
Java Is Still Free - melqdusy
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nFGazvrCvHMZJgFstlbzoHjpAVwv5DEdnaBr_5pKuHo
======
bradleyjg
The bottom line isn't all that complicated.

If you've never bought a commercial support contract just switch to OpenJDK
(via AdoptOpenJDK if you want standalone binaries) and be on your merry way.
Which giant company(s) are taking the lead role in maintaining the project
will change, but that should have little impact on you.

If you do have a commercial support agreement, you can keep doing what you've
been doing with the same company you've been doing it with.

~~~
dajohnson89
Is there any situation in which using Oracle's JDK is preferable to OpenJDK,
if you know that you dont need commercial support? E.g., maybe Oracle releases
patches more frequently, or has some libraries that are more performant.

~~~
jerven
None.

OracleJDK11+ doesn't allow non licensed production use in commercial settings.
Otherwise the builds are nearly identical.

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tannhaeuser
Hint: if you want to get a discussion going, or, in fact, have your article
read in the first place, don't put it on Google docs, nor medium via link
shorteners for that matter.

~~~
iuwhagtr
Why not? Google Docs does not show any stupid popovers, ads or anything

~~~
mabbo
On mobile, this is painful. Every one of those blue blocks stays too wide and
requires manual scrolling side to side to read each line inside it.

If this were basic HTML, there wouldn't be a problem.

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petetnt
Honestly, if you need a third-party to explain your scheme with a 6000-word,
20 page document there might be some sort of issues with your scheme.

~~~
teilo
Welcome to Oracle. They make their money off of taking simple things and
making them extraordinarily complicated. The JDK is no exception.

I tried using nothing but the Oracle website to determine what the terms of
usage are, and what the cost would be. It's confusing, buried many levels
deep, in multiple documents in different places.

They use the term "processors" to refer to how 11 is licensed. They give you a
per-processor price. Then in a footnote they say that you have to multiply the
number of cores you use by a ratio that is different for different platforms
and/or CPU models in order to determine your "processor" count.

Where is this ratio? In a different document that they don't bother to link
to. Seriously. Well, there IS a link, but it takes you to the index page of
massive document library. Browsing around there in obvious places got me
nowhere. I finally googled for it with "site:oracle.com" and found it, but I
still have no idea where on their website they put it.

~~~
mr_overalls
> They make their money off of taking simple things and making them
> extraordinarily complicated.

And then extorting money from your company via the threat of lawsuits if,
speaking purely hypothetically, your company is determined - because of said
processor-vs-cores distinction - to be out-of-bounds on the number of
installed databases during an audit.

Oracle has all of the ethics and humanity of a lawnmower.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246)

~~~
teilo
The only inroad Oracle has made into my company has been EssBase (a component
of their Hyperion platform), and we run that against MSSQL. They keep calling,
hoping for more.

Last time I told the salesperson: "I will not bring any more Oracle products
into my company for the simple reason that Larry Ellison is an asshole who is
hostile to his customers." The response? "Yeah, I get that a lot."

Honestly, I felt sorry for the guy.

------
kijin
Sure, MySQL is also still free. OpenOffice remained free until Oracle dumped
it on Apache's doorstep. Neither product was ever under threat of becoming
legally unfree. The problem is that people don't trust Oracle anymore. The
developer community doesn't want to touch anything from Oracle with a 10-foot
pole _even if it 's licensed under GPL._

I haven't used enough Oracle products to judge whether this sentiment is
justified. But regardless of whether it is justified, the fact that Oracle
doesn't seem to be making any effort to clear up possible misunderstandings
suggests that they don't give a crap about their reputation with
non-"enterprise" developers.

~~~
threeseed
> The developer community doesn't want to touch anything from Oracle

Which developer community are you talking about ?

Because in the JVM community we like Oracle quite a bit since they have been
surprisingly great at supporting the platform over the last decade. Actions
speak louder than words you know.

~~~
kijin
The FOSS community in general, I guess. Which has a much larger presence on
forums like HN than the subset that is JVM developers.

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kamaal
The problem with write ups like these is they send the exact opposite message
of what was intended to be sent. Even those people who didn't receive the
news, will now hear about this.

On the other hand, the entire write up seems to attempt to convince people to
keep faith in Oracle. The problem with this kind of talk is you are the mercy
of some VP in Oracle, whose one decision could change everything and given the
fact they are already thinking of monetizing(and to some extent have) Java, it
most certainly will.

In most companies merely migrating Java versions is a process that happens
over several months if not years. Asking people to change their entire install
bases, and expecting them to not worry about it is pointless. These people
have to redo not just regression tests but a range of security tests. And of
course even after all that you are still not sure about the future.

The right question to ask at this point is, about the alternatives.

One of the greatest things about Java is the library ecosystem. The language
itself is not that enjoyable, but Java has had so much money driving behind it
that you will find pretty much a library for every thing on Earth.

The only languages that can match that ecosystem are Perl and Python. And may
be Javascript.

My only concern with Java is related to Clojure. I liked that language as a
practical alternative to Lisp, if Java has no future, then Clojure's biggest
sell 'Java interop' doesn't have a future too.

~~~
sytelus
> The only languages that can match that ecosystem are Perl and Python. And
> may be Javascript.

