Google, Sun Headed for Showdown Over Android

narramissic writes "There may be trouble brewing between Google and Sun. Google has written its own virtual machine for Android, 'most likely as a way to get around licensing issues with Sun.' If Google used any of Sun's intellectual property to build Dalvik, Sun could sue Google for patent infringement. But here's where it gets interesting - Sun is a vocal advocate for open source and it would 'hardly appease the open source community to sue Google over an open source software stack.'"

Comments

To put it bluntly.

[LWATCDR]

So reporter thinks that Sun might sue Google for forking Java all the while over looking the fact that Sun has GPLed Java and that other groups have produced versions of Java with out getting sued. Google and Sun both are saying that they are working together.
In other words a none story.

Re:To put it bluntly.

[cromar]

It's not the CEOs. It's the PR and legal depts.

Re:To put it bluntly.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

GuI interfaces are usually done horribly in Java, because its easy to screw them up. The unresponsive Gui (see zend framework) often makes people think that Java is slow.

Unresponsive is slow. From a user's (and my) POV, I don't care if code executes in 10ms or 299ms if the GUI refreshes every 300ms. Why, because I use a program to do things, not to marvel at the effiency of the algorithim (unless I'm examining the code).

Additionally, a lack of progress bars leads to killing processes and restarting them, making them slower in reality.

Re:How about an Android for this Web ?

[mhall119]

Java on web browsers has possibly gotten worse with years. Java 6 update 3 contains improvements to both install and startup of the JVM within web browsers.

Current multi-media web dev is relegated to Flash, but I'm sure that there are many skilled programmers out there that would be glad to have a lean Java VM & API working in web browsers. Sun gave up long time ago, Google could take over and make it ubiquitous. A new spec for easily embedded media components is in the works, hopefully it will make it into Java 7, and will be a good compliment to Java FX script on the web. There is talk about plugging it into existing media frameworks like GStreamer or VLC, to bring in all of their supported formats. Sun may have deglected multi-media, but it's not quite forgotten yet.

Ahhhh, Slashdot

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Title: "Google, Sun Headed for Showdown"
Summary: There MAY be trouble brewing between Google and Sun...
TFA: Google COULD get in trouble with Sun, according to some analyst (but both parties declined to comment)
Reality: Move along, nothing to see here...

it's a real issue

[m2943]

while over looking the fact that Sun has GPLed Java

Releasing software under the GPL wouldn't give Google patent rights, since Google is not basing their software on Sun's.

and that other groups have produced versions of Java with out getting sued

Quite to the contrary: all conforming Java implementations that have ever been produced are produced under license from Sun, and Sun has used legal threats to ensure that.

There are a bunch of non-conforming implementations where Sun has chosen not to press the issue yet, but that doesn't tell you that Sun doesn't have the patents or doesn't enforce them. And, if you look at USPTO, you'll see that Sun has dozens of Java-related patents, some of them on fundamental aspects of the platform like bytecode verification.

OTOH, I suspect Google was careful about this, and this is one of the reasons Google didn't use a standard JVM. In the end, all Android shares with Sun Java is a fairly generic programming language and some fairly generic core APIs.