[HN Gopher] Oracle's JDK 17 - Free Again for Commercial Use
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Oracle's JDK 17 - Free Again for Commercial Use
        
       Author : sharjeelsayed
       Score  : 141 points
       Date   : 2021-10-31 17:52 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.infoq.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.infoq.com)
        
       | xony wrote:
       | anyone moving back? .. me , No..
        
       | occamrazor wrote:
       | Still a shitty license:
       | 
       | > [For LTS Oracle JDK versions] security updates will be
       | available for a total of three years. After that period, further
       | use of the Oracle JDK in production requires a commercial
       | license.
       | 
       | Apparently the business model is having commercial customers
       | deploy Oracle JDK and suing them as soon as they forget to
       | upgrade after three years.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | I mean, I hate Oracle as much as the next person, but I don't
         | really see a problem with "stay current or pay for LTS".
        
         | simion314 wrote:
         | I interpret this that if you want more then 3 years of security
         | issues fixes you have to pay, it is similar on how other
         | companies charge for extended support, if you don't like it you
         | update faster.
         | 
         | But what is your opinion, everything should be free for big
         | companies to use and then who pays the developers? Even in
         | Linux world you need to pay to get extended LTS support.
        
           | pseudalopex wrote:
           | Maybe the author meant continued updates. But they said
           | continued use.
           | 
           | The person you replied to didn't say anything against paying
           | for support.
        
           | occamrazor wrote:
           | I read it as after three years the Oracle JDK cannot be used
           | any longer without a license, there is no option to continue
           | using it in production without support.
        
             | monocasa wrote:
             | Reminds me of the free for non commercial use VirtualBox
             | plugin that makes itself super easy to install by random
             | endusers, and then phones home so that enforcement on the
             | sales side is almost automated.
        
         | phendrenad2 wrote:
         | That seems like a mistake, but it's very problematic if true.
         | Having to go through a grueling JVM version update every 3
         | years, or more often if you can't jump 3 years worth of JVM
         | updates at once? Brutal.
        
         | whartung wrote:
         | You also can not distribute it for no fee, which impacts anyone
         | that wants to, say, do a desktop app and ship a bundled
         | executable, which is, arguably, a key tenet of the
         | modularization effort done in JDK 9 to make the JRE lighter and
         | more nimble.
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | s/Oracle OpenJDK/Oracle JDK/
         | 
         | They can't sue you for using OpenJDK.
        
           | occamrazor wrote:
           | thanks, I fixed the terminology in my post
        
       | qalmakka wrote:
       | Guess it didn't work well for that. Thankfully projects like
       | AdoptOpenJDK exist, so there are basically zero reasons to touch
       | their stuff ever again.
        
       | znpy wrote:
       | Friendly reminder that oracle has no customers, only hostages.
        
       | Schnitz wrote:
       | For most companies, unless you haven't switched already, I assume
       | this won't matter. Why switch back from Azul or whatever unless
       | there's a strong reason to? Nothing is preventing Oracle from
       | trying to monetize their JDK aggressively again.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | OpenJDK is also their JDK.
        
           | Longhanks wrote:
           | The GPL however isn't theirs.
        
             | chungy wrote:
             | Oracle is in a nice position where they could discontinue
             | or relicense OpenJDK, much in the way they did to
             | OpenSolaris.
             | 
             | Let's be grateful they haven't done so yet. I'm not
             | convinced there is sufficient talent to carry on OpenJDK
             | without Oracle (contrary to the OpenSolaris-illumos
             | situation).
        
               | phendrenad2 wrote:
               | > Let's be grateful they haven't done so yet
               | 
               | Why? Wouldn't the community come together and implement
               | any features Oracle tries to lock away in their
               | proprietary version?
        
               | IshKebab wrote:
               | Well that's what you hope would happen. Is there even
               | still a big Java community? Android is by far the biggest
               | community of users and they have moved on to Kotlin.
        
               | krinchan wrote:
               | You're confusing language with the compiled bytecode
               | virtual machine that it runs on. OpenJDK underpins almost
               | all of the VMs out there. Sure Android has it's own JVM,
               | but kotlin, scala, closure, jruby, jython, and more all
               | still need to be compiled against a JVM and then run
               | inside it.
               | 
               | All non-android JVMs depend heavily on OpenJDK.
        
               | Vespasian wrote:
               | Also a lot of backend shops use Java or JVM backed
               | services
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | I really would like to see all the haters prove me wrong.
        
