[davidw]

If you're against software patents, it's for a reason, no?

That's sort of like saying that you admire one mafioso more than the other, because he has fewer compunctions about killing people in order to extort money, even though you're against the "killing people" tactic in general.

The entire Android stack is open source, and is not software that was implemented by Sun/Oracle. The class library comes from the Apache Software Foundation. Is Oracle going to sue Apache next? Who else might they sue?

[codexon]

What he means is that it was better to go through the wake-up call earlier instead of losing millions of dollars and man-hours on a language controlled by corporate interests.

[sasidharm]

I hate software patents, but it is the reality of the world. Google had a chance to license with Sun, but they did not want to yield any control to Sun and implemented their own technology for the mobile platforms. Sun/Oracle believe they violated their patents in this process. So they are suing Google. I do not see this as Oracle going after open source technologies. Google is no champion of open technologies. No corporate company that has to answer their stock holders every three months can be a true champion of open source. They are open only as long as it suits their business model. Right now making Android open source suits their business model bcos every stupid carrier on the planet can build a stupid android skin on their own, and Google can claim that Android is not a locked platform. Sun tried to be truly open and they literally went bankrupt.