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Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

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Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#91

Post by super_mario »

georgewfraser wrote: post #2

Why would a company pay for "commercial support" of OpenJDK from IBM? I have used Java for 15 years and I don't know what "support" for a JDK would mean.

Every once in a while you hit a JDK bug that you cannot work around. You post a bug to Oracle (Sun in the past) and find out it's a duplicate that has been sitting around for years unfixed.

If you have paid support, a small team of engineers will dedicate their time to fix the bug for you and provide you with a patch, so you can move on. The patch can sometimes be specific for your platform and situation.

This is particularly true if you are stuck with older JDK version and cannot move forward for various reasons.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#92

Post by vesak »

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…

> Actually, time to look beyond the whole Java ecosystem.

So why not Unix instead of *VM? It's been stable for quite some time, and offers massively better tools than these two alternatives.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#93

Post by carlosrg »

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…

The .NET ecosystem is minuscule compared to Java, especially when it comes to alternative languages running on the virtual machine. So no, for a lot of people it's not a real alternative.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#94

Post by kodablah »

brabel wrote: post #44
kodablah wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it's no coincidence that, as Oracle removes differences between its JDK and OpenJDK, that they are throwing their weight behind this non-community project, with an enterprise version. Between sunsetting community owned Nashorn in favor of Graal solution to giving tools to OpenJDK presumably with fewer of their own maintainers, the resource shift is clear. Not that it's wrong or even nefarious, but devs need to…

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.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#95

Post by fulafel »

threeseed wrote: post #69
flurdy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently primarily on the JDK . But enough abstraction to migrate. Scala, for example, has a mature scala.js VM and an emerging Scala Native VM. [1] http://www.scala-js.org [2] http://www.scala-native.org

I do a lot of development in ScalaJS. And what you are talking about is just ridiculous. There are very few real world (if any) Scala projects that don't rely on least some Java based libraries. Either directly or through transitive dependencies.

If it's anything like Clojure/ClojureScript, the port would require work but be straightforward in most cases. Many people already use ClojureScript on Node instead of JVM Clojure. If you rely on JVM-only libraries for your core domain functionality, things become harder of course.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#96

Post by kweks »

village-idiot wrote: post #88
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…

IIRC, if Oracle declines to protect its IP because you’re not worthy of suing yet, then they actually weaken their legal ownership of the IP.

The legal area you are probably referring to is trademark law. If you do not defend a trademark, the mark risks becoming diluted, and is open to overturn. ( https://secureyourtrademark.com/blog/trademark-101-can-lose-... ) Patents do not lose their validity if undefended.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#97

Post by chrisseaton »

kodablah wrote: post #90
chrisseaton wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this non-community project What do you mean by non-community? Graal is developed by a large community of people at Oracle, other companies and universities.

> What do you mean by non-community? Who owns it. Sure, we all use stuff owned by large companies, we just have to pick and choose, and I avoid Oracle. As a dev community I wish we could avoid wholly owned Oracle software to make a statement about their business practices, but I understand that stance is unreasonable for many.

That's a reasonable stance, but I thought you were comparing it to OpenJDK. I don't think Graal is any less community than OpenJDK. Similar people (RedHat, AMD, Intel, many universities) contribute to Graal in the same way they contribute to OpenJDK. I suppose there isn't a formal community process for Graal?

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#98

Post by village-idiot »

kweks wrote: post #96
village-idiot wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, if Oracle declines to protect its IP because you’re not worthy of suing yet, then they actually weaken their legal ownership of the IP.

The legal area you are probably referring to is trademark law. If you do not defend a trademark, the mark risks becoming diluted, and is open to overturn. ( https://secureyourtrademark.com/blog/trademark-101-can-lose-... ) Patents do not lose their validity if undefended.

What about copyright? I believe the Java API issue was about copyright.

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#99

Post by ptx »

coldtea wrote: post #71
jsiepkes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Its only been a couple of years that Microsoft has been behaving "better" So? Oracle has never behaved good, so there's that. Do you expect a MS regression? Besides MS has made some concrete efforts to clear things, like a pledge to not sue over patents, an ECMA standard, etc. > I suggest you read up on the history of Java, Android, Google and Microsoft because you also seem to be unaware what Android Oracle vs Goo…

Microsoft's pledge not to sue [1] covers only compliant implementations of specific versions of some of the components. Since Android, for example, could be considered non-compliant (with the Java specification), they wouldn't necessarily have been covered if they had based it in the same way on .NET instead. Even if they were, there would likely still have been issues with the parts that aren't listed as covered by the pledge.

On top of that, while the promise mentions "Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents" it is very specific about who is promising not to sue - Microsoft only, not its partners, subsidiaries or other affiliated entities. So they still have plenty of room to arrange for opponents to be sued.

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecifications/dn646765

Re: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

#100

Post by jpalomaki »

oldpond wrote: post #86
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…

I agree Java is dying, but so is .Net. Microsoft is trying it's best, but .Net Core is no where near as popular as .Net 3.5. (google trends). Embrace the Beam. :)

My feeling is that .NET core is just starting to gather steam. I think it took some time before developers understood what was happening (and probably still quite many .NET developers could not describe the differences).

This Google Trends search shows .NET Core as leading since February 2017 [1]

[1] https://trends.google.fi/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=....

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