
How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java - gararapa
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/how-oracles-business-as-usual-is-threatening-to-kill-java/
======
RRRA
It seems like no sane people would choose Oracle for a new project. Is that a
company milking its legacy contracts and buy new legacy product until they
can't follow fast enough?

This kind of business model is a drag on the whole ecosystem, just like
Microsoft as a monopoly stagnated the whole ecosystem until Linux broke out.

~~~
vertex-four
Probably no small company would, but Oracle doesn't make its money on small
companies. Oracle _does_ provide benefits for Fortune 500s and the banking
industry, where projects are not going to be replaced for a very long time -
there's a lot of configurability and their products can be made to do almost
anything you could possibly want, now and in 30 years.

~~~
joostdevries
These big companies don't like uncertainty in their IT platform though. And
this apparent lack of commitment to Java EE without any communication could
scare them away.

We can only speculate what's going on at Oracle. Some options come to mind: 1)
the JCP is moving too slowly to keep up with the changing IT landscape 2)
Oracle no longer sees benefit in standard APIs with competing implementations
and interoperability. Maybe it's eyeing enviously Salesforces cloud lockin...

~~~
snaky
Why don't we just use the Hanlon's razor?

> Oracle's overall revenue was down, largely because of its shrinking "on
> premises" software sales

> So how did Oracle increase profit on revenue that shrank overall by about 1
> percent? The company slashed the operating cost of performing software
> updates, license support, developing and supporting new hardware, and
> services—in other words, through layoffs

[http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/06/oracle...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/06/oracle-boosts-cloud-sales-but-at-expense-of-java-and-
everything-else/)

So top management is in "cut all the corners, don't care about the future, we
need our bonuses now" mode, that's it.

------
PaulHoule
I code all kinds of stuff in Java and never use Java EE; JDK8 SE is great and
I like some what is planned for JDK 8, it always seemed to me that Java EE was
a collection of second- or third- best technologies.

~~~
quantumhobbit
That is what I was thinking. Java EE is was already losing mindshare to
Spring.

However I still find this troubling for the future of Java. If they kill EE
this casually, why wouldn't they slowly abandon Java altogether . Java EE is
the canary in the coal mine.

Not that I would be sad about Java's demise. Many companies see Java as they
only real programming language. Maybe if Oracle keeps it up the enterprise
will start to consider using other languages.

~~~
pjmlp
Oracle has always been big on Java since day one.

They tried to do Java based based terminals like Sun was promoting (remember
NC?), their RDMS engine allows for stored procedures in Java and already in
the early 2000's the database GUI tools were Java based.

What I imagine they doing is going full commercial with the language and
withdraw OpenJDK from public access.

There are already quite a few features that are only available via commercial
licences, including the AOT compiler that is being developed.

------
apo
Is Java EE released under an open source license?

The article only makes sense if the license is not open source, but this
important detail appears to have been left out entirely.

A few quick searches suggest Oracle is using some kind of free-as-in-beer
license for Java EE.

edit: buried in the middle of the article is this passage:

> JCP concerns aside, rumblings over what's happening with Java EE have been
> much louder. Discontent began when Oracle shut down commercial support and
> internal development for GlassFish, the open source version of Java EE that
> served as the reference implementation for the platform. Even without
> commercial support, Open Glassfish was still being predominantly developed
> by Oracle employees. Java EE 7 and the GlassFish open implementation soon
> released on June 12, 2013.

So what's the problem here? Big company doesn't want to fund R&D for a product
that generates no revenue?

Said product is open source, so community takes over.

~~~
marcosdumay
> Said product is open source, so community takes over.

Hum, that would be true in general. But said product does exactly the same
thing Google was found guilty of doing with Dalvik, to the exact same company.
Nobody but Oracle can take over such product without drawing a huge target on
themselves for Oracle to shoot on.

