Re: From James Gosling (father of Java at Sun and recent ex-Googler) himself
Ah yes, a disgruntled ex-employee who did his best work at Sun, of course he must be a legal expert on the case,,,
How about the guy actually in charge of Sun when Android was released and they negotiated to make a joint Java phone, even talking about doing a joint venture using an Android device, Jonathan Schwartz...
"Schwartz described that the community talked about open APIs and competing implementation. He affirmed that basically everyone would have the same set of APIs, but each company would create its own products, the virtual machines specifically, to go off and perform.
Getting into what is at the heart of Google’s case — that the 37 Java APIs in question were free for its engineers to use on Android — Van Nest asked Schwartz if the Java APIs ever sold or licenses separately from the language.” Schwartz replied instantly, “No, of course not.”
Van Nest also asked Schwartz if the Java APIs were considered proprietary to Sun, to which Schwartz also replied no, adding that “we would have worked very hard to say that wasn’t true.”"
This first part of the case is actually about the copying the naming convention and structure of the Packages and Methods that form the API after all - not really about dubious copying. But then how can you implement the Java Programming Language without using the names freely published in the API? Hmmmm...
Where do you think any form of Java would be headed today on mobile devices if it wan't for Android? It wasn't as though if there is one phone OS that allows writing apps in Java then there is not allowed to be another (one running true, certified Java would surely have been far better under that thinking). JavaME was never a big draw for phones, nothing like in the same league as IOS or Android or Blackberry.