Oracle's move to sue Google over Android is, if a surprise, then not a shock. Oracle has a reputation of playing hardball; Android was a direct threat to Oracle's Java ME business. The question is: is this just the first of many lawsuits over technology that Oracle thinks it has a right to? And if so, who's next?

One candidate that popped into my mind the moment I got my head around the nature of the lawsuit was SpringSource. In some ways, the Spring Framework and Spring's tc Server is the enterprise mirror of Android. Android offered an alternative to the restricted and fragmented Java ME platform, based on the Java SE platform that was more familiar to developers; the Spring Framework is an open source alternative to Java EE, without a lot of the enterprise-y cruft in the Java EE spec that many developers don't need. Android avoids the need to pay for Java ME licensing; I'm not sure if vendors need to pay Oracle to get their app servers Java EE certified, though it seems likely to me (I'd love to hear from someone who knows for certain). Android and the Spring tc Server are even both built atop Apache projects (Harmony and Tomcat, respectively).

I'm not the only one worried, but it's important to note that there are differences, too. Perhaps more important is the fact that Android represents an existential threat to Java ME as a platform. As processors become more and more powerful, there's no reason why the Java ME platform, optimized for resource-restricted environments, will be necessary at all, and platforms like Android, built from the ground up for modern mobile processors, will have a big advantage. And Java ME wasn't necessarily taking the market by storm even before Android came onto the scene. By contrast, the Java EE server market is pretty healthy -- and as server chips too become more powerful, the need to for a slimmed-down enterprise Java alternative like Spring might fade somewhat.

Still, anyone building on the Java platform that doesn't have Oracle's seal of approval is officially on notice. It's possible that lawsuit against Google is really about Google and Android in particular, that Oracle sees Android as a looming threat that has to be dealt with now. But it's also possible that it's the equivalent of picking a fight with the biggest guy in the yard on your first day in prison -- it's not just about that fight, but about sending a message to others as well. EMC, SpringSource's ultimate corporate parent, may not be Google, but it's pretty big too -- and Oracle may feel like taking it down a notch.