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How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

arstechnica.com

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Re: How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

#11

Post by vertex-four »

RRRA wrote: post #5

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.

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.

Re: How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

#13

Post by marcosdumay »

apo wrote: post #6

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 loud…

> 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.

Re: How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

#15

Post by [deleted] »

vertex-four wrote: post #11
RRRA wrote: post #5

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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

#16

Post by nightmiles »

burnte wrote: post #4
simonh wrote: post #2

"It's a dangerous game they're playing," Not for Oracle it isn't.

It's more dangerous for Oracle than anyone else. You can only be a bully for so long before customers and potential customers become scared of you and go elsewhere. When you scare off customers, you die. I won't implement anything Oracle and my company for just that reason, they're unethical and a liability. Predatory licensing rules, lock in, stick it to the customer pricing, and the potential for litigation at the…

The inertia of large enterprises makes Oracle largely immune to perceived bullying or negative reputation. While the "boots on the ground" developers may be displeased with how Oracle increases friction, project managers and directors are happy to continue renewing their contracts in order to keep their systems "supported."

Oracle are shrugging their shoulders all the way to the bank.

Re: How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

#17

Post by dozzie »

apo wrote: post #6

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 loud…

> Is Java EE released under an open source license?

Irrelevant, as long as US judges find API copyrightable.

Re: How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

#18

Post by noir_lord »

insulanian wrote: post #14

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

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.

Re: How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

#19

Post by pjmlp »

quantumhobbit wrote: post #9
PaulHoule wrote: post #8

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.

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 s…

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.

Re: How Oracle’s business as usual is threatening to kill Java

#20

Post by noir_lord »

nightmiles wrote: post #16
burnte wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more dangerous for Oracle than anyone else. You can only be a bully for so long before customers and potential customers become scared of you and go elsewhere. When you scare off customers, you die. I won't implement anything Oracle and my company for just that reason, they're unethical and a liability. Predatory licensing rules, lock in, stick it to the customer pricing, and the potential for litigation at the…

The inertia of large enterprises makes Oracle largely immune to perceived bullying or negative reputation. While the "boots on the ground" developers may be displeased with how Oracle increases friction, project managers and directors are happy to continue renewing their contracts in order to keep their systems "supported." Oracle are shrugging their shoulders all the way to the bank.

> The inertia of large enterprises makes Oracle largely immune to perceived bullying or negative reputation.

The inertia of current large enterprises using Oracle sure, if the cost to move from Oracle is very large then they'll accept the risk if they even consider it.

Not so sure that applies to new customers though, they won't hemorrhage customers but they could see a slow gradual decline as the odd large enterprise folds, moves to something else etc.

I think if Microsoft continues down the path it appears to have really committed to the potential for .NET (Core) to go toe to toe on Java on none-microsoft platforms is there.

I certainly think that is the intention (along with making Azure a more attractive platform).

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