Change in any industry involves conflict. Evolution and revolution in tech this year took place not only in the marketplace but also in the courtroom, the factory, and on the Web. Here are the top news stories of 2012 as selected by the editors of the IDG News Service.

James Gosling, the inventor of the Java programming language when he worked at Sun Microsystems, finds the security framework for Java he designed still stands up after all these years. In fact he's using it today to design marine robots that can be sent across the ocean to gather weather data or carry out research projects.

All the news and pictures from Oracle's flagship event in San Francisco

Oracle said that no court has ever found that APIs for software like Java are ineligible for copyright protection, in its objection to Google's request that the court make a summary judgment on Oracle's copyright allegations.

If there were ever an IT Olympics, in which software developers could compete to solve programming problems, the event would likely take place on Gild, an online career development community where IT professionals from around the world do just that.