On Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:59:49 +0200, Casper Bang <casper.b...@gmail.com>
wrote:
The point of an open spec is to offer a standard everybody is free to
use.
Without standards, it's pretty hard to coordinate and cooperate across
system boundaries. As such, a language is no different from a protocol.
JavaScript is another example of an open standard under Ecma (why it's
also
called EcmaScript), which allows many different browsers and none of
which
has to pay licence fees to NetScape. Don't get me wrong here, I think
it's
great to have a de-facto implementation (OpenJDK) of the JSE standard,
but
I think it's a crying shame you alternatives are forced out (Apache
Harmony) since I have a preference for open standards allowing for many
different implementations. C# (Ecma-334) has .NET/CLR (Microsoft
propriatary) Rotor (Microsoft Shared Source), Mono (open-source), dotGNU
(open-source, dead).
Generally speaking I agree. But I was talking from the point of view of
Android. Google's needs were to build Android from scratch or reuse,
adapting, the OpenJDK. Furthermore, I doubt they are really interested in
making Android an open specification so other independent implementations
would be created.
Sure there is, I just explained it a few times. It's the same reason you
and I are arguing in English here; it's not that the English language
is particular superior or that we couldn't invent a better one, it's the
fact that it allows a Dane and an Italian to readily communicate.
Well, English *is* particular superior for this task. While it is
certainly true that English spread mainly because USA won the II World
War, I don't know about Danish, but I can guarantee that Italian is
syntactically more complex than English. It's definitely easier for an
Italian to learn English than for a English-speaking person to learn
Italian, especially if we're talking of a simple, introductive but already
productive level. Perhaps there are other natural languages that have the
same property, I'm not saying that English is the simplest in absolute. So
we can say that Java is spread also because Sun and other corporates
marketing efforts in the '90s and early 00's, but it also has some
definitely good properties. On the other hand, keeping this metaphor, I
could add that while Esperanto or Interlingua are possibly even simpler,
they fail to spread because they lack a sponsor. You need both things:
good properties and a sponsor.
--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
fabrizio.giud...@tidalwave.it
http://tidalwave.it - http://fabriziogiudici.it
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