vJUG Panel: What do the Oracle/Google shenanigans mean to the Java Developer?

Recent news about the legal battle which Oracle and Google have been involved with in the courts has made many Java developers wonder what this actually means to them. Should they be careful about what and how they code in the future to avoid legal repercussions? What do they need to understand or know going forward? Is this just a problem for Java or development in general?

This session led by some of the key Java stalwarts in our industry, including Bruno Souza, Martijn Verburg, Hildeberto Mendonça, Lukas Eder, Michael Rice and moderated by Simon Maple, will aim to provide opinions of what the news means to them. Note, nobody on the team are lawyers, so seek professional legal advice if you rely on it. This session will be in discussion format and will be heavily focused on Q&A by the audience. Here is more info on our panel:

Bruno Souza

Bruno Souza is a Java Developer and Open Source Evangelist at Summa Technologies, and a Cloud Expert at ToolsCloud. Nurturing developer communities is a personal passion, and Bruno worked actively with Java, NetBeans, Open Solaris, OFBiz, and many other open source communities. As founder and coordinator of SouJava (The Java Users Society), one of the world's largest Java User Groups, Bruno leaded the expansion of the Java movement in Brazil. Founder of the Worldwide Java User Groups Community, Bruno helped the creation and organization of hundreds of JUGs worldwide. A Java Developer since the early days, Bruno participated in some of the largest Java projects in Brazil.

Martijn Verburg

Martijn Verburg (aka 'the Diabolical Developer'), CTO of jClarity, herds Cats in the Java/open source communities and is constantly humbled by the creative power to be found there!

Currently he resides in London where he co-leads the London JUG (a JCP EC member), runs the Adopt a JSR and Adopt OpenJDK programs and drinks good beer at his local pub. You can find him on-line facilitating development of FOSS projects (PCGen and Ikasan), moderating at the Javaranch or discussing (ranting about?) subjects on the Programmers Stack Exchange.

He's become a regular (diabolical) speaker at conferences on Java, FOSS and software development and has recently wrapped up his first Manning title - "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" with his co-author Ben Evans.

Hildeberto Mendonça

Hildeberto Mendonça is a Java Architect at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and holds a Ph.D in Applied Sciences by the same University. He has been working professionally with Java in the last 14 years and he accumulates 10 years of experience as a JUG Leader of the CEJUG Community (Ceará, Brazil). He spends his free time writing technical articles, developing Yougi and having fun with his family.

Lukas Eder

Lukas Eder is the head of R&D at Data Geekery, the company behind jOOQ. He has been working with Java and SQL passionately for the last 8 years, being specifically interested in the design of comprehensive fluent APIs and internal DSLs. Lukas is a very active international speaker and writer of technical articles, spreading SQL love among Java developers furiously. In his free time, he can easily be talked into playing board games or the occasional hike in the Swiss mountains. 

Michael Rice

Michael just recently joined Red Hat Consulting as a consultant focused on open source middleware technologies like JBoss. He is also a lawyer licensed in California and Washington State. During law school he worked for an intellectual property firm primarily prosecuting software patents and advising clients on licensing issues and currently practices in the same areas for clients in California and Washington. After law school, he clerked for two years for a federal judge. He graduated magna cum laude from Seattle University School of Law and was an emeritus member of the law review. He has been writing Java code since the only IDE was Notepad and has been involved in the open source community since the 1990s.