               | oaiey wrote:
               | Same with .NET. The stunt Microsoft pulled a week ago
               | made me think that .NET needs a OpenJDK-like model ...
               | until I realized that without the 200 devs from Microsoft
               | no one will care enough to continue developing .NET.
               | 
               | Surprised that Java is in the same position.
        
               | Hello71 wrote:
               | i don't think that's consistent with history. there used
               | to be a large number of Java implementations; by far the
               | biggest reason why they (almost) all died out is because
               | Sun agreed to open up their implementation. IBM still
               | maintains J9, and while that's only part of a full Java
               | implementation, I don't see any reason why Apache Harmony
               | or GNU Classpath couldn't be revived and combined with it
               | for a high-performance Oracle-less Java implementation.
               | there is major precedent for this in the form of
               | GNU/Linux, where substantial parts of the userspace are
               | provided by GNU, but the kernel is a separate project.
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | I guess Oracle saw that enough orgs were opting out of JDK 17
       | adoption?
       | 
       | They'll have to boil the kettle much slower, like Microsoft and
       | Apple do.
        
         | EdwardDiego wrote:
         | 17 only reached release in September.
        
           | floix wrote:
           | True. It's not really new and not really free: https://www.th
           | eregister.com/AMP/2021/09/16/oracle_jdk_free_l...
        
         | kaba0 wrote:
         | Based on the Inside Java podcast, the reason was more along the
         | line to ease installation in cloud environments. This new
         | license is legally installable without clicking accept license,
         | etc.
         | 
         | Also, making the last 1.5 (LTS+1 year into the next LTS) years
         | free probably doesn't mean a serious profit loss, as those
         | primary come from things running Java 8 for another decade
         | still.
        
           | vbezhenar wrote:
           | Yet no official Oracle JDK docker image. That's weird.
        
       | Am_I_Right wrote:
       | Yeah, right. As if I'm ever going to allow anything Java-related
       | on anything I manage again.
       | 
       | "This application requires JRE #" -- end-user Googles JRE # and
       | downloads/installs it.
       | 
       | End-user organization gets sued by Oracle lawyers for 10K site
       | licenses for JRE #. Sure, they COULD have downloaded
       | OpenFerretMongrelAsphalt JRE Pi, but yet, here we are...
        
         | foepys wrote:
         | Isn't the recommended way of distributing Java applications
         | nowadays to bundle a custom JRE with it? Wasn't project jigsaw
         | especially created to be able to just bundle libraries and/or
         | classes the application requires instead of the whole JRE?
        
           | tadfisher wrote:
           | Yes. The official stance of the OpenJDK organization is that
           | there is no such thing as a "JRE" anymore, and applications
           | are expected to use jlink or similar to bundle a customized
           | Java runtime.
           | 
           | The distributions that matter here are for the JDK, which
           | simply provides the "full" Java runtime along with developer
           | tools such as javac and jlink.
        
           | Am_I_Right wrote:
           | Yup, you go and explain that to, say. Ubiquiti. Their network
           | management software still requires end-users to download JRE
           | v8 (and noothing else: it won't work). And, once end-users do
           | that, they get sued by Oracle. But, serves them right, right?
        
             | easton wrote:
             | Install OpenJDK's v8 JRE instead.
             | 
             | sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jre-headless -y on ubuntu.
             | Works fine with UniFi Controller. (what do you think they
             | use on the cloud key?)
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | vips7L wrote:
         | This isn't how Java works anymore. The developers are supposed
         | to be packaging the JVM with their application.
        
           | d0mine wrote:
           | For some languages developers package a whole browser for
           | their app.
        
           | elric wrote:
           | No, they're not. It's a silly idea with a pretty specific
           | target audience. Most shops don't have time to waste on
           | keeping their customers' JVM up to date by re-releasing their
           | applications with new JVMs.
           | 
           | This feature is mostly useful when you want to ship a
           | particularly stripped down version of the JVM for footprint
           | reasons.
        
             | blandflakes wrote:
             | With docker, effectively we're ending up in that world
             | anyway (lamentable though I find it).
        
         | tinus_hn wrote:
         | Similarly the VirtualBox plugin package Trojan horse.
        
           | spicybright wrote:
           | What is that?
        
             | KindOne wrote:
             | Please see these Reddit posts:
             | 
             | (Apr 2018) - https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8ff
             | cg3/oracle_is_...
             | 
             | (Sep 2019) - https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/d1t
             | tzp/oracle_is_...
        
