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Having been across the table from Sun licensing people when using an open source Java in a project, "some reasonable sum" is optimistic. In fact any transparenc

by Zigurd 6y ago

Having been across the table from Sun licensing people when using an open source Java in a project, "some reasonable sum" is optimistic. In fact any transparency about what sum they might demand is optimistic.

bitL 6y ago
AFAIK they were pretty open to some reasonable sum as they were internally fans of Google, but due to Google's arrogance the upper management relationship with them soured, then opportunistic Oracle bought them and here we are.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  You mean the only company that actually made an offer to buy Sun and kept it? Google could have own Java, avoid the lawsuit and keep it Go style frozen at Java 6 instead. And given Google's history they would have killed the other products even sooner than Oracle did.
  - bitL 6y ago
    IIRC IBM was in the play as well, but yes. I guess Google didn't want to inherit all the internal late-SUN problems so they passed on a chance to own it. Now Google had to switch to an alternate strategy utilizing JetBrains for Android.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      IBM withdraw their proposal shortly after coming into the buy.
      - bitL 6y ago
        IIRC SUN's revenues at that time were flat $16B, so they were in a zombie mode, likely could have survived for the next 10-20 years but the board gave up seeing all their competitors growing like crazy YoY.