Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Java Is Still Free

docs.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 111 posts

Re: Java Is Still Free

#41

Post by pron »

agumonkey wrote: post #35
jillesvangurp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Oracle is continuing to put a lot of R&D resources into Java and is generally not doing a terrible job with nice work around modernizing the language, contributing non trivial innovation around e.g. the Graal project, etc. Like them or not, Oracle is doing a lot of heavy lifting and most of it is released through Openjdk as 100% OSS under the GPL. So, neither IBM nor Red Hat have any big issues with the statu…

Recent effort on the JVM (modules, type system) is indeed significant. Is it all Oracle or a partnership between many groups ?

Mostly Oracle, but with some outside help. Some numbers here: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11...

Re: Java Is Still Free

#42

Post by MaxBarraclough »

threeseed wrote: post #28
mariusmg wrote: post #10

Why don't the bigwigs like RedHat + IBM just fork it already ? Take OpenJDK , GPL the IBM runtime and slap some stupid coffee inspired nickname on it. People will trust that more than they trust Oracle anyway...

Do you honestly write in Java/Scala/Clojure etc ? Because I have never met a single JVM developer who either (a) wants another JVM fork, (b) wants OpenJDK to be undermined or (c) thinks Oracle has been anything other than a pretty great steward of the platform.

Point (c) is changing with this recent kerfuffle, no?

Re: Java Is Still Free

#43

Post by sytelus »

kamaal wrote: post #26

The problem with write ups like these is they send the exact opposite message of what was intended to be sent. Even those people who didn't receive the news, will now hear about this. On the other hand, the entire write up seems to attempt to convince people to keep faith in Oracle. The problem with this kind of talk is you are the mercy of some VP in Oracle, whose one decision could change everything and given the f…

> The only languages that can match that ecosystem are Perl and Python. And may be Javascript.

Nope. Python as well as Perl are pretty slow compared to Java on JVM. To replace Java you need to move to either C# or Go. The key thing would be licensing terms and available frameworks. Smart CIOs with lots of Java baggage in their companies should be investing in transition to C# given the state of things. It would be pretty stupid if you are starting new development on Java at this point.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#44

Post by kamaal »

icebraining wrote: post #40
kamaal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google... . Oracle has sought upward of US$8.8 billion in damages due to the commercial success of the Android system. Nothing wrong with it, of course. If a company wants customers to pay for their products, then they are right. People just need to know before hand, than being sold on it as free, and then asked to pay $XK per installation box a few years down the…

While I don't agree with their tactics, Google was - by their own word - not using Java. This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using OpenJDK/Oracle Java.

>>This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using OpenJDK/Oracle Java.

That depends on how commercially successful your product is. I don't think it would even make logical sense for Oracle to go after every single start up that uses Java.

But lets say tomorrow news came out that a big reason for AWS's success is Java, then all of a sudden you are going to see Oracle want some of that money.

Please note I'm not saying expecting people to pay is necessarily wrong. I'm only saying people need to know what they are signing up for.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#45

Post by unixhero »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #21
the_clarence wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely not the trendy language anymore. We still have a lot of it because of legacy products and a generation trained on it mostly. But new languages are objectively better and getting adopted at a faster rate than ever. What young programer wants to write java nowadays? When you have Golang, Rust, Swift, Python, etc.

> What young programer wants to write java nowadays? One who wants to earn good money working with legacy stuff?

Yes. Can confirm. My now senior java developing friends are now making solid 150k+ at corporate gigs.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#46

Post by kamaal »

sytelus wrote: post #43
kamaal wrote: post #26

The problem with write ups like these is they send the exact opposite message of what was intended to be sent. Even those people who didn't receive the news, will now hear about this. On the other hand, the entire write up seems to attempt to convince people to keep faith in Oracle. The problem with this kind of talk is you are the mercy of some VP in Oracle, whose one decision could change everything and given the f…

> The only languages that can match that ecosystem are Perl and Python. And may be Javascript. Nope. Python as well as Perl are pretty slow compared to Java on JVM. To replace Java you need to move to either C# or Go. The key thing would be licensing terms and available frameworks. Smart CIOs with lots of Java baggage in their companies should be investing in transition to C# given the state of things. It would be pr…

Very interesting to see Go as a choice. On sheer library numbers Go would still come short compared to Perl/Python. But Go's simplicity is actually huge accidental positive.

One of things that I remember from the past is applications used to be developed as giant Monoliths. Which is why you needed all that OO, templates and generics related magic to work with.

These days people don't develop applications that way anymore. Adding to which microservices architecture has taken off really well. People tend to write their binaries as applications that do one thing well.

Go is actually a very practical language for today's everyday work.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#47

Post by [deleted] »

mariusmg wrote: post #10

Why don't the bigwigs like RedHat + IBM just fork it already ? Take OpenJDK , GPL the IBM runtime and slap some stupid coffee inspired nickname on it. People will trust that more than they trust Oracle anyway...

[deleted]

Re: Java Is Still Free

#48

Post by FactolSarin »

pron wrote: post #39
kamaal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google... . Oracle has sought upward of US$8.8 billion in damages due to the commercial success of the Android system. Nothing wrong with it, of course. If a company wants customers to pay for their products, then they are right. People just need to know before hand, than being sold on it as free, and then asked to pay $XK per installation box a few years down the…

BTW, Microsoft has already extracted billions from Android due to litigation or threats of litigation over patents.

Your comment is irrelevant. Besides the fact that other companies like Apple wielded their parents against Android, the big difference is Microsoft's patents weren't open source.

The reason Oracle's behavior is so bad, and raises the question of whether Java is really Free Software anymore, is they sued Google over re-implimenting an ostensibly Open Source language.

And if you want to talk Microsoft, the most relevant thing to the discussion is that .Net Core includes explicit language in it's lisence that allows for re-implimenting it, and in fact despite the whole "Microsoft is evil" meme, they never sued Mono, a re-implimentation of their non-Open Source .Net Framework.

Re: Java Is Still Free

#49

Post by wbl »

sytelus wrote: post #43
kamaal wrote: post #26

The problem with write ups like these is they send the exact opposite message of what was intended to be sent. Even those people who didn't receive the news, will now hear about this. On the other hand, the entire write up seems to attempt to convince people to keep faith in Oracle. The problem with this kind of talk is you are the mercy of some VP in Oracle, whose one decision could change everything and given the f…

> The only languages that can match that ecosystem are Perl and Python. And may be Javascript. Nope. Python as well as Perl are pretty slow compared to Java on JVM. To replace Java you need to move to either C# or Go. The key thing would be licensing terms and available frameworks. Smart CIOs with lots of Java baggage in their companies should be investing in transition to C# given the state of things. It would be pr…

In what world does openJDK stop existing and RedHat or IBM drop Java?

Re: Java Is Still Free

#50

Post by icebraining »

kamaal wrote: post #44
icebraining wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't agree with their tactics, Google was - by their own word - not using Java. This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using OpenJDK/Oracle Java.

>>This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using OpenJDK/Oracle Java. That depends on how commercially successful your product is. I don't think it would even make logical sense for Oracle to go after every single start up that uses Java. But lets say tomorrow news came out that a big reason for AWS's success is Java, then all of a sudden you are going to see Oracle want some of that money. Please note I'm n…

And all I'm saying is that Google was not using Java, they were using an alternative implementation of the same APIs (derived from Apache Harmony). The difference is that using Java™ gives you a license to the copyright and patents (and hence protection from Oracle), whereas using something else does not.
Post reply on HN