Why Oracle’s Lawsuit Has Merit
Here’s the rub – Sun only included the Classpath Exception for the core Java platform – it’s not included in the mobile edition. So Sun brilliantly appeared to be playing open source benefactor while at the same time keeping control of the mobile side of the equation (i.e. the rights to the gold mine).
Google, realizing what Sun had done, developed an end run strategy to Sun’s move, which resulted in Dalvik. Davlik is a virtual machine, similar to the VMs in Java or .Net. Google developed it from scratch (most likely with the team of Java engineers it hired in mid last decade). Google made Davlik open source skirting Sun’s GPL license (which doesn’t include the Classpath Exception for mobile). Because of Davlik, Google doesn’t have to ship Java Virtual Machine with Android yet its Android developers can still use the core Java integrated development environment (IDE). Google gets to have its cake (leveraging the Java community) and eat it too (by shipping its own VM with Android thus skirting Sun’s licensing terms).
The problem with Google and the legion of "Google Can Do No Evil" fan base is the attitude that if you impose x rules or restrictions on developers, you're "stifling innovation." The problem with the argument is that it doesn't and that sense of entitlement just nets you a big fat, well warranted lawsuit from Oracle.
