James Gosling says Oracle lawsuit against Google is about ego, money and power

Java founder James Gosling has weighed in on Oracle's lawsuit against Google over Android's use of Java, saying the unsurprising litigation was about ego, money, and power.

In separate blog posts during the past week, noted Oracle "finally" filed a lawsuit against Google. Oracle filed a lawsuit in federal court last week last week alleging Google with the Android mobile phone platform infringed Oracle's intellectual property pertaining to Java. Google has vowed to fight the lawsuit.

 

"Not a big surprise," said Gosling, who was a longtime Sun engineer before briefly working at Oracle following the merger between the two companies. Gosling has been called the father of Java.

Gosling stressed he was not necessarily supporting Oracle's lawsuit but stressed there were no "guiltless parties with white hats in this little drama."

"This skirmish isn't much about patents or principles or programming languages. The suit is far more about ego, money, and power," said Gosling.

"During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer's eyes sparkle. Filing patent suits was never in Sun's genetic code," Gosling said. Only one of his personal patents was involved in the litigation, he said. That patent pertains to a method and apparatus for resolving data differences in generated code.

Sun had objected to Google's "weak notions of interoperability" when it came to mobile phones, Gosling said.

Gosling also recalled that Sun took Microsoft to court over a lack of interoperability pertaining to Microsoft's Java development efforts.