             | saxonww wrote:
             | VirtualBox is GPL2, but the 'extension pack' is under a
             | personal use and evaluation license that doesn't cover
             | commercial use. You're supposed to buy an Enterprise
             | license for that.
             | 
             | The extension pack covers "Support for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0
             | devices, VirtualBox RDP, disk encryption, NVMe and PXE boot
             | for Intel cards." according to the website.
        
               | johannes1234321 wrote:
               | My understanding of those (thus maybe wrong) is, that
               | they are built on too of third party licensed code and
               | patents. Thus opensourcing is hard and would require
               | reimplementation. Thus choice is this model or nothing.
               | One could also create those modules as open source
               | versions, but there doesn't seem to be enough interest by
               | independent folks ...
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | There most certainly is a world of options between "all
               | open source" and "aggressively litigious jerks".
               | 
               | https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/04/oracle_virtualbox_
               | mer...
        
         | billyjobob wrote:
         | The JRE hasn't existed since Java 10.
        
           | Am_I_Right wrote:
           | Oh, sorry for being so dumb. I'm just an Ubiquiti customer
           | wanting to download the JRE v8 that their software requires.
           | Guess I should just... use LISP to write my own solution? I
           | don't know, again, I'm just ignorant and dumb, apparently...
        
         | kaba0 wrote:
         | Citation needed. Oracle JRE was free for personal use.
        
           | tinus_hn wrote:
           | But is use in a commercial environment personal use?
        
           | jimbob45 wrote:
           | Oracle has proven themselves to be a litigious organization.
           | You're not wrong that there are _probably_ safe ways to
           | interact with their organization 's products but why bother
           | when there are alternatives from companies that don't have
           | such dirty legal histories?
        
         | listenallyall wrote:
         | You don't have to like (or use) Java or Oracle to recognize the
         | JVM is an incredible platform to build upon.
         | 
         | > OpenFerretMongrelAsphalt
         | 
         | Ignorance is bliss, I guess. Your loss.
        
           | nightfly wrote:
           | It went from Java to OpenJDK, to Eclipse Temurin (formerly
           | OpenJDK from Eclipse Adoptium) or something. If that doesn't
           | seem like a big mess to use I don't know what to tell you
        
             | frant-hartm wrote:
             | If you follow Java & ecosystem at least a bit you needed to
             | read one or two blog posts from reputable community members
             | to figure out what the situation is and what to use.
             | 
             | To compare I find a licensing situation on mid-size (50+
             | direct dependencies) or larger project much harder to
             | comprehend - you need to figure out what licenses are used,
             | if they can be used at all due to the requirements and
             | company's policy, if they are compatible with each other
             | and what's required for distribution.
        
               | tyingq wrote:
               | It is confusing from the outside though, trying to decide
               | if you should use Java from your distro, from Oracle,
               | Azul, Amazon Corretto, AdoptOpenJDK, Eclipse Temurin, or
               | Red Hat OpenJDK. Which ones have might have builds for
               | your various platforms, what support they might offer,
               | how closely they track OpenJDK, etc.
               | 
               | One good example is what is meant by "LTS". You get
               | different answers to that question depending on which JDK
               | it is.[1]
               | 
               | I don't remember another language where it was ever this
               | confusing.
               | 
               | [1] More detail:
               | https://www.javacodegeeks.com/2019/07/long-term-support-
               | mean...
        
               | listenallyall wrote:
               | I mean, just picking the best Linux distro for you or
               | your company's particular use case is more confusing than
               | this.
        
               | tyingq wrote:
               | Linux was like that almost from day one, so it's
               | expected. It's much less expected for a language.
        
               | listenallyall wrote:
               | The JVM isn't a language. Kotlin, Scala, Clojure, and
               | Java are languages. I'm quite pleased there are an
               | abundance of options when picking a runtime. Yes, Oracle
               | has not been a good steward, so having numerous open and
               | free alternatives is a positive thing.
        
               | tyingq wrote:
               | That's true, but a little pedantic. If you look at it
               | from the lens of "I've picked a language (java), now I
               | need to build and run/deploy things", it's a confusing
               | ecosystem. There's good arguments for why things are the
               | way they are. But there's not really a good argument that
               | it's straightforward and simple.
        
               | listenallyall wrote:
               | You are not making a coherent argument. Once you have
               | decided you're building your server app in Java, it is
               | MORE difficult to evaluate and decide Ubuntu, Debian, Red
               | Hat, CentOS, etc. than it is to pick a runtime. Whether
               | it has been like that "from day one" to use your term, is
               | irrelevant. Secondly, having choice is GOOD. Yes it adds
               | a bit of confusion but I'd rather have options than not.
               | If you want some overriding authority to make all the
               | decisions for you, go build on iOS.
        
