Google is not taking the Oracle patent lawsuit against Android sitting down and the search giant is pulling out of the JavaOne conference.
Joshua Bloch of the Google Open Source Programs Office told Reuters:
We wish that we could [present at the show], but Oracle’s recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally. This is a painful realization for us, as we’ve participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996
The JavaOne conference is schedule for Sept. 19-23 and Google was going to be a major participant in multiple sessions. Google said it is proud to be part of the open source Java community.
The lawsuit comes as Android is on a rocket ship, as the operating system outsold its competitors in the United States for the first time. Oracle purchased Sun for about $5 billion and many think the ability to go after the search giant in the courts was one of the reasons the acquisition was finished.
Sun open sourced parts of Java but other parts were still under Sun’s control. Sun was also able to sue Microsoft over its use of Java and it wound up costing Microsoft at least $1 billion.
Google has called the lawsuit baseless and said:
We are disappointed Oracle has chosen to attack both Google and the open-source Java community with this baseless lawsuit. The open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform.
We’ve seen a ton of patent lawsuits hit the mobile space and I’d expect the Java Android lawsuit to take at least a decade to settle. Sigh.
