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Comment by Jacob4u2 | Hacker News Reader

Florian continues to comment on the post, posts this link for confirmation of the source files still being in Android source

http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/libcore.git;a=tree...

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I think Florian was looking at Froyo, while the author was looking at master. The offending source files are not in Gingerbread:

http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/libcore.git;a=tree...

His response seems to be along the line of "how do we know the unit test code didn't get put on a device and shipped?":

For this one as well as quote #3, what's missing is an analysis of the code actually shipped with Android-based devices. There are many such devices. Some may be more security-oriented (hence more likely to make use of the "acl" and PolicyNodeImpl type of classes) than others.

So we're talking about a totally unsubstantiated claim here. There may be build scripts, and some files may not be in them by default. That doesn't mean that no maker of an Android-based device actually decided to build them into a product, especially if Apache license headers appeared to allow it.

If this scenario did in fact occur, then isn't it the device manufacturer's fault and problem, and not Google's responsibility?

Which party builds/packages the Android distributions for the actual phone devices that the OS will appear on?

The nice thing about open source is that the public can investigate what exactly is happening here, which is exactly what I am trying to do.

Clue: Go up to the support directory and click the HEAD link and notice the difference.

Nice. Specific commit: http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/libcore.git;a=comm...

Note however that deleting the files don't suddenly make the copyright infringement claims invalid.

Sure, but it appears that there was no intent and that the actual damages from the infringement are roughly $0. It may result in a small penalty, but it's in no way a threat to Android's future.

> It may result in a small penalty

Especially considering they did register their copyright on Java 5. I know because I have read the court exhibits.

Yup, statutory damages for copyright infringement suck for individuals, but for someone like Google they're not awful (AFAIR it's something like $7,500 or $150,000 depending on something per count).

True, but if they did ship something tainted, then that could be a very large count.

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