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Mystery meat OpenJDK builds strike again

mail.openjdk.java.net

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Re: Mystery meat OpenJDK builds strike again

#51

Post by pron »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #50
pron wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oracle seems to have stepped away from this and only offers limited time support for their own JDKs which also cost money. This is inaccurate (I work at Oracle on OpenJDK). Oracle provides the JDK under two different licenses: the commercial OTN, for support subscribers, and the free OpenJDK license (here: http://jdk.java.net/ ). Moreover, Oracle's OpenJDK builds are the official ones in the sense that bugs reporte…

That's the Oracle pitch. The practical implication is that you don't get your openjdk builds from them if you want to avoid the audits, licensing, etc. Paid support is also offered by others so they don't do this exclusively. This has been true since they acquired Sun. I find this odd because that was arguably the most valuable thing they acquired from them. BTW, v9 was a non LTS release, just like 10. v8 was the las…

> That's the Oracle pitch.

Well, like the vast majority of OpenJDK developers, I work at Oracle :) (but I speak only for myself)

> The practical implication is that you don't get your openjdk builds from them if you want to avoid the audits, licensing, etc.

The OpenJDK builds from Oracle (http://jdk.java.net/) -- the "official" OpenJDK builds for the current JDK version -- are under the same license as any other OpenJDK distribution, and the download page for Oracle customers clearly says download our OpenJDK builds if you're not a support customer.

> the void left by Oracle no longer offering long term support for free.

The "no longer" here is misleading. There are two completely new upgrade models now. Oracle offers one of them (the recommended gradual path) completely free, and the other (the non-gradual path) as a subscription. Neither of those is the same as before. For example, JDK 11 is a feature release marked LTS. It is about the same size as 7u4 or 8u20. Oracle never offered LTS for 8u20 or 7u4; it was always only 6 months. In the past we had major releases that were supported with "limited update" releases and patch releases. Those major releases no longer exist, so it doesn't make sense to say that Oracle no longer offers something which is now irrelevant. On the other hand, the LTS releases now include only patches, whereas the feature releases are like "limited update +".

So Oracle no longer offers free LTS (in the form of limited update releases and patches) for major releases, and no one else does, either, because major releases no longer exist.

Re: Mystery meat OpenJDK builds strike again

#52

Post by kevin_b_er »

pron wrote: post #40
makomk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still astounded how much of an (intentional?) mess Oracle have made of Java and OpenJDK. If you search for Java you get to a Oracle page with a big download button and a cryptic yellow warning about license changes, with a little link at the bottom directing people to OpenJDK. The official OpenJDK builds they send people to have no Windows installer - they're just a ZIP of the JDK. There is no way for an ordinary…

The changes to the process were absolutely necessary for Java to keep growing and remain competitive, but the ecosystem will take a few years to adapt (and I don't think the warning is cryptic). As to an installer -- the JDK does not require any installation (just point JAVA_HOME at it). In addition, the JDK is for developers only. The days of the "system desktop JRE" are over, and it is against the recommended pract…

Yes, the current practice is such because Oracle wants to tax all creators of java applications. Java is not run anywhere anymore.

The JDK is for "developers only" because it is open and java is not. Oracle cannot tax and legally threaten an open system the same way it can one where you need a license to actually run java.

Re: Mystery meat OpenJDK builds strike again

#53

Post by kevin_b_er »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #6
ars wrote: post #4

There don't seem to be any debian emails about it: https://lists.debian.org/debian-java/2019/05/threads.html

The place where you'd want to look is the Debian Package Tracker entry for the source package, openjdk-8. Here's the URL: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/openjdk-8 That has the current status of the package, and links to the bug tracker, which is where I'd expect things to appear!

That seems an odd place to look, considering this is at the top of the page:

> package is gone

> This package is not in any development repository. This probably means that the package has been removed (or has been renamed). Thus the information here is of little interest ... the package is going to disappear unless someone takes it over and reintroduces it.

So it is an obsolete package?

Re: Mystery meat OpenJDK builds strike again

#54

Post by pron »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #52
pron wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The changes to the process were absolutely necessary for Java to keep growing and remain competitive, but the ecosystem will take a few years to adapt (and I don't think the warning is cryptic). As to an installer -- the JDK does not require any installation (just point JAVA_HOME at it). In addition, the JDK is for developers only. The days of the "system desktop JRE" are over, and it is against the recommended pract…

Yes, the current practice is such because Oracle wants to tax all creators of java applications. Java is not run anywhere anymore. The JDK is for "developers only" because it is open and java is not. Oracle cannot tax and legally threaten an open system the same way it can one where you need a license to actually run java.

I don't know what you're talking about. Oracle has recently, for the first time ever, open sourced the entire JDK. It is 100% open source. No one is threatened, and the license is the same one as that used by Linux.

Just to be clear: Java is a standard; OpenJDK is the name of Oracle's implementation of the Java standard.

That the JDK is for developers who then build their own custom runtimes using the JDK tools is a result of shifts in software distribution -- on the desktop, the shift to app stores, and on the server, the shift to containers -- that made the "desktop JRE" irrelevant (and unpopular). But if you prefer that old model, the JDK contains all you need to create such a runtime easily.

Re: Mystery meat OpenJDK builds strike again

#55

Post by repolfx »

djsumdog wrote: post #12
chungy wrote: post #2

As an observer, not any kind of authority: The release methodology of OpenJDK from Oracle is obscure at best, and it is hard to imagine how package managers are supposed to cope. I notice both of these examples come with Debian version strings attached, and they likely build from tags in the version control repository. As example, in these two links: https://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8u/jdk8u/tags https://hg.openjdk.jav…

I think this has lees to do with the OpenJDK team and more to do with the part of the Docker team and/or community that maintain this repo and not pulling correct release versions. I knew someone who worked at Gradle and noticed how RedHat did all their own gradle packaging that broke everything they had in their offical rpms and spec files. Some projects like Elastic Search maintain their own v2 repos on their own d…

It's an age old problem. Upstreams were complaining (legitimately) about how Linux distributions would (re)package their software and break it along the way 20 years ago. Broken packages in Docker being pulled from Debian is no surprise, it was ever thus.

Re: Mystery meat OpenJDK builds strike again

#56

Post by javagram »

https://lists.debian.org/debian-java/2019/05/msg00008.html

> I can only comment on the OpenJDK 11 backport in Stretch since I'm the one who uploaded it last month. Debian 9 "Stretch" is far from being usable with Java 11 (we poured a lot of work into Debian 10 to make this possible) and this backport can only be reasonably seen as a technology preview aimed at gathering feedback.

More at link, but that’s concerning. We’ve been using the “OpenJDK” images but maybe we should look at using a different set of them.

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