Oracle starts to show his disrespect for the java ecosphere.  Oracle published a press release on 12th august 2010 that they are suing Google about patents presumably used in android. This results in a lot of fear in the industry that they may be next. This hurts Suns former goal to make java a language that is widely used. There are millions of people out there who use java to earn a living. Is this on stake now? Would I as a company try to find alternatives now to mitigate the risk of Oracle go even more haywire? Of course I would. And if I’m getting familiar with the new alternative, then I’d switch over completely, when the new solution fits my needs. Why should I keep up the risky java business?

I think that Oracle did a great mistake by suing Google. But after all, java is kind of open source, it’s mainly protected by trademarks and obviously some patents, which sun should have donated to a separate organisaion long ago… So what can we do? Maybe we should use the open source spirit and show oracle that a blade can have two sides and start a java fork.

After all, there are plenty of JVMs out there, the specification if freely available. The language itself is standardized. Why not create a fork and get rid of code and features that is blocked by patents and invalidate as many oracle java/jvm patents by prior art as possible. Put the new ecosphere in the hands of a foundation that is lead by the interested companies and highly rated individuals from the java community to ensure that the cancer doesn’t come back. I am sure that google would be delighted to help in this process and I guess that IBM wouldn’t mind either to get rid of Oracle as gatekeeper.

We all play in a publicly available playground that has been build by a (presumably) nice guy and then a bully comes, takes over the nice guys business and starts kicking out some people whose face he don’t likes. What do you think? Should we keep playing or show the bully that he may have bought the playground, but without us, it will be pretty boring?

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