Will Sun’s past Android attitude influence the courts?

Rodney Gedda

Rodney Gedda is the former deputy editor of CIO and former editor of Techworld.

The week some old TechWorld news about Sun’s former CEO praising Google’s adoption has resurfaced in the US. The question now is whether the courts will take notice.

Writing on his ZDNet.com blog, Steven J Vaughan-Nichols raises the question whether whether the patent case between Google and Oracle might be influenced by Schwartz’s previous comments about Android. The blog was then syndicated on Slashdot.

We first reported on this contradiction nearly a year ago. See Ghost of Sun's Schwartz chides Oracle's Google lawsuit. If you read the article, note that the original blog post written by Schwartz has been pulled by Oracle.

The reaction to the news seems to be mixed – some say a blog won’t have much bearing on whether patents are deemed to be infringed or not, but others say it has some legal merit. Or, at least, it can be used to influence the judiciary.

Other things to consider in this case include:

Oracle’s history of mobile OS development: Does Oracle have much of a history of developing operating systems, especially those that run on mobile devices? Not really. Its own Enterprise Linux distribution is a fork of Red Hat Linux. With Android Google has carved out a new market for mobile Linux and Java. There’s not much evidence Oracle would have done the same.

The open source Java ecosystem: There is a vibrant open source Java ecosystem used by businesses all over the world. While standard practice for enterprises is to licence approved Java application server software, there’s no reason why applications can be deployed with open source options like JBoss and Apache Harmony. In addition, Sun made waves when it began to release parts of the Java core under and open source licence. Suing over patent infringements is in stark contrast to free availability of Java code and tools. This is why Google labelled the suit is an attack on the open source Java community.

The continuing relevance of Java: Android uses Java, but it doesn’t have to. The pros of Java are its ecosystem and the availability of skills. But there are plenty of ways to develop mobile apps without Java. Apple doesn’t use Java and MeeGo uses Qt. Oracle needs to be wary that a heavy-handed dictatorship over the platform could easily scare off partners and developers. Even the CEO of JasperSoft has said publicly Oracle’s Java direction is a concern. It wouldn’t surprise me if Google is preparing to steer Android app development away from Java to another environment whether it wins the lawsuit or not.

Unfortunately at this stage the whole saga is filled with uncertainty so we’ll just have to wait and see if Schwartz’s post is taken seriously by the courts.

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Tags: android, java, oracle, sun