[jhall1468]

The issue at hand was licensing. In the Android Runtime, Google is linking to the OpenJDK libraries rather than using it's "reverse engineered" runtime. OpenJDK is GPL with a classpath exception, which Google is utilizing.

The caveat for Google is any changes to the OpenJDK itself has to be upstreamed. But the Android Runtime itself doesn't have to be GPL due to the classpath exception.

In all honesty, this is how they should have done it in the first place.

[wtallis]

That sounds more like an allegation that Dalvik was lacking a required license from Oracle, not that it was violating any existing license.

[jhall1468]

It was violating the open source license, thus required a commercial license, which it didn't have, which in turn makes this copyright infringement. At least that's the position of the courts so far.