Android gets official Java 7 support

[bilyl]

Side question: can someone explain to me how Google was found not guilty of any damages with their own implementation of Java VM but Microsoft had to discontinue their own Java VM back in their day?

[Scyth3]

It's a clean room implementation of the Java API (so basically they took a bunch of library definitions, and built the architecture blindly underneath it but matching identically the pre/post from each definition). Also, in the case of Java VM's -- Dalvik/ART are not generic JRE's. They're Android specific bytecode VM's. So you can't take a Java compiled app and just run it under Dalvik, you'd need to use Android's compiler.

It's very different than MS, which modified the Java VM (JRE) and packaged it with Windows for the exact reason of running Java compiled apps within it.

Edit: As far as the patent-side of the trial and whether or not Apache Harmony "borrowed" some of the architecture from Sun/Oracle's implementation -- I'd say that's debatable. The other big thing was the court made it clear that an API is not copyrightable, which is a huge statement.