2010-11-07

Suits

Oracle has filed a lawsuit against game developer Markus Persson, citing an object class member that violates the Java licensing agreement. The filing, which was published on the Oracle website Saturday afternoon, explains that an Oracle employee was in the process of auditing Persson's decompiled Java code during one of their routine inspections, when the auditor discovered a class field that was declared public.

"It's unfortunate," said James Gosling, who is credited with inventing the Java language, "but this rule has been in the Java EULA for a long time. Sun used to be pretty relaxed about this sort of stuff, but Oracle believes in enforcing the rules, and that's what they're doing."

We weren't able to reach Oracle for comment, because we couldn't afford the upgrade to their premium PR product.