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Java is still available at zero-cost

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Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#61

Post by MBCook »

agibsonccc wrote: post #42
MBCook wrote: post #35

I have a friend working at a company that is having “very important” discussions about this. They need to keep up with security patches (for obvious reasons) but the six month limit has them scared. The consensus seems to be that they don’t believe they can keep up with an upgrade schedule that fast and are thus forced to pay for support from someone or hope that the community backports security fixes far enough for…

What's being missed here is there is a whole slew of vendors that support openjdk. Those patches will come from red hat, ibm, azul,.. as well.

The question is for how long. Three months? Six months? A year?

The community will provide updates, but it this point no one knows what the eventual pattern will be which makes planning based on it difficult.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#63

Post by MBCook »

euske wrote: post #43

Honest question: How often do people upgrade their production language? Me: once in a decade, maybe. I'm still perfectly happy (and productive) with C# 3.5, Java 7 and Python 2. I'm grudgingly moving forward because the old toolchains are being deprecated now, but my codes aren't significantly improved because of a few fancy idioms available in a new language, and it barely affects the design decisions. Upgrading you…

Is a Java developer I’ve always been happy moving up as soon as possible, if I see a benefit. I was quite happy to move up to 1.5 for generics. Java eight was fantastic because you got streams and lambdas. Some of the updates in 10 and 11 will take bigger changes to the codebase to take advantage of.

But even if you weren’t using the new features, there was basically no downside to upgrading the run time. The newer version is usually ran much better thanks to improvements in threading or garbage collection. And you knew you’d get security patches, even if you ended up getting stuck on that version for a while.

As you said, libraries and frameworks can be a big issue to upgrade.

But the backwards compatibility promises of Java have been so incredibly strong it hasn’t been an issue.

The one time breakage in Java 9 is basically the first I’ve experienced in my career.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#64

Post by MBCook »

scarface74 wrote: post #9

Just for comparison.... Microsoft supports .Net Core LTS releases for three years.... https://www.microsoft.com/net/support/policy

How frequently do they release LTS releases?

The six months security patch limit would be a DISASTER in Java world if releases still happened every 2 to 3 years like they used to. Everyone would be stuck with large periods were no security patches were available without paying.

But that’s not happening here. Yes you’re limited to six months of free security patches, but a new version comes out every six months. So you can stick with Oracle and never paid a dime is long as you stay reasonably up to date.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#65

Post by MBCook »

needle0 wrote: post #52

Nice idea on clarifying what the word "free" means in this context (gratis, not libre) by prefixing it with a dollar sign. This is the first time I saw this, is this usage widespread?

After I knew what they meant it made sense, initially I wondered if it was a version of that old programmer joke of a shell variable. Like $DIETY.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#66

Post by shados »

euske wrote: post #43

Honest question: How often do people upgrade their production language? Me: once in a decade, maybe. I'm still perfectly happy (and productive) with C# 3.5, Java 7 and Python 2. I'm grudgingly moving forward because the old toolchains are being deprecated now, but my codes aren't significantly improved because of a few fancy idioms available in a new language, and it barely affects the design decisions. Upgrading you…

In the JavaScript world people use those holiday chocolate calendar things to count the days until a new version of their favorite compiler will come out and can't sleep the night before because they want to be sure they can update at the very instant the release is dropped (and then proceed to complain that their favorite framework didn't update for the quirks of the new compiler in a timely manner).

I wish I was completely joking.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#67

Post by MBCook »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #36
tadfisher wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rare that Java the language or the JDK breaks backward-compatibility. Code without generics, for example, still compiles with JDK 10, albeit with a bunch of warnings, so long as you specify an appropriate language level. The ABI, however, can and does break, usually when one of your dependencies updates to a language level not supported by your toolchain or runtime environment. The common solutions are to update…

The biggest issue I've met with the ABI issue is frameworks (Spring etc.) that emit bytecode at runtime. I tried upgrading our project to Java 10 and Spring 4 and Camel (I can't remember the version) were the main issues because of their runtime generated proxies. The fix is to upgrade Spring to Spring 5, but that's a whole bunch of other work, and I'm unsure of the scope of work to upgrade Camel. All that said, Java…

I remember running into an issue sort of like that with Struts (IIRC). I could use Java 8 anywhere in the codebase except on JSP files because Struts would choke on the new bytecodes it didn’t know were now valid.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#68

Post by RandomInteger4 »

spydum wrote: post #13
sdinsn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not how it works. You can download the Oracle JDK and use it forever, commercially, for free. You just won't get updates backported to your version unless you pay for long term support.

Find that in writing. Everything I read says jdk 8 is the last free Oracle jdk.

https://react-etc.net/entry/oracle-to-stop-providing-a-free-...

"This is as in many other projects, except it seems that releases of the LTS version, dubbed to be Oracle JDK, will no longer be free. This means that companies looking to stay on a specific version for more than six months would need to get updates from a commercial operator or apply patches from later free OpenJDK versions manually."

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#69

Post by smudgymcscmudge »

euske wrote: post #43

Honest question: How often do people upgrade their production language? Me: once in a decade, maybe. I'm still perfectly happy (and productive) with C# 3.5, Java 7 and Python 2. I'm grudgingly moving forward because the old toolchains are being deprecated now, but my codes aren't significantly improved because of a few fancy idioms available in a new language, and it barely affects the design decisions. Upgrading you…

I’m always an early adopter for new language features on personal projects. I love playing with new things. But I use boring, reliable technology when somebody is paying me for it. As much as I like playing with shiny new things, I’m not going to bet my professional reputation on them.

Re: Java is still available at zero-cost

#70

Post by agibsonccc »

MBCook wrote: post #61
agibsonccc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's being missed here is there is a whole slew of vendors that support openjdk. Those patches will come from red hat, ibm, azul,.. as well.

The question is for how long. Three months? Six months? A year? The community will provide updates, but it this point no one knows what the eventual pattern will be which makes planning based on it difficult.

Not sure that's relevant either. Within the target environments you're still looking at 5 to 10 years just for red hat: https://access.redhat.com/articles/1299013

Azul publishes this as well: https://www.azul.com/products/azul_support_roadmap/

Cursory google searching is all it takes to find these things.

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