------
kod
Java EE can die in a fire. Only thing that matters at this point is that the
JVM stays relevant.

~~~
Roboprog
I hear you :-)

We have been doing an app rewrite at work to do a rich HTML/JS client,
reducing the Java back-end to just REST services. As far as I'm concerned,
there is still too much "Enterprise!" in the back end, but we have a legacy
codebase to try to recycle.

I'm not ready to go pure Node.js, but I wouldn't mind coding the backend on
Nashorn, skip the Object-{Relational/View}-Mapping make-work, and only drop
into legacy Java as a last resort. However, I'm the only pro-dynamic language
(as well as functional programming) fan at work, so that's a non-starter.

------
deegles
How likely is it that Oracle could sue a company using Java? Are you safe as
long as you don't create something Dalvik-like?

I have a gut feeling that lawsuit has had a chilling effect on enterprise Java
usage. It obviously didn't put Oracle in a good light.

~~~
vroombaprime
No group I've talked with has any concern for being sued over implementing
java applications. The actual concerns are mainly whether oracle will continue
supporting the ecosystem - security and features.

------
Nelson69
Is there a specific implementation that people are worried about or the EE
specification?

Was there ever a time people were happy with the J2EE/EE process? It moves
slowly, the opensource and smaller implementations do lots of cool stuff that
isn't part of the specification. The big money implementations generally seem
and feel like they are years and years behind the times. Sun seemed to have
issues actually listening to and working with the community too... And the
regardless of any actual experiences, people just seem to love to bitch about
Oracle.

------
insulanian
Now that .NET Core runs on Linux, there is an alternative at least.

~~~
noir_lord
Theoretical alternative, while I'm deeply excited about .NET Core on Linux
(mostly for when F# is fleshed out) it's not got the massive ecosystem Java
has yet and might not have for a while since Java on Linux (and others) has
been around quite a while.

~~~
maxxxxx
If Microsoft would create a bridge that allowed use of Java libraries from
.NET I think a lot of projects would consider moving to .NET. A while a go I
did some text processing projects and the existence of frameworks like Lucene
and Tika alone were a big argument for Java.

~~~
JohnL4
Microsoft could've built that bridge 10+ years ago and chose not to. I don't
expect them to change their minds now.

------
heisenbit
Java EE was the child of a relationship between SUN and IBM. The latter
contributed hugely. IBM and SUN were able to work with each other. IBM and
Oracle less so.

IBM WAS used to be a key selling point for IBMs consulting force. But JEE
skills and tools are now commodity and WAS is less critical to IBM. It is
curious that IBM is investing these days into Swift also targeting servers
([https://developer.ibm.com/swift/](https://developer.ibm.com/swift/)).

It looks to me at times that both parents are neglecting and considering
abandoning the child in the long run.

------
simonh
"It's a dangerous game they're playing,"

Not for Oracle it isn't.

~~~
sdlion
I wouldn't invest (not even my time) in licenses and staff to work over a
platform that won't be maintained in the next 5-10 years. Stability is better
for business.

~~~
niroze
Exactly.

Long term stability, even if programmers/admins complain, is still the best
option for a business.

Hobbyists can do whatever they want, a company isn't depending on what they
do.

------
mark_l_watson
Although I don't use Java much anymore (favoring Ruby, Typescript, Haskell,
Clojure, etc.) Java used to be my world, including enterprise Java.

Honest question: aren't there open source solutions for the best parts of Java
Enterprise specs?

~~~
Roboprog
JBoss seems to work well enough. Er, Wildfly???

~~~
punctilio
WildFly is the project formerly known as JBoss Application Server.

------
stevesun21
I don't use Java EE since I know there is a thing called J2ee/Java EE – 10
years ago.

IMHO, Don't call self a Java SE if you just know how to configure some shity
XML configuration files in Java EE stacks.

------
the_arun
In the world of Spring & Play, just JDK alone isn't good enough? Does
evolution of J2EE really matter?

------
JohnL4
So, then, best non-JVM alternate language for backend servers?

Go? D? Haskell?

Node (please, no)?

~~~
otabdeveloper
> So, then, best non-JVM alternate language for backend servers?

The vast, vast majority of 'backend servers' are written in C++. (Those that
aren't are legacy that was written in C.)

P.S. Of course, for some people when they say 'backend' they really mean
'anything not Javascript'. In that case PHP is the world's most popular
backend language, and that would be just silly.

P.P.S. The disconnect of the online discussion bubble with reality always
shocks me. D? Go? Seriously?

