IcedRobot Android fork to sidestep legal battle between Oracle, Google

We'd prepared ourselves for a drawn-out legal battle between Oracle and Google when we heard the former was suing the latter for Java-related copyright infringement, but fortunately for Android enthusiasts, not everyone was so resigned. A team of developers are working on an Android fork called IcedRobot (yep, that's the logo) to separate the offending Dalvik Virtual Machine from the OS, hopefully circumventing this epic argument altogether. The project seeks to create a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that is based on OpenJDK (an open-source implementation of Java), avoiding Oracle's Apache Harmony, and to allow Android to run on just about any PC with the use of Hotspot, another device non-specific JVM using open-source Java. It's a tall order, and the devilish little Android has already gained a healthy amount of tech industry skepticism, but we're interested to see if these guys can make it work. Either way, we're pretty sure we've still got years of legal volleying to go before Google and Oracle can play nice again -- this ain't no People's Court, folks.