Hiring the staff and handling the lawsuit - Google has their own in-house law firm anyways - has likely worked out to be cheaper for them than buying Sun Microsystems would have been.
Yes, but the downside on a lawsuit if Oracle prevails will be much worse.
Imagine, if you will, all that Sun IP in the hands of Google instead of Oracle. ZFS might have gotten a license friendlier to Linux, Solaris could have stayed open source, and I would put money on Google having spun Java out into a completely open foundation that wouldn't have done what Oracle has done with new EE versions.
Imagine, if you will, all that Sun IP in the hands of Google instead of Oracle. ZFS might have gotten a license friendlier to Linux, Solaris could have stayed open source, and I would put money on Google having spun Java out into a completely open foundation that wouldn't have done what Oracle has done with new EE versions.