Before it was purchased by Oracle, Sun Microsystems enjoyed a strong relationship with the open source community, particularly for its Java programming language, which the company evolved over time to adapt to an open source framework.
But last week Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) surprised the open source community with a patent infringement suit against Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), over the search giant’s use of Java in Android, its open source mobile operating system. Datamation reports on what a key open source advocate, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, has to say about the impact of Oracle’s suit.
Last week’s move by Oracle to sue Google over Java use in the Android open source mobile operating system, may well end up having an impact that effects far more that just Android. And that has some key stakeholders in the open source community concerned.
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu Linux, is among those in the community who don’t see a positive outcome from Oracle’s lawsuit, which was based around claims of Linux-based Android wrongfully treading on Oracle’s patented Java code and copyrights.