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

J2ME

[notknown86]

IMHO, Android fills a void in Java Mobile applications by providing API to build richer applications (lcdui, in particular, is limiting) - more useful for Smart Phones which contain the ability to provide these types of functionalities. If J2ME filled every void, Android as an API wouldn't be needed (though Android as an OS could still fill a void). According to the article, JME requires a licencing fee. Android does not - this precludes building on the existing platform (unless, of course, Sun actually did waive the fee). Regardless, isn't it possible that this is a fragmentation where the positives outweigh the negatives?

A bigger story - BSD libc + Linux

[btarval]

Well, I wouldn't quite say that it's a non-story. But IMHO there's a bigger story which has been missed. Namely, that Google decided to take a BSD-derived libc and include it as a part of their Android effort. This is running on top of Linux.

This is a blow aimed squarely at the Free Software Foundation, and RMS's efforts to establish GPLv3. Good luck in trying to square that one away.

Now, why in the world Google would do this is beyond me. IHMO it smacks of too much money, and too many engineers with not enough relevant things to do. But hey, if Google's goal is to try to minimize both versions of the GPL, well, I can think of no better effort.