Ellison to talk Java's future

Seafaring Oracle captain, Larry Ellison, has decided to flash the world with his prized Sun acquisition, Java, at the company's annual Oracle World conference in San Francisco next month.

Ellison will pair up with executive vice president Thomas Kurian to discuss Oracle's strategy for the software platform which is at the centre of a patent war with Google over its use of Java in the Android mobile operating system.

Oracle pointed out that Java powered 3 billion mobile phones, and that the "open-standards-based" platform was supported by 9 million developers. It also had 5 billion Java cards, and 80 million TV devices.

Observers of the stoush between Oracle and Google declared the battle as one of "ego, power and money", rather than ideology.

Ellison flagged Oracle's intention to punt more cash on its Java platform when it acquired Sun last year, announcing that its middleware and applications would be 100 per cent Java-based.

He said Java's open-ness allowed Oracle to build its middleware on top and ISVs and customers to add to its own platforms.

"This [Java] platform is open and extensible. There's a lot of things we had to add to Java, if you will.

"We had to add real time business activity monitoring, we had to add business intelligence, we had to add a variety of things, but we could do that because Java was open, and we think it's going to be appealing in the community because so many people know Java," Ellison said at the time.

He also hinted at the time that while Oracle wouldn't make changes to Java, action would come in the form of "expanded investment and a lot of enthusiasm coming from Oracle."

According to Java's founder, James Gosling, it wasn't in Sun Microsystems' genetic code to pursue the legal avenues Oracle had since it acquired Sun.