using member of outer class in a inner class makes null exception?

Question

UPDATED

I found a problem using Gson library using nested classes. When Gson build the nested object leaves the reference of the inner class to the outer class this$0 to null making any reference to the outer class produce an NullPointerException (below a complete example). Is this known Gson issue with solution?

import com.google.gson.Gson;


public class Outer {


    protected Inner inner = null;


    public Inner getInner() {
        return inner;
    }

    protected void something(){

    }

    public void function(){

       inner.innerFunction();
    }

    public class Inner {
        public String name = null;

        protected void innerFunction(){

            something();//exception source
        }
    }
    public static void main(String[] args){
        String str = "{\"inner\":{\"name\"=\"test\"}}";
        Outer outer = (new Gson()).fromJson(str,Outer.class);
        System.out.println(outer.getInner().name);
        outer.function(); // exception here
    }
}