You're right, they let the cat out of the bag with open sourcing JavaSE, and they should have anticipated getting screwed with Google not paying for JavaME and forking the platform away. But they probably don't want to just lay down to be robbed, and thus are fighting with what they do have.

Sun used a subset of the C++ syntax, and definitely none of its libraries, and obviously none of its runtime. In fact, it was mostly designed as not being C++. That's a homogeneously far cry from the straight up copy and paste that Google has done.

Also, C/C++ had the benefit of being developed in Bell Labs to solve their own software needs, not as its own product. And what you get with C/C++ is a pale fraction of what you get with Java. The Java standard library dwarfs the POSIX C library by orders of magnitude. And its not like Sun used Java to somehow cut out Bell Labs funding.

If a company invests 10 million dollars on their free product, and 1 million on their for-pay product, then what they've actually done is invest 11 million in their for-pay product, because that's what they're getting their return on. Saying that Sun didn't pay nearly as much for JavaME, which is based on JavaSE, is avoiding the reality of the business model.

The lesson everyone is going to take from this is: don't make any part of your software open source, because someone is going to ignore any patents you have, any investment you've made, they won't care which parts of the product you're try to monetise on (that pays for the whole damn thing), they will just take what they can, and push you out. This will be Google's legacy, that you're clamoring for so shrilly.

Sun had a clear business model with Java:

- Make JavaSE as free, open, and ubiquitous as possible.

- Make money off of JavaEE tools and support

- Make money off of JavaME licensing

The part where they're getting paid is what funded the development of all three. If software patents did not exist, then they would not have open sourced anything, and would have stuck to their previous "open source" strategy of allowing read-only access to the source. But, because software patents do exist, they opened up their copyright protection, allowing projects like Harmony. The idea being that, it would make JavaSE more ubiquitous and open, but wouldn't cut into JavaME licensing. Apparently they didn't realise that smart phones would become as powerful as desktop computers, and some company, with the resources of Google, would come along, and abuse the openness of JavaSE to create a mobile Java-esque environment, to avoid paying the costs of JavaME. Yes, blame Sun for being stupid and not grasping the ramifications of Moore's Law, and not adding even more value to JavaME. But in the end, Google has abused Sun's openness to circumvent their business model.

There are potentially huge ramifications from this abuse, for the whole software industry. Many software companies have an opensource / commercial business model, where some base product is open and free, and some pro variant of it costs money. That means that the big players pay for pro, and everyone else gets the free ride of the open variant, so everyone benefits. The free users help bug report the product, and spread its mind-share, so they're still contributing necessary aspects, but they're not paying the bills, so companies still need the big customers to actually buy the pro version. Now, if Google gets away with taking the open version, straight up copying it, and not paying for anything, damn the patents, then that will create a huge disincentive for having open software. We'll be back in the closed source days, which really sucked for everyone.

And don't tell me that only charging support is a solution. When your software works well enough, and is simple and straightforward to use, then no one needs support. What they will buy is a pro product that adds value. Plus, product companies get better share valuation than support companies, which affect VC funding. Either way, if the market believes that large companies will find ways to avoid paying for your product, funding will dry up, and the software will not get made.

JavaSE was on the path towards being open sourced, both the class libraries and the JVM via OpenJDK. Then the Tests didn't get opened up and everything stalled. And that's right as Android was being developed. Coincidence?

It's a very simply model: JavaSE is free, JavaME is not. Google did an end-run around that arrangement by using parts of JavaSE, instead of JavaME, so the process of opening JavaSE was slowed/halted.

Read your great grand parent comment.

And why do you think they've locked down their test suite, when Google has come out and taken their IP and not paid for it?

I'm a little surprised that people don't understand how Google is riding free on Sun's efforts, so I'll try to explain this better.

Sun spent more than a decade doing R&D on virtual machines, which has helped the whole industry. Microsoft's CLR borrowed heavily from this, and many other interpreted languages have taken ideas from Java.

Yes, the Java API that Harmony has is a clean room implementation of the Sun ones, so the implementation is not a copyright infringement, but it's still an implementation of a spec that someone else designed and refined and improved over the years. It's a lot easier to construct a house when you're given blue prints than to build it completely from scratch.

The Java language itself is a carefully crafted balance between the power of C++ and the simplicity that history has taught us is necessary for beginner and intermediate programmers. There have been countless features that people have complained are not in Java, and there have been countless bugs that have not been written due to its simplicity.

All the R&D, the marketing, and the prioritisation of Java, throughout a decade of people saying it would fail, due to the incumbents of C/C++, VB, Perl, Win32. After the dot com bust, when Sun continued to invest in it, when more quarterly profit oriented companies might have quit.

No wonder efforts to open Java stalled out a couple years ago, because along comes Google, who's willing to leverage every strength of Java, borne on Sun's back, and take it away without giving back, by walking some fine line of the letter of the law, while ignoring the spirit of the law, which is that if a company drops billions of dollars into a technology, and is trying to sell it (JavaME), they should be compensated. Why didn't Google simply make their own technology from the ground up? Because they received tremendous value from taking it. Was that not worth some compensation?

When it was Microsoft, everyone called for their blood. But it's now Google, so every fan boy here is playing a different tune.

I'm noticing that all the pro Google comments are getting the high moderation, and the ones pointing out that Google leveraged Java in such a specific way as to not have to actually pay for it, are not getting the moderation.

So let me ask all the clearly biased moderators:

Why is more free, Java or Dalvik? Can you download and use Dalvik on your desktop or server? Is it completely open source? Or is it just a proprietary copy of a more open platform, with a few tweaks, and a cynical dodge of paying for it?

Sun poured development into Java for more than a decade, creating a whole community of Java developers around the world, freeing us from the Wintel dominance. A whole ecosystem has been created, of tools IDEs, libraries, books, tutorials, applications servers, etc. Google has swept in, taken all that, and with a little legal trickery has attempted to not pay for it, to not give back compensation for what they are clearly benefiting from. And somehow, that's alright. Fighting to stop from being robbed means one is suddenly a patent troll.

Realistic? That biological entities en masse completely ignore their biological imperative to reproduce?

You're right, people shouldn't even try to get transparency, because things might get locked down even more. Time to give up.

The USA spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. It's population is approximately the same as the EU countries combined. Of course it's going to be over represented in just about any situation.

I like buying apps where I have some kind of guarantee they're not trojans.

How do Americans pronounce moot? The sound clip from dictionary.com pronounces it that way too.

Unless this was really just about... about / aboot. Lived in Canada 30 years and never heard anyone say it as aboot.

Just a guess, but try opening iCal, and clicking on the calendar that you want the events to go into. Now go back to Mail, and click on the invite.