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Comment by jbandela1 | Hacker News Reader

For libc at least, the API is actually an ISO standard. Same with the C++ standard library. Therefore, you should not expect issues like this.

Now, using a language which is owned by one company, Google's lawyers really dropped the ball in terms of risk.

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Does the ISO standardization process include a copyright license or assignment? Copyright had pretty specific rules over who owns a work. Assigning your copyright to someone else requires certain explicit steps.

I've been trying to find the answer to this to no avail. I did find it interesting that the ISO does enforce copyright for their own works.

It looks like you have to buy a copy of the standard to get a license to use it. That's just from reading their website, but I too cannot find a definite answer.

Did they though? At the time wasn't Java supposed to be "open source"? By that logic many companies who used (and use) Java have made the same mistake.

I would say it's Google's executives and engineers who have dropped the ball if the moment Oracle won the case the last time, they didn't start planning and working on stripping Java out of Android. If they still have a "let's wait and see" attitude about it for another 2-3 years or how long these Court battles will take to settle, then THAT would be a major fail on their part. Because by then they would have to pay who knows how many billions of dollars and it would take yet a few more years (5+?) to do the whole transition.

The problem is precisely that Google didn't use Java under its free software license.

Sun did not allow anyone to use GPL Java (SE) on mobile devices ('field of use' restrictions). For that, you had to license J2ME from Sun under different conditions. If you ever had the misfortune of targeting J2ME, you'd know why it was a no-brainer for Google. I shudder to imagine writing Android apps using J2ME.

It is prudent to note that Google didn't write its own implementation from scratch: they took advantage of Apache Harmony (by erstwhile Sun frenemy: IBM). This is the same Apache Harmony that Sun repeatedly refused to provide the TCK for

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