Java Is Still Free • Hacker News Board

Re: Java Is Still Free

#101

Post by mr_overalls » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

teilo wrote: post #98

petetnt wrote: post #75

Honestly, if you need a third-party to explain your scheme with a 6000-word, 20 page document there might be some sort of issues with your scheme.

Welcome to Oracle. They make their money off of taking simple things and making them extraordinarily complicated. The JDK is no exception. I tried using nothing but the Oracle website to determine what the terms of usage are, and what the cost would be. It's confusing, buried many levels deep, in multiple documents in different places. They use the term "processors" to refer to how 11 is licensed. They give you a per…

> They make their money off of taking simple things and making them extraordinarily complicated.

And then extorting money from your company via the threat of lawsuits if, speaking purely hypothetically, your company is determined - because of said processor-vs-cores distinction - to be out-of-bounds on the number of installed databases during an audit.

Oracle has all of the ethics and humanity of a lawnmower.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246

Re: Java Is Still Free

#102

Post by curt15 » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #68

curt15 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So no open-source software was the subject of the lawsuit. But doesn't the lawsuit effectively outlaw Apache Harmony, and more generally the practice of reimplementing APIs?

No, it does not. The ruling was that APIs (at least actual APIs, not web "APIs") fall under copyright, but that does not mean you cannot use copyrighted material even without a license or outside its terms. It was ruled that Google (in particular) did not use the APIs in one of the "fair use" ways (e.g. it did not pursue interoperability). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...

Android was derived from Apache Harmony. Nothing in the terms of the Apache license would prohibit what Google did with Android.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#103

Post by pron » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

curt15 wrote: post #102

pron wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it does not. The ruling was that APIs (at least actual APIs, not web "APIs") fall under copyright, but that does not mean you cannot use copyrighted material even without a license or outside its terms. It was ruled that Google (in particular) did not use the APIs in one of the "fair use" ways (e.g. it did not pursue interoperability). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...

Android was derived from Apache Harmony. Nothing in the terms of the Apache license would prohibit what Google did with Android.

You can only license what you own. As the court ruled that Oracle owns the copyright on the Java APIs, it is not enough to follow the terms of the Apache license, but also of the Oracle license. The APIs were released under two licenses (relevant to Android) -- GPL and a commercial one. Google chose neither. At that point, you are still free to use the APIs just under Harmony's license, provided that your use is fair use of the Oracle-copyrighted code. The court ruled that Google's use was not fair use, as it met none of the conditions required (e.g. it was not meant to be interoperable with the Java APIs). So this does not mean that Harmony is in violation, only that Android's particular use of Harmony is. In fact, Harmony very likely is fair use because, unlike Android, it is intended for interop.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#104

Post by teilo » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

mr_overalls wrote: post #101

teilo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to Oracle. They make their money off of taking simple things and making them extraordinarily complicated. The JDK is no exception. I tried using nothing but the Oracle website to determine what the terms of usage are, and what the cost would be. It's confusing, buried many levels deep, in multiple documents in different places. They use the term "processors" to refer to how 11 is licensed. They give you a per…

> They make their money off of taking simple things and making them extraordinarily complicated. And then extorting money from your company via the threat of lawsuits if, speaking purely hypothetically, your company is determined - because of said processor-vs-cores distinction - to be out-of-bounds on the number of installed databases during an audit. Oracle has all of the ethics and humanity of a lawnmower. https:/…

The only inroad Oracle has made into my company has been EssBase (a component of their Hyperion platform), and we run that against MSSQL. They keep calling, hoping for more.

Last time I told the salesperson: "I will not bring any more Oracle products into my company for the simple reason that Larry Ellison is an asshole who is hostile to his customers." The response? "Yeah, I get that a lot."

Honestly, I felt sorry for the guy.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#105

Post by Oowee1Ee » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

petetnt wrote: post #75

Honestly, if you need a third-party to explain your scheme with a 6000-word, 20 page document there might be some sort of issues with your scheme.

