Father of Java James Gosling joins Google; Will it provoke Oracle's Larry Ellison?

Father of Java James Gosling has joined Google, much to the dismay of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, even as Google and Oracle slug it out over Java patent infringement lawsuit targeting Android.

Gosling announced on his web blog: I don't know what I'll be working on. I expect it'll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon.

James Gosling designed the write once, run anywhere Java platform in 1990 while he was with Sun Microsystems. He left Sun Microsystems after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010.

His arrival in Google comes at a time when Google and Oracle are locked in a lawsuit over the use of Java in Android's Dalvik virtual machine. Oracle filed a lawsuit against Google in August. At the root of the issue is Android's Dalvik virtual machine (VM) which uses a Linux kernel as an abstraction layer and a set of Apache Harmony library. Apache had failed to avail a TCK from Sun and Oracle has followed Sun's course and denied Harmony a license, which would have qualified Harmony as having met the official Java standard.

When Oracle filed a lawsuit against Google Gosling commented on his blog: Oracle finally filed a lawsuit against Google. Not a big surprise. He had revealed that after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems it grilled Sun employees over the patent issues between Sun and Google during the integration process. Gosling said he could see the Oracle lawyer's eyes sparkle.

However, Gosling had reservations about how Google handled Android. In his August 2010 posting on his blog he talked about a time when Google approached Sun with their ideas about cell phones. According to Gosling, money was the chief reason why the relationship failed. Sun was looking for some compensation for the product, which they figured out had no strong revenue-model. Gosling says Google's launch of Android was more an attempt to derail Apple from entering the advertising channel.

Gosling had described the feud between Google and Oracle as: This skirmish isn't much about patents or principles or programming languages. The suit is far more about ego, money and power.

The arrival of Gosling in Google's camp is due to make Oracle CEO Larry Ellison nervous. Gosling refers to Ellison as LPOD, short for Larry, Prince of Darkness, The Regsiter reported.

Oracle has been derided by the open-source community for its handling of Java. The issue flared up in October 2010, when Key Java Community Process (JCP) member Doug Lea resigned stating that JCP's role as a credible specification and standards body has eroded.

In November 2010, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) threatened to leave JCP if Oracle did not issue the TCK and called other members to vote against the Java 7 roadmap which was crafted around Oracle's roadmap for Java.

In December, Oracle had won 75 percent of votes supporting its roadmap for Java 7 and 8. Google and ASF voted against the roadmap. The very next day Apache quit JCP EC.

However, it still remains puzzling as to how Gosling's presence in Google could possibly help the company in its fight against Oracle.