Nope. Python as well as Perl are pretty slow compared to Java on JVM. To
replace Java you need to move to either C# or Go. The key thing would be
licensing terms and available frameworks. Smart CIOs with lots of Java baggage
in their companies should be investing in transition to C# given the state of
things. It would be pretty stupid if you are starting new development on Java
at this point.

~~~
kamaal
Very interesting to see Go as a choice. On sheer library numbers Go would
still come short compared to Perl/Python. But Go's simplicity is actually huge
accidental positive.

One of things that I remember from the past is applications used to be
developed as giant Monoliths. Which is why you needed all that OO, templates
and generics related magic to work with.

These days people don't develop applications that way anymore. Adding to which
microservices architecture has taken off really well. People tend to write
their binaries as applications that do one thing well.

Go is actually a very practical language for today's everyday work.

~~~
moocowtruck
go is simplistic, not simple

------
mariusmg
Why don't the bigwigs like RedHat + IBM just fork it already ?

Take OpenJDK , GPL the IBM runtime and slap some stupid coffee inspired
nickname on it. People will trust that more than they trust Oracle anyway...

~~~
jillesvangurp
Because Oracle is continuing to put a lot of R&D resources into Java and is
generally not doing a terrible job with nice work around modernizing the
language, contributing non trivial innovation around e.g. the Graal project,
etc. Like them or not, Oracle is doing a lot of heavy lifting and most of it
is released through Openjdk as 100% OSS under the GPL.

So, neither IBM nor Red Hat have any big issues with the status quo. They get
to do their own thing, support their customers, and they get to ship openjdk
with no strings attached.

~~~
kamaal
>>Oracle is doing a lot of heavy lifting and most of it is released through
Openjdk as 100% OSS under the GPL.

At some point they are going to want see some profits in return given how many
Android phones are being sold. And needless to mention how much of world's
software runs on Java today.

~~~
threeseed
Oracle took over Java 8+ years ago.

Don't you think if they wanted to "see some profits" they might've done it
already ?

~~~
kamaal
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc).

 _Oracle has sought upward of US$8.8 billion in damages due to the commercial
success of the Android system._

Nothing wrong with it, of course. If a company wants customers to pay for
their products, then they are right.

People just need to know before hand, than being sold on it as free, and then
asked to pay $XK per installation box a few years down the lane.

~~~
icebraining
While I don't agree with their tactics, Google was - by their own word - _not_
using Java. This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using
OpenJDK/Oracle Java.

~~~
kamaal
>>This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using OpenJDK/Oracle Java.

That depends on how commercially successful your product is. I don't think it
would even make logical sense for Oracle to go after every single start up
that uses Java.

But lets say tomorrow news came out that a big reason for AWS's success is
Java, then all of a sudden you are going to see Oracle want some of that
money.

Please note I'm not saying expecting people to pay is necessarily wrong. I'm
only saying people need to know what they are signing up for.

~~~
icebraining
And all I'm saying is that Google was _not_ using Java, they were using an
alternative implementation of the same APIs (derived from Apache Harmony). The
difference is that using Java™ gives you a license to the copyright and
patents (and hence protection from Oracle), whereas using something else does
not.

------
snarfy
Why doesn't Google provide an OpenJDK distribution like Redhat, IBM, etc do?
It's still free guys, but here go download it from some other guy.

~~~
brian_herman__
That would be cool but maybe they dont want to be sued or something... Were
they just in court for java ?

~~~
josefx
An OpenJDK fork would be covered as Sun released it as GPL, meaning everyone
could fork it. Google based its "Java" implementation on Apache Harmony, which
was never licensed, never passed the official conformance tests and would have
cut into Suns Java ME business.

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lowry
Who is the author?

~~~
maltalex
There's a long list of authors at the bottom.

~~~
lowry
Signatories and backers, not authors.

~~~
giancarlostoro
According to a sibling post some of those names are of some of the authors.

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maltalex
Better source (not google docs):

[https://itnext.io/java-is-still-free-c02aef8c9e04](https://itnext.io/java-is-
still-free-c02aef8c9e04)

~~~
jannes
That's not the canonical source, though. From the HN guidelines:

"Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on
another site, submit the latter."

------
baybal2
Is original Java still alive? That's the question.

Yes, the whole AP CS curriculum is based on it, Google's Java can somehow be
called its continuation. But despite of all of that, the overall feel is that
Java's development and developer scene is rather morbid.

>The developer community doesn't want to touch anything from Oracle with a
10-foot pole _even if it 's licensed under GPL._

Yes, that's exactly the case here. Oracle pigeonholed Java back into the
category of "corporate software stuff" language, just as it was getting close
to being called a normal programming language

~~~
the_clarence
It's definitely not the trendy language anymore. We still have a lot of it
because of legacy products and a generation trained on it mostly. But new
languages are objectively better and getting adopted at a faster rate than
ever. What young programer wants to write java nowadays? When you have Golang,
Rust, Swift, Python, etc.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> What young programer wants to write java nowadays?

One who wants to earn good money working with legacy stuff?

~~~
knightofmars
It's more than "legacy stuff" as well. People always hear "Java" and
immediately think "legacy application". I find it quite amusing. It's this
weird idea that somehow nobody would or could ever write a new application in
Java. Yet here we are with RedHat Thorntail (previously Swarm) and other
modern frameworks written in Java and ready to deliver solid large-scale
performance.

~~~
spreiti
I like it that way. Keeps my rate high while doing trivial CRUD applications.

On a serious note, I still think Java has one if not the best ecosystem of any
language. Fast JVM, lots of high quality Open Source libraries/frameworks,
tooling (IDEs, monitoring, debugging) and if you have a problem you probably
are not the first one and usually find an answer.

