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Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

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Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#101

Post by repolfx »

jeswin wrote: post #36
pjmlp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of JVM vendors are happily selling their own versions, playing by the rules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines#... Google had the option to buy Sun after helping to their downfall, they have chosen not to spend the money to own Java. Now they get to spend on lawyers instead.

I guess what I'm saying is that we should dump a non-free platform ("non-free", as you seem to agree) for an alternative that offers freedom. People have certainly learnt their lessons that the stewards cannot be trusted - they could get bought out as with Sun or their management could change any time. How users rejected Facebook's React License speaks of better awareness on these issues and is welcome.

They're all open source licensed. Android even uses OpenJDK code these days.

What you're looking for goes beyond any traditional notion of free software, in the Stallmanist sense.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#102

Post by repolfx »

kodablah wrote: post #94
brabel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graal is open-source and most projects under its umbrella are [GPL2-with-classpath-exception licensed]( https://github.com/oracle/graal/#license ). The fact that they also have an Enterprise Edition does not make this a non-community project.

Sorry, I meant non-community owned. Mentioned in sibling comment, I use plenty of non-community-owned software, but I avoid wholly Oracle owned software.

It's all GPL licensed. How is it not 'community owned'? What is your definition of 'community', exactly?

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#103

Post by repolfx »

hashrate wrote: post #53

Interesting read. I think the whole idea of "We need to replace Java with [Insert Language]" is much more complicated topic than just saying "X is free , Java is owned by Oracle". Even is this is true , Java is by far one of the most performant programming language that exist on earth. People just don't realize the hundreds of millions of dollars that went into the JVM and the JDK. Even if they are great alternatives…

The Google / Oracle case didn't end up being about patents because they were all invalidated or deemed not to apply, iirc.

It ended up being about copyrights and whether or not you can copyright APIs.

It's unfortunate that Oracle chose to break the long-standing convention on this topic, however, it's not entirely surprising that eventually someone did. It's not at all clear why APIs should not be copyrightable, given the intent and wording of copyright laws and treaties - it's merely a convenient collective belief the software industry has had. It's now being tested in court and apparently splitting judges both ways.

I would also note that you always take such risks when building on platforms. The web is basically driven by Google these days, with other browser vendors either struggling to keep up or just giving up entirely (see, Safari) creating a new "works best in IE" era. And Google's stewardship of the web is hardly uncontroversial. Lots of obvious, major technical problems go unresolved for years or decades. AMP seems to be upsetting a lot of people. And of course there's not much stability: the web guys don't seem able to pick a direction and stick with it (e.g. web components/shadow dom stuff).

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#105

Post by acdha »

village-idiot wrote: post #89
acdha wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is better than it used to be but you’re significantly overselling performance as a competitive advantage. Many other languages have no trouble producing code which is as fast or faster, and Java is still shaking the culture of excessive complexity which has squandered much of the hard work in the JIT. The ecosystem is a much better argument since it’s certainly massive, as is finding developers, although quality…

More than that, speed is vastly overrated in a lot of cases.

True, although that has a way of becoming important after awhile. That’s why I prefer to focus on complexity and clarity as it’s much harder to make convoluted code when it becomes important.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#106

Post by Sindisil »

ece wrote: post #43

There's really only one, possibly two saviors of Java. Redhat with JBoss/Icedtea, and OpenJDK, which has IBM, Redhat, Oracle and Doug Lea at the top level. I don't see any great examples of building successful open source communities from IBM, but open sourcing OpenJ9 earns them some good will. Short of OpenJDK being adopted by Apache/Mozilla/etc.. (Oracle will let this happen after hell freezes over..) Java really h…

"I don't see any great examples of building successful open source communities from IBM, [...]"

What about Eclipse?

Love it or loathe it, it's certainly been successful.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#107

Post by pjmlp »

v_lisivka wrote: post #64
pjmlp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google had the opportunity to buy Sun after screwing it up and preferred not to. "Triangulation 245: James Gosling" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be... If IBM had not given up to buy Sun, I am pretty sure they would have done likewise. Plenty of JVM vendors are selling their versions without getting into trouble by playing by the rules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_ma…

So, if I want to ship with OpenJDK, I will need to buy Sun? And if I want to ship with Wine, I will need to buy M$?

If you ship 100% of OpenJDK no, which Google is yet to do.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#108

Post by kodablah »

repolfx wrote: post #102
kodablah wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I meant non-community owned. Mentioned in sibling comment, I use plenty of non-community-owned software, but I avoid wholly Oracle owned software.

It's all GPL licensed. How is it not 'community owned'? What is your definition of 'community', exactly?

Who makes the decisions and who can change the license and who can sue you for misuse of the software? I don't want to support any Oracle product if I can help it, regardless of license.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#109

Post by naikrovek »

jsiepkes wrote: post #46
jeswin wrote: post #6

Actually, time to look beyond the whole Java ecosystem. After the claims Oracle made during the Google trial (such as APIs and method signatures being patent-able), it is clear that one can't work on the Java platform without infringing Oracle's IP. If Oracle doesn't sue you now, it can sue you when it makes financial sense to do so. .Net looks like a much better alternative, with a patent pledge and ECMA standardiza…

Your suggesting .net as an alternative but ironically the licensing of Java is largely shaped due to the Sun vs Microsoft lawsuit. Microsoft tried to do their famous Embrace, Extend, extinguish on Java (and failed: https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/ ). Its only been a couple of years that Microsoft has been behaving "better". I suggest you read up on the history of Java, Android, Google and Mic…

What is your suggestion, then, if Java and .net are off the table?

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#110

Post by severino »

jeswin wrote: post #6

Actually, time to look beyond the whole Java ecosystem. After the claims Oracle made during the Google trial (such as APIs and method signatures being patent-able), it is clear that one can't work on the Java platform without infringing Oracle's IP. If Oracle doesn't sue you now, it can sue you when it makes financial sense to do so. .Net looks like a much better alternative, with a patent pledge and ECMA standardiza…

Lol, after reading the headline, I knew somebody was going to make a "time to look beyond Java" comment. It's a classic: it doesn't matter when or where, or if it makes sense or not... somebody has to say it.

However I wasn't expecting the same guy to actually promote .net, which is exactly a Java clone (created soon after the justice told Microsoft to stop trying to harm Java with this J++ thing) which only ran on Windows. It still does, because .net core is just a subset of the entire platform. But it's got a big corporation behind dictating its future development which poses the same threats as Oracle.

So given nobody can predict the future right now, I think I'd better keep using the long time open source, community focused and cross-platform alternative, which happens to be Java.

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