               | tyingq wrote:
               | Why is the comparison to operating systems and not other
               | development languages?
        
               | didibus wrote:
               | Most other languages don't offer long term support.
               | 
               | You can't run an old version of Python and continue to
               | get security and performance backported fixes. Same thing
               | with GO or Ruby or Swift.
               | 
               | I can't remember what Microsoft does for .Net, but I
               | suspect you also need to always be on the newest CLR to
               | get updates.
               | 
               | I think this is one of the major differences with the
               | JVM, in a way, it has more options and vendors which
               | should be a good thing, but it seems to mostly confuse
               | people.
        
               | davey48016 wrote:
               | https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy/dotn
               | et-...
               | 
               | Dotnet LTS versions have three years of support. LTS
               | versions come out every two years, so there is a year of
               | overlap.
               | 
               | The non-LTS (which they call Current) have 18 months of
               | support.
        
           | Am_I_Right wrote:
           | Oh, yes, silly ignorant me. Real-world scenario: someone
           | downloads the Ubiquiti network management software. It
           | requires end-users to download JRE v8 (and nothing else: it
           | won't work). And, once end-users do that, they get sued by
           | Oracle. But, I'm just soooooo ignorant...
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | Yep. It's safest to classify using Oracle software as a
         | business risk. After a due diligence evaluation it may be an
         | acceptable risk, but you darned well better research it before
         | assuming everything will be fine.
        
       | Pet_Ant wrote:
       | Isn't the cat out of the bag already?
        
       | voz_ wrote:
       | Oracle is such a scummy, useless company. Die already!
        
       | amachefe wrote:
       | Why would anyone talk them seriously again.
       | 
       | Thay did this same thing with OpenOffice.
       | 
       | At the rate things are going, MySQL would also get this in the
       | next 10yrs.
       | 
       | Oracle wants to extra as much resources as possible from any
       | product. And when they realise the tech world has moved on, would
       | try to throw a hinge to the wheel.
        
       | appleflaxen wrote:
       | Great; now put virtualbox under a more liberal license.
        
       | mberning wrote:
       | The longstanding disaster of Java version numbering and licensing
       | continues. How long until they reverse course on this? I don't
       | know of any other popular language with a such a sordid history
       | in these areas.
        
         | matsemann wrote:
         | Meh, not a disaster in practice. Our team has spent less than
         | 10 minutes thinking about this the later years.
         | 
         | For server stuff one points to a matching dockerfile, for
         | distributed stuff one bundles the jre with the tools since
         | java9.
        
       | PedroBatista wrote:
       | Fuck them, that's what I have to say.
       | 
       | And also thank you, for giving many companies the necessary push
       | for them to realize Oracle's JDK was not the only game in town
       | and many other's could deliver a perfectly fine JDK.
       | 
       | There's few things worse in this business than being labeled an
       | "unreliable partner" and Oracle is being seen as just that even
       | at big companies. Oracle's wisdom to pull this kind of bullshit
       | is already legendary, the Open Solaris train-wreck, the MySQL
       | writing on the wall, the OpenOffice implosion, the JDK shoot-in-
       | foot, those samurais at Oracle's board sure know what they're
       | doing..
        
       | ChuckMcM wrote:
       | From the article -- _Providing Oracle OpenJDK builds under the
       | GPL was highly welcomed, but feedback from developers, academia,
       | and enterprises was that they wanted the trusted, rock-solid
       | Oracle JDK under an unambiguously free terms license, too. Oracle
       | appreciates the feedback from the developer ecosystem and are
       | pleased to announce that as of Java 17 we are delivering on
       | exactly that request._
       | 
       | Translation, everyone stopped using our stuff in favor of the GPL
       | version, that sucked so we changed the terms on ours to be free
       | for commercial use. I bet they collect data and resell it but
       | that is just a guess.
        
         | laurent92 wrote:
         | Don't forget that Oracle was guilty of shipping the AskBar as
         | part of the JRE for the general public. That's right, a malware
         | which uploaded your browser history and redirected any 404 to a
         | commercial advertising page, wrecking the web and the
         | understanding of it for everyone.
         | 
         | Oracle is not to be trusted.
        
           | bitwize wrote:
           | Didn't Sun do that too?
        
