Oracle finally sues Google over Java.
CNET has a copy of the complaint letter from Oracle. Other than a list of patents that was infringed nothing much was said about how it was infringed. I always thought that with the coming of Android, Java finally has a great platform in the mobile arena, I know people will agree with me that Java ME sucks most of the time.
I agree with
Miguel that Java as a product has never been profitable for Sun, when Sun was around the big names in the J2EE app server market was Oracle, Bea and probably IBM that made money from selling middleware products. So i guess since
Oracle paid quite abit for Sun and so they need to milk it for all it's worth.
How will all this pan out? Below are my 4 guesses.
1. Google pays Oracle
Straight forward way to solve the problem, but that will mean anyone else who has the same idea as Google needs to cough up money big time and that affect's Java, although people might not be moving away quickly but stagnation may occur and that's bad for any language.
2. Google goes to court and wins ! And all is well in the Android world.
Might be a long and drawn out battle, but sets the scene for even more innovation in the Java eco system. The thing is what will Oracle do about Java if it loses this battle.
3. Google goes to court and lose, Google pays Oracle
Same as 1
4. Google moves Android to alternative languages (Python, .Net).
That would be interesting, considering that Goggle is quite the advocate for Java and Python (look at App Engine). Would love to see Android supporting Python in the future, quite like how Symbian has some support for Python (although I think Symbian as a platform is dead also), the next closest alternative would be a move to C#, since they are quite close in terms of syntax and perhaps popularity, and it doesn't cost much for a Java programmer to move to C#.
