> However! My controversial opinion is that Google's use of the Java API wasn't for interoperability. This brings to mind something I heard from my legal frien

> However! My controversial opinion is that Google's use of the Java API wasn't for interoperability. This brings to mind something I heard from my legal friends in the early days of this case. Their position was that this wasn't a dispute about APIs, copyright, etc. It was a licensing dispute -- Sun/Oracle wanted to charge for Java on Mobile, and Google didn't want to pay. Google then executed an engineering 'hack' whereby Java JVM bytecode (.class files) was converted to Google's Dalvik VM format (.dex) via a tool (dx), thus avoiding Sun's licensing fees and still being able to take advantage of the Java ecosystem. Their argument would have been this was a fairly mechanical effort to avoid licensing fees, analogous to reprinting a copyrighted book in Piglatin, and therefore Google was liable to pay licensing fees to Oracle. This was from ages back though; the case has of course evolved since then. I do wonder however if Google's effort to paint this as a case of straightforward re-implementation of an API may not backfire upon them.