Re: "Get a licence or build something new. It's really that simple."
"Java ME got absolutely nowhere"
Um, it was deployed on nearly every phone on the planet, from nearly every phone maker. 100's of millions of devices per year, and millions of apps. And it was quite capable as well, giving you APIs for everything from the mundane like Bluetooth up to opengl and GIS.
The problem was that Sun tried to play nice and let manufacturers pick and choose which optional API's to use. This did make sense since there was a huge difference in capabilities between the lowest and highest end phones. But it meant you had to be more careful when coding as you couldn't assume what API's would be there.
Apple went their own way (or course) and inflicted the abomination that is Objective-c upon us poor developers. Android rightly chose Java since the majority of the worlds mobile developers were already using Java ME. But Google didn't want to pay those few pennies of royalties per device and so instead took Java SE and started adding and removing APIs, against the advice of their own staff.
And now they owe billions in damages, as I expected they would all along.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
