David Cao, an organizer of the Silicon Valley Android Developers group, says “The group is very, very unhappy” with Oracle’s lawsuit against Google. Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth adds, “Oracle has significantly undermined its relationship with the open source and developer community. That may or may not have an immediate impact on its bottom line, but it’s going to present real challenges for the pace of adoption of key Oracle technologies like Java and MySQL, which have traditionally been led from the bottom up. Developers have been the drivers of adoption of open source platforms, and they will avoid platforms that look like patent traps.”
Redmonk analyst Michael Cote warns that the move could backfire with Oracle’s partners. “Other licensees were already a bit freaked out about Oracle taking over, and I’m sure this kind of thing makes them want to switch from relying on Java to some degree,” he says.
