Comment Re:Check, But Not Mate (Score 3, Informative) 342
Why is more free, Java or Dalvik?
Dalvik, because Oracle has sued over Java and not the other way around. At least, that's one way to look at it. Dalvik is apache licensed.
Can you download and use Dalvik on your desktop or server? Is it completely open source?
Yes, you could download and run it on a PC (the SDK which includes an emulator is available for Linux, Mac and Windows). If you want to boot directly into android, google doesn't provide that, but see http://www.android-x86.org/. As far as I know it's 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?
This is the part I don't understand. Pay for what?
The JVM they aren't using? The implementation of the core classes from apache? The android stuff they did themselves? What are they supposed to be paying oracle (or sun) for?
Oracle would probably prefer that Google had used J2ME and would pay fees. But they didn't choose J2ME. Oracle would probably prefer that Google had licensed the JVM. But they didn't, they wrote their own.