Native Libraries

Native Libraries

The native libraries are C/C++ libraries, often taken from the open source community in order to provide necessary services to the Android application layer. Among others, they include:

Webkit  A fast web-rendering engine used by Safari, Chrome, and other browsers SQLite    A full-featured SQL database Apache Harmony    An open source implementation of Java OpenGL    3D graphics libraries OpenSSL    The secure locket layer

Although many of these libraries are used as-is, one notable exception is Bionic, which is basically a rewritten version of the standard C library. Bionic is used for two reasons:

Technology     To make it purpose-built for tiny, battery-powered devices License     To make it license-friendly for others who might want to adopt it and change it

GNU libc, the default C library for Linux, is licensed under a GPL li- cense, which requires any changes that you release publicly to be pushed back to the open source community. As such, it might not be the most business-friendly open source license when a company wants to keep their derivative work proprietary. Bionic, on the other hand, is licensed under an Apache/MIT license, which doesn’t require derivative works to be open sourced.