         | chungy wrote:
         | It's probably the same binaries, no added stuff. But yeah, it
         | must have hurt them when the bean counters tallied it up :)
         | 
         | It's also probably worth financially supporting Oracle if you
         | make substantial money from Java-based software. Oracle is by
         | and large responsible for the platform that you are using.
        
           | mehrdada wrote:
           | > _It 's also probably worth financially supporting Oracle if
           | you make substantial money from Java-based software. Oracle
           | is by and large responsible for the platform that you are
           | using._
           | 
           | Mmm... That's an interesting theory, but one does not really
           | know if the money will be spent on tightening down the Java
           | platform and legal attacks or technical improvements[1]. In
           | practice it probably does not matter either way as that
           | company is not cash-constrained in any shape or form.
           | 
           | [1]: https://www.globalnerdy.com/2011/07/03/org-charts-of-
           | the-big...
        
           | cercatrova wrote:
           | > when the bean counters tallied it up
           | 
           | If you're making Java, you'll have to count up the beans
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | mrtweetyhack wrote:
       | Free today, not tomorrow. Just keep them guessing
        
       | marginalia_nu wrote:
       | The company I was working for at the time spent a not
       | insignificant amount of money and effort migrating away from
       | Oracle JDK when they first pulled this shit.
       | 
       | It was a B2B outfit, had maybe 30 customers running a dozen
       | different products that the customers hosted themselves. The
       | product was critical to business and the customers were large and
       | part of critical infrastructure. Even a short outage would have
       | made it into the news. What I'm saying is it wasn't a place where
       | you could just hope for the best while migrating JVMs, everything
       | needed to be tested and re-tested from every imaginable angle.
       | 
       | This was extremely expensive, but in the long run, it was still a
       | lot cheaper than ponying up for oracle licensing costs.
       | 
       | I don't work there anymore, but I doubt they are repeating the
       | process to migrate back, especially given how well OpenJDK works.
        
         | Cullinet wrote:
         | can I ask you for some illumination of the licensing costs
         | components involved with remaining licensed by Oracle?
         | 
         | this page https://dzone.com/articles/how-much-does-java-cost
         | 
         | gives $28,500 pa for a 200 core runtime
         | 
         | that sounds negligible compared to the engineering investment
         | that was preferred instead.
         | 
         | the logic of a commercially supported license is obviously the
         | engineering depth of the original author's knowledge and in
         | particular being able to refer to the authoritative / canonical
         | answers
         | 
         | were savings the only objective?
         | 
         | if so, what did the savings get? anything better?
        
           | awill wrote:
           | negligible? It all depends on how much hardware you have. If
           | you're a startup, you don't want scaling to cost you anymore
           | than the hardware.
           | 
           | I remember reading years ago about the FB vs MySpace fight.
           | MySpace was (I think) .NET on Windows with SQL Server. Every
           | extra machine cost a fortune in licensing. Whereas every FB
           | machine was PHP/MySQL. It matters.
        
           | murderfs wrote:
           | > that sounds negligible compared to the engineering
           | investment that was preferred instead.
           | 
           | Can you trust Oracle not to raise the pricing in the future,
           | given that they've raised it once already?
        
             | Sparkle-san wrote:
             | >Can you trust Oracle
             | 
             | No
        
           | marginalia_nu wrote:
           | I don't have exact figures, but I'd guess our customers
           | really weren't too enthusiastic about getting bullied into
           | vendor lock-in with Oracle, which through this very act had
           | already demonstrated their unreliability and willingness to
           | renege on existing terms. That may have been the bigger
           | reason for migrating. Staying on Oracle was definitely an
           | option, but nobody wanted that.
        
         | chrisseaton wrote:
         | > The company I was working for at the time spent a not
         | insignificant amount of money and effort migrating away from
         | Oracle JDK when they first pulled this shit.
         | 
         | What did you migrate to? Another build of the OpenJDK? But it's
         | the same code, isn't it? What's the difference that mattered to
         | you?
        
           | flatiron wrote:
           | I did a migration too. 20+ year legacy code base. It was a
           | 2-3 day effort. To adopt open jdk
        
             | chrisseaton wrote:
             | > It was a 2-3 day effort
             | 
             | Right but why? I'm not an expert in the difference but
             | isn't it literally exactly the same code and functionality?
             | What were you doing in that migration time?
        
               | tauwauwau wrote:
               | It's generally related to the infrastructure. Like
               | migrating Dockerfiles, Jenkins, SonarQube servers.
        
