I am not a Java developer, but how is this situation is too much different from the Java/J++/C# issues that were had between Sun and Microsoft? It is a differen

I am not a Java developer, but how is this situation is too much different from the Java/J++/C# issues that were had between Sun and Microsoft? It is a different type lawsuit, and (arguably scary) patents are involved, but it seems to be similarly motivated. Sun originally developed Java to be a standardized, cross-platform development tool. The original intent (as I see it, anyway) was to get some market share away from Microsoft/Intel by providing a tool that would allow a program written and compiled once on one platform to run on any platform. (The actuality is that you have to make small changes, but for the most part, this works). So Microsoft started working on J++, and did/were doing the same thing that they did in the web browser space. They built non-standard extensions that would not be compatible from one platform to the next. Exactly the opposite of what a vendor providing an OS/Hardware combination wants, when the entire idea of the language is to make the OS/hardware a reasonable option. Dalvik doesn't support certain parts of either SE or ME. I would have to believe that this is the reason Google is unwilling to license; they would then have to comply with one of the (bloated/inefficient) standards. (This isn't because Google doesn't have the cash to pay up). From Oracle/Sun's perspective, this could easily be seen as a long term threat to the platform. If you have runtime compatibility issues, the ship is sunk. You have reliability issues, as with early C++ implementations (can't use 1/2 of the features); Or you have compatibility issues, as with the current state of Common Lisp implementations (many rock-solid implementations, but things are subtly different from one to the next. Aside: subtly different is the worst type). So from that perspective, that they do not want the JVM fragmented, I sympathize with Oracle. From the perspective of the patents as described in this article, as a computer scientist and programmer, that these things can be patented is shocking. What worries me, is that I will unknowingly build something which has already been patented. In particular, the hybrid compilation technique does not seem to be very much different from the methods involved in having a lisp (for example) with both an interpreter and a compiler. It is an interesting technique, and very clever, but how can a compilation technique be patented? Specifically this early in the history of computing. What if someone had patented using assembly instead of machine code, or intermediate representations of code? What if McCarthy had patented the AST? Or if the various ways of implementing regular expressions had been patented? It seems morally objectionable. I honestly, truly hope that Oracle loses this patent suit.