Is Oracle Going to Kill Java?
With 9 million developers worldwide, Java is used more than any other programming language. Java got there in no small part because of Sun's 2006 decision to relicense most of Java as open source. What was not made open source was Java ME – the environment for mobile devices.
In 2005 Google bought Android, Inc. the originators of the Android operating system. Google wanted to use Java ME on top of Android but they were unable to come to terms with Sun over licensing.
Not wanting to give up on those 9 million developers, Google developed the Dalvik Virtual Machine which is a clean room implementation of a virtual machine built into Android.
This past August, Oracle filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google claiming that Android infringes on various Java patents. For those lawyerly inclined, here is a copy of Oracle's complaint in pdf format and here is one company's analysis of the complaint.
Google contends, among other things, that Dalvik iextends open source Java and does not infringe on Java ME patents. Here is a copy of Google's answer to Oracle (pdf) and a (somewhat lengthy) analysis by Groklaw.
Forgetting for a moment the battle of the Titans, the question is "what does this mean for Java". The answer lies in your view of the future of computing.
If computing's future is in client side apps, Oracle's actions don't bode well for Java. Oracle is nothing if not aggressive - in this case they apparently filed suit without first approaching Google about buying a license. Aggressive protection of their patents would probably push development to more open platforms which would mean RIP, Java.
If computing trends toward server side distribution , Oracle's actions will have very little impact. Java server technology is GNU open source and even an aggressive player would have a tough time getting that horse back into the barn.
The future is probably "both of the above" which would still leave a pretty broad field for Java development. That said, we're rooting for Google on this one.