Google bows out of JavaOne due to lawsuit

Due to its dispute with Oracle, Google said it will not present at the JavaOne conference this year.

"We wish that we could, but 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," wrote Joshua Bloch, who is part of Google's Open Source Programs Office, in a blog post on Friday. "This is a painful realization for us, as we've participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996."

Two weeks ago, Oracle filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that Google infringes its intellectual property in Android. At issue is Dalvik, the virtual machine that Google built to run Java in Android. Rather than use the standards-based Java Micro Edition to run Java applications, Google built Dalvik.

Since the very early days of Android, some experts have wondered if Google would run into trouble over Dalvik. Around the time of Android's release, Stefano Mazzocchi, a prominent developer with ties to Java and Apache, suggested that Google built Dalvik as a way to get around licensing issues associated with JME.

Oracle claims that Google infringes its patents and Java copyright, which it acquired recently along with Sun Microsystems.

Google has vowed to fight the lawsuit, calling it baseless and positioning it as an attack on open-source software.

Bloch said that Google looks forward to presenting at other venues and that the company is "proud to participate in the open source Java community."

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com

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