While I certainly prefer iOS to Android ... it's really unfortunate that such a situation has emerged. I think the Android platform has only done good for our planet. Developers have more jobs, more interesting apps are being created, more devices are being sold, there are more powerful and less expensive devices in the smartphone world that are becoming popular in emerging markets and third world countries (don't quote me, but a nearly free Android handset in Nigeria?) Mobile is a paradigm shift. People are more and more connected while away from their homes and desks. Payments are going mobile. Also, Android is the biggest competitor to Apple. I'm certainly an Apple guy in all aspects, but I do appreciate competition in the market to keep everyone working hard and innovating.

Sucks that Oracle will not consider any of that. That no terms could be reached out of simple goodheartedness. Oracle isn't losing money because of Android as far as I am concerned. There might be profit lost due to licensing, but it just feels wrong to me.

So the message is pretty clear. No one should ever again build anything on top of Java.

Bryan Cantrill (formerly Sun, then worked for Oracle, now working elsewhere) talks about Oracle in his interesting talk here: http://smartos.org/2011/12/15/fork-yeah-the-rise-and-develop...

He compares Oracle to a lawnmower - if you stick your hand in a mower, it will cut your hand off.

Oracle is simple in the way that a mower is simple - a mower cuts what is put in front of the blade. Oracle wants money from whoever they can get it from.

What's the worse case scenario in this dispute? I'm sure Oracle just wants money, but could they legally prevent Google from using Java entirely? I can hardly imagine rebuilding the Android ecosystem on another language.

How is it that Google (et al) does not just fall back on the GPL-licensed OpenJDK? I understand that Oracle has a lot of money to burn on lawyers and other forms of harassment, but why does it seem that the common wisdom (not just this case, but the whole Java community seems generally scared of Oracle) is to completely ignore the generally accepted legal grants of this one specific GPL-licensed project?

Ellison doesn't seem to know a lot these days (and this isn't just snark): his moves to purchase then effectively lose influence over various large aspects of the Sun assets (Jenkins, Open Office, MySQL), his vacillation on whether NoSQL is a threat or not, and this ever churning battle with Google over Java...just shows a very unfocused leadership at the helm.

Is there any other programming language with similar legal history? I would like to know.

I wouldn't answer in his position either. If there's any internal record that he wasn't sure (and how could he be before the trial's over), and if he mentioned it to anyone who isn't a lawyer (no attorney-client privilege), then a definite answer either way invites a perjury charge.

I wonder if a ruling that favors Oracle will taint JVM-based languages such as Clojure?

I wonder what would have happened if IBM won the bidding war for Sun instead of Oracle.

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