That 20 page document is most likely needed to counter FUD on the management level, not to inform developers.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#106

Post by guitarbill » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #65

guitarbill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's more to it than that. let's take C#, as i find that interesting and a bit sad. C# had what seemed like huge mindshare around the 2.0 era. great tooling, sane language, great developer experience. of course it helped that Windows was still huge. now? it still exists, but i'm happy to bet it will never become that big again for various reasons (windows only for a long time, still windows-centric, sucky webdev +…

C# is still the sanest default choice for any Windows desktop app. And the web stack has only gotten better since 2.0 days, especially with .NET Core. And all the "enterprise" stuff never went away, either. Never become as big again? It's way bigger than it was back then.

you're probably right, and i'm not here to bash C#, just to show what can happen to a healthy language when external things are occurring in the meantime.

C# 2.0 was released around nov 2005. even with two solid years of use, that's 2008, and means i haven't touched windows in almost 10 years professionally! coincidentally, intel macs were released jan 2006, and vista was 2007.

those same enterprise customers that wanted desktop apps started wanting web-based tools, for mostly good reasons. developers, especially web devs and designers started using macbooks. virtualisation, containers, etc. all came from linux/bsd, and that showed for a long time.

but hey, who knows. maybe they'll magically fix all the issues with windows 10, regain people's trust especially w.r.t. to updates, captialise on Apple's hardware weakness (if you see it that way), make .NET and GUIs with .NET first-class citizens on other OS', then maybe?

Re: Java Is Still Free

#107

Post by guitarbill » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #37

guitarbill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's more to it than that. let's take C#, as i find that interesting and a bit sad. C# had what seemed like huge mindshare around the 2.0 era. great tooling, sane language, great developer experience. of course it helped that Windows was still huge. now? it still exists, but i'm happy to bet it will never become that big again for various reasons (windows only for a long time, still windows-centric, sucky webdev +…

Reading your comment is honestly like going back in time. Where are these client side Java apps ? I haven't seen one in the wild for years.

minecraft? all of jetbrains' IDEs? but yeah, i struggled to name even those.

actually, the minecraft modding community is awesome, and they are doing some really great stuff. including amazing GUIs (inside minecraft, but still).

Re: Java Is Still Free

#108

Post by vorg » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

guitarbill wrote: post #30

maltalex wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is original Java still alive? That's the question. Yes. Very much so. It's either the top or one of the top languages in pretty much every benchmark: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#technology https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://githut.info/

there's more to it than that. let's take C#, as i find that interesting and a bit sad. C# had what seemed like huge mindshare around the 2.0 era. great tooling, sane language, great developer experience. of course it helped that Windows was still huge. now? it still exists, but i'm happy to bet it will never become that big again for various reasons (windows only for a long time, still windows-centric, sucky webdev +…

> groovy, scala, clojure, and kotlin injected some cool ideas, but might have done more harm by cannibalizing the community and proving that just because it runs on the JVM doesn't make it great

1. Apache Groovy gave people closures and builders on the JVM but at the cost of static type checking, and developers happily embraced it.

2. Then Scala came along and showed you could have closures without losing the static type checking, so many developers moved there instead.

3. Then Clojure came and brought closures to the JVM and lost the syntax, but no-one embraced it.

4. Then Kotlin came and showed you could have both closures and builders on the JVM without losing the static typing, and it's now everyone's favorite.

5. Finally, Java bolted on closures and Groovy and Clojure bolted on static typing annotations, but who's using them?

Re: Java Is Still Free

#109

Post by int_19h » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

guitarbill wrote: post #106

int_19h wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C# is still the sanest default choice for any Windows desktop app. And the web stack has only gotten better since 2.0 days, especially with .NET Core. And all the "enterprise" stuff never went away, either. Never become as big again? It's way bigger than it was back then.

you're probably right, and i'm not here to bash C#, just to show what can happen to a healthy language when external things are occurring in the meantime. C# 2.0 was released around nov 2005. even with two solid years of use, that's 2008, and means i haven't touched windows in almost 10 years professionally! coincidentally, intel macs were released jan 2006, and vista was 2007. those same enterprise customers that wa…

.NET Core runs happily on Linux and macOS - that's kinda why it was such a big deal.

Ditto Visual Studio Code.

Things have... changed in the Microsoft ecosystem since 2008, let me put it this way.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#110

Post by lmm » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 9:27 AM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #88

lmm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed that you will be arbitrarily denied the ability to actually run those tests if you're trying to make a true open source implementation - see Apache Harmony.

That is old news, do you have an uptodate link?

What's changed? There still isn't an independent implementation of Java, Harmony is still shut down because they were arbitrarily denied a TCK license.