               | jonhohle wrote:
               | There are packaging differences between various JVMs.
               | Some of these are relatively minor (explicit or optional
               | dependencies on X11 or other libraries), others are a
               | bigger issue (how the Java keystore integrates with paths
               | configured for system certificates).
        
       | IceWreck wrote:
       | You'd be better off using JDK builds from your distro's repos.
        
         | chrisseaton wrote:
         | Many systems either don't provide a modern JDK at all (for
         | example macOS), or provide a pretty old JDK (for example I
         | think Debian Stable only provides 11.)
        
           | seba_dos1 wrote:
           | Debian stable provides LTS releases - and the latest one was
           | 11 up until a month ago.
        
           | mastax wrote:
           | Fwiw Debian Bullseye has OpenJDK 8 (for Nvidia?), 11, and 17.
           | 11 is the default.
        
         | ptx wrote:
         | Maybe. Debian says[1] that their OpenJDK package will get
         | "security updates on a best effort basis, but users should not
         | expect to see updates for every quarterly upstream security
         | update."
         | 
         | I'm not sure what that means, exactly. Will the Debian package
         | have unpatched security vulnerabilities for several months at a
         | time?
         | 
         | [1] https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/release-
         | notes...
        
           | IceWreck wrote:
           | You could use Alma Linux / Rocky Linux or any other RHEL
           | likes which will get updates as long as RHEL does.
        
           | nick__m wrote:
           | I think that means that the Debian maintainers appear to be
           | understaffed and you should use the Correto or Zulu
           | repository if you care about security updates.
        
           | seba_dos1 wrote:
           | This applies to OpenJDK 17 in bullseye specifically, which is
           | a special case because it wasn't released yet when bullseye
           | was being released. There's the previous LTS version of
           | OpenJDK (11) available in bullseye as well.
        
       | exabrial wrote:
       | I actually thought Oracle's move initially was actually a good
       | thing: It brought some much-needed diversity to OpenJDK builds.
       | 
       | Very pleased to see this move as well. It's taken a very very
       | long time, but it's encouraging to see Oracle finally understand
       | the open source ecosystem.
        
         | computronus wrote:
         | I agree that the blossoming of additional JDK distributions,
         | spurred on by Oracle's initial license change, was a good
         | thing. I'm a happy AdoptOpenJDK / Temurin user, at work and at
         | home.
         | 
         | However, I don't see any benefit to this latest change in their
         | stance. Everyone already had to wade their way through the
         | confusion from that initial licensing change, and many (most?)
         | spent a lot of time and effort getting to a new stable
         | configuration on a different distro. Why spend more effort,
         | again, to run back to Oracle JDK? I think most organizations
         | have better things to do than deal with all this.
         | 
         | Also, who's to say Oracle won't change their licensing deal
         | once again for Java 21?
        
         | kaba0 wrote:
         | Oracle commit 98%+ to the OpenJDK project, that they finished
         | open sourcing and opening up paid only features year to year,
         | to the point where OracleJDK and OpenJDK are pretty much
         | identical.
         | 
         | Contrary to their litigious image, they are more than great
         | stewards of the ecosystem and they do undertake open-source.
        
           | tinus_hn wrote:
           | Because if they don't, the Java ecosystem is dead.
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | Indeed, specially because in spite of all the hate, no
             | other company bothered to acquire Sun assets (with the
             | exception of IBM that quickly withdrew their offer).
             | 
             | Without Oracle, there wouldn't exist Java 17, MaximeVM made
             | into GraalVM, J/Rockit JIT cache as OpenJDK DSA, J/Rockit
             | monitoring as Flight Recorder,....
             | 
             | And everyone could enjoy Java 6 with the JIT and GC
             | improvements the FOSS community is known for, when there
             | isn't some big corp sponsoring the work.
        
               | vbezhenar wrote:
               | gcc is pretty advanced compiler and, AFAIK, it's
               | independent from big corporations. I wouldn't deny the
               | possibility for Java to live under truly open source
               | umbrella.
        
               | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
               | Almost all of GCC's development is done by employees of
               | big corps, often as their sole job. Red Hat, IBM, etc.
        
               | Hello71 wrote:
               | looking at last 1000 commits to gcc, it seems like about
               | 80-90% of emails are associated with "big corps".
               | however, this doesn't tell the whole story. according to
               | https://lwn.net/Articles/867540/, over 85%
               | (100%-6.8%-5.0%-1.6%=86.6%) of Linux kernel changesets
               | are supported by employers, but nobody sensible would
               | claim that Linux is not community developed. whether it
               | is because of historical project culture, or BDFL, or
               | simply a large number of contributing organizations,
               | there is clearly a substantial difference between Linux
               | and OpenJDK development methodology.
        
