Last Apple PowerPC machines shipped in 2006
Snow Leopard shipped in 2009 without PowerPC support.

So Apple didn't release a new OS for machines that were 3 years old. The Sun machine impacted by this are probably 10 years old on average. Yeah, the fact that old hardware was still supported by Solaris 10 was neat but try putting Solaris 10 on some of that old hardware and using something like JDS or ZFS, it's painfully slow.

Solaris 11 hasn't even shipped yet. Add in the fast that most enterprises don't upgrade to a new version of their server OS until it's been out for a while and I doubt this will impact anyone in a production environment.

You don't even need a lawyer to read it. No supersets or subsets. "Java" on android doesn't implement the complete Java SE API so no grant. Google was trying to avoid having to license Java ME by only using the Java language and not a JVM. That grant clause is from the language spec so it's a pretty bone-headed move on Googles part to think they can repurpose the Java language. Microsoft didn't get away with making incompatible Java implementations with Visual J++, why should Google? If Google would have just licensed Java from the get-go, Android wouldn't just now be getting the speed boost of using a JIT.

Oracle doesn't want some of the open source projects they paid for.

Not sure if parent is trying to be ironic or not but he sounds just like Prince. The most recent Prince CD I have was obtained for free at one of his concerts. You couldn't even buy the thing, getting it for free at the concert was the only way to get one. And he puts on a damn good concert, he is one of those few artist that are better live than on CD.

Is this your first language? I'm a Java developer but I believe all Java developers can benefit from knowing another language. Personally I wish everyone knew a little assembly. I've met Java developers that couldn't keep kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes straight because they never learned about the hardware their applications ran on.

Syntax is one thing, designing code is another. There are several design pattern books you might want to look at. There is the Head First Design Patterns book and the traditional Gang of Four Patterns book. Code Complete, The Mythical Man Month, and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture are some other books you might want to look into.

Don't forget about Java EE and the other frameworks. You've got dynamic websites (Servlets and JSPs), database applications (JPA and Hibernate), EJB 3, CDI (WebBeans), etc. You might want to start with the "Java EE Tutorial" that is on the Sun/Oracle website. Start with either Java EE 5 or 6. You'll need an application server; for EE 6 this will be GlassFish, for EE 5 you could use GlassFish or JBoss AS. There are frameworks that are outside the official standards like Spring and Struts.

You also might want to look for a local Java Users Group (JUG) as they present topics that you might find interesting.

You can't make a linked wrapper library since the GPL wrapper would be GPL too. See: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#GPLWrapper However it sounds like you are talking about a service based wrapper. Then I'd say it depends on how integrated your service wrapper is with your main program. If you use separate processes but lots of IPC and shared memory then I'd think you app is to tightly integrated making it a derived work. If you make a network based service then I'd say you are legally clear even if you'll probably piss off the library author. See: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#NFUseGPLPlugins You could also make your app GPL but put a lot of the functionality in non-free plugs, see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#FSWithNFLibs Of course you could also just release you app as GPL and not worry about it. What is stopping you from using the GPL?