The question is what Oracle would lose by licensing real Java to Google at reaso...

pjmlp · on May 1, 2014

> Mobile non-Android Java is deader than dead.

Lots of embedded devices make use of J2ME, e.g. cars, manufacturing, electricity monitoring...

thwarted · on May 1, 2014

How many of those will get Java 8 updates?

beat · on May 1, 2014

The billionaires at WhatsApp beg to differ. They got very very rich from "mobile non-Android Java".

hatred · on May 1, 2014

Isn't their stack based on Erlang or am I missing something ?

cgh · on May 1, 2014

You're missing the client side. It runs on J2ME-powered feature phones.

krzyk · on May 2, 2014

And on Android (and probably iPhones). Which version was first, J2ME or smartphone one?

spullara · on May 2, 2014

Oracle was offering licensing for "real Java" at around $1 per device. This was too high for Google that wanted to make it entirely free. Kind of silly, since Android hardware manufacturers pay much more than that to Microsoft in patent licenses.

_ea1k · on May 2, 2014

It's unlikely that the patent licensing situation would have been different with Java ME. It is entirely likely that it would not have been completely open source due to Sun (and ultimately Oracle) restrictions on Java ME.