         | josefx wrote:
         | It also avoided licensing accidents. Oracles JDK always came
         | with non free components and making the entire JDK non free
         | made stories claiming that they "accidentally" triggered one of
         | the commercial features and had to pay thousands in licensing
         | fees unlikely.
        
       | rob_c wrote:
       | Not knowing the details. Doesn't this impact the sun<->google
       | Java android suit?
        
         | halestock wrote:
         | It doesn't, and that suit is finally dead and over with: https:
         | //en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America....
        
           | rob_c wrote:
           | I suppose but would that impact any future complaints.
           | Probably not I suppose but I'll not pretend to be a legal
           | expert
        
       | tyingq wrote:
       | Guessing they didn't like everyone flocking to things like Amazon
       | Corretto. I don't see this move gaining anyone back though.
        
         | michaelcampbell wrote:
         | I'm not really in that space any more but I haven't heard of
         | ANYONE "flocking" to Corretto. OpenJDK, sure.
        
           | vecplane wrote:
           | Android Studio recommends versions of Amazon's Corretto
           | distrubutions. That could be a JetBrains IDE feature though,
           | not certain.
        
           | tyingq wrote:
           | I don't think Oracle would be unhappy with providers like
           | Eclipse. I suspect they are less happy with people going to
           | Azul, Amazon, RedHat, etc.
        
           | jffry wrote:
           | Well I'll break your anecdote. I "flocked" to Corretto for a
           | production JVM-hosted system that ran on EC2 at the time that
           | the Oracle distribution was re-licensed.
           | 
           | My reasons, aside from just licensing concerns? It came with
           | a public long-term support commitment, and was deployed by
           | AWS themselves on internal services before it was released
           | publicly.
        
             | baud147258 wrote:
             | I remember the same argument of long-term support from the
             | tech lead when he decided that the software we deliver to
             | our clients would use the Correto JDK.
        
       | rStar wrote:
       | java 11 fo life yo
        
         | rStar wrote:
         | oracle could have not been morons and gotten the entire world
         | stuck on java 11, but as we all know, oracle has one product,
         | and it's called vendor lock in.
        
       | stunt wrote:
       | Oracle has been doing amazing work for OpenJDK and Java, it's
       | just that Oracle's JDK isn't a great business model. Glad that
       | they realized that too and I hope it doesn't stop them from
       | putting resources behind it.
        
       | 1cvmask wrote:
       | It seems they were not in a dominant position in terms of market
       | share. Anyone have a clue how low Oracle's market share was?
       | 
       | "Surveys suggest that Oracle's JDK distributions are not the most
       | popular Java distributions anymore. Developers seem to prefer
       | OpenJDK distributions from AdoptOpenJDK (now Eclipse Temurin),
       | Amazon, Microsoft, Azul, and other vendors. These organizations
       | also provide commercial support for their distributions. In the
       | case of Eclipse Temurin, Azul offers such support."
        
         | kaba0 wrote:
         | Oracle JDK is pretty much the exact same as OpenJDK and Oracle
         | commits 98%+ of all commits to the project. It's hard to define
         | a market when most of it is freely available.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | People hate Oracle so much that don't stop two seconds to
           | actually think who does the work and keeps the lights on
           | OpenJDK.
        
             | marktangotango wrote:
             | Who does the work is immaterial to a lot of people. When
             | Oracle bought Sun, literally everyone knew they'd move to a
             | paid commercial license eventually. Which they did. I
             | personally am amused at this sequence of events. It
             | happened to other Sun products as well; open office, and
             | mysql primarily. Commercial licensing didn't work for those
             | open source projects either. What did Oracle actually gain
             | from the Sun acquisition? With this news it seems like
             | nothing. No tears shed for Larry.
        
               | sharms wrote:
               | Just to specific answer the question of what did Oracle
               | gain, I believe they made back all of their investment
               | across their Exadata line of products which were sold to
               | large commercial enterprises, running on custom SPARC
               | silicon.
        
               | pengaru wrote:
               | You sure about that SPARC bit? According to [0] v1 ran on
               | HP commodity hardware, and the subsequent history
               | repeatedly mentions intel xeon processors...
               | 
               | [0] https://flashdba.com/history-of-exadata/
        
               | kmonsen wrote:
               | They got an Android lawsuit against Google over Android.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Rightfully so, we don't need Google's own flavour of J++.
        
