether it is free or paid) is not copy-protected it will appear on all devices, including developer configurations.

So I've found a reason (other than it being more expensive) why someone might want to buy the locked version of the Android phone. I still think the dev phone is more attractive, since the unlocked phone is pretty much a Linux box that fits in your pocket. (And I'm pretty sure it's more powerful than my first Linux box, too. =)