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Google Backs Out of JavaOne

Posted by timothy on from the but-java-is-delicious dept.

snydeq writes "Citing concerns about Oracle's lawsuit against it, Google has backed out of the upcoming JavaOne conference. 'Oracle's recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally,' Google's Joshua Bloch said in a blog post. The move may signal eventual fragmentation for Java, with Google conceivably splintering off the Java-like language it uses for Android."

4 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Loss of confidence by Duncan+J+Murray · · Score: 5, Informative

    Looks like we're seeing a new loss of confidence in Java, much like the loss of confidence in mono, for which patent concerns stunted its uptake.

    So where to next?

    And where is my replacement for open office?

    1. Re:Loss of confidence by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ximian, now Novell, did fork OO.o. You can get their fork at http://www.go-oo.org/. The only reason that Sun maintained control over OO.o was that they provided most of the code. Last statistics I saw for OO.o contributions were around 80% Sun, 15% Novell, 5% everyone else. If Oracle doesn't keep up the contribution rate, then other forks will overtake theirs and be regarded as the main version. A lot of Linux distributions already include the Novell fork, rather than the main branch, as their OpenOffice.org package.

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  2. Re:I'm glad by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The similarity of android's dev language with Java is only superficial

    You mean, aside from the fact that they are exactly the same language and both provide a large number of the same classes in the java.* namespace, they are completely different?

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  3. Google built VM allegedly infring'g Oracle patents by mmacdona86 · · Score: 5, Informative
    That's the whole case. There's no Java license or trademark involved.

    Two enormous differences with the Sun/Microsoft case: 1-- Everything Google built for Android is open-sourced; 2-- No Java license is involved

    Google built a VM called Dalvik. Like the Java and .Net VM's, it can run code written in a number of languages, including the Java language. That patents at issue are not related specifically to the Java language, but they do cover common techniques in VM implementation, and if upheld could threaten other VM implementations.