               | monocasa wrote:
               | Apparently not rightfully so since the courts struck it
               | down.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Unfortunately, hence the Java community got screwed by
               | your employer and now have to put up with Android Java.
        
               | monocasa wrote:
               | I'm not employed by Google, and never have been; not
               | everyone who disagrees with you has been paid off to do
               | so.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Except no one else bothered to acquire them, so they were
               | fine with uncle Larry putting the greens on the table.
        
             | mulmen wrote:
             | It's more like nobody wants to do business with Oracle. The
             | products themselves are fine. It's the pray-we-don't-alter-
             | it-further licensing that's a dealbreaker.
        
               | atsjie wrote:
               | > The products themselves are fine
               | 
               | I beg to differ. The majority of their products are
               | flawed and outdated. I'm not talking Oracle DB or Java
               | but the vast amount of other apps they sell.
               | 
               | They bought lots of stuff, pull funding from development
               | and redirect it to sales. Then they sell it to fit their
               | vision; but nothing integrates cleanly and you'll be
               | spending massive amounts of money on consultants who
               | understand product A & B and how to connect them.
               | 
               | A java-dev can't do that; you need that A and B knowledge
               | + integration skills. Those consultants are very hard to
               | find and good effective ones nearly non-existent. The
               | fees are enormous regardless of whether you use Oracle
               | consultants, Oracle partners or freelancers. If you do
               | manage to find cheaper consultants (offshoring most
               | likely) be prepared for terrible quality as well.
               | 
               | Ow, and once you're finally comfortable with their stuff
               | after spending all that money, be sure to make a
               | reservation for the unexpected additional license fees
               | they'll slap on you because you failed to remember the
               | fine print.
        
         | xpressvideoz wrote:
         | It is ironic that the very distribution that is not recommended
         | by @pron (AdoptOpenJDK) is the most widely used one!
         | 
         | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28821316
        
           | outjected wrote:
           | The simple reason is that they made it the easiest to install
           | and keep updated with deb / rpm repos.
           | 
           | Unfortunately they migrated from adoptopenjdk to adoptium
           | back in September and have yet to provide repos.
           | 
           | Microsoft however makes it very easy to install their build
           | in linux.
           | 
           | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
           | us/java/openjdk/download#linux...
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | Seems expected. Everyone moved away when they announced it
         | wasn't free anymore.
         | https://support.oracle.com/knowledge/Middleware/2511229_1.ht...
        
           | laurent92 wrote:
           | And it wasn't possible to perform unattended installations,
           | because they required to approve the license manually ("y"
           | from keyboard input), so Oracle JDK was excluded from any
           | Ansible/Puppet/Docker deployment or Linux distribution.
           | Immediate roadblock.
        
             | Spivak wrote:
             | You can absolutely programmatically have apt make arbitrary
             | selections like this with debconf.
             | 
             | debconf-set-selections is your friend.
        
               | carlhjerpe wrote:
               | yes | apt install whatever could work too.
        
             | JazzXP wrote:
             | Wow, what a moronic decision by Oracle. Automating
             | installations is so important, if you're deploying 1000
             | servers, to not be able to automate (even just for the one
             | character button) is stupid.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | flyinprogrammer wrote:
       | I wonder if Docker Inc will learn from this.
        
         | easton wrote:
         | They probably can't. Every other business model they've tried
         | hasn't worked. Their only other option is a buyout, and I can
         | only assume Microsoft hasn't offered them enough money yet,
         | because otherwise I assume that would have happened years ago.
        
         | oneplane wrote:
         | They won't because it's not the same situation and not the
         | issue at hand.
         | 
         | If you want to make a comparison: Docker is more like Sun. They
         | will have three options:
         | 
         | 1. Go bankrupt
         | 
         | 2. Get bought
         | 
         | 3. Find a way to make money
        
         | Pet_Ant wrote:
         | But what else is Docker to do? It feels like some companies
         | should be bought out jointly by the tech giants and turned into
         | charities since they have no business model but provide
         | excellent value to the ecosystem that isn't capturable.
        
       | Z3lgius wrote:
       | This feels like a bait and switch
        
       | overgard wrote:
       | Dumb question, but what's the difference between the Open JDK and
       | the Oracle JDK? Are they separate codebases?
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-31 23:00 UTC)