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What worries me is that Red Hat and IBM are handing Oracle the perfect excuse to close up Java on a silver platter. Java 9 is very late in development, it's sc

by amyjess 10y ago

What worries me is that Red Hat and IBM are handing Oracle the perfect excuse to close up Java on a silver platter. Java 9 is very late in development, it's scheduled for release in a month, and it would have already been released by now if Oracle hadn't held it back for additional polish. For Red Hat and IBM to pull this now is a violation of the JCP's spirit, and it makes the entire Java Community Process look bad. It's 100% in bad faith, and it's a huge black eye for the JCP. I wouldn't be surprised one iota if Oracle uses this as an excuse to pull the plug on the JCP and declares that Java will solely be an Oracle product from now on developed solely by Oracle employees without any third-party contributions. Maybe they'll even use the death of the JCP to pull the plug on OpenJDK and make Java 100% proprietary again. Honestly, if Oracle does kill the JCP, I'd be fine with that. I'm just afraid for the future of OpenJDK.

adakbar 10y ago
Purely curious, what if that happen? 100% proprietary, will it do damage to any alternative language that use JVM?
dwaite 10y ago
Without the JCP making Java a "standard" language, Java no longer meets the selection criteria for many government organizations for a programming language. Java is only usable by Oracle to write their own products if they let the JCP die.
virmundi 10y ago
Could the OpenJDK folk just say, "fuck off" and do their own thing? Basically break Java into, I don't know, Fresh Press and Orcalse Brew? All of the old IP made available to OpenJDK and new stuff being their own.
- danarmak 10y ago
  OpenJDK is GPLd, so anyone can fork it or continue development on their own, although they might lose the right to use the trademarked word Java to describe it. But they might not be able to support future Oracle Java versions and features, because Oracle wouldn't release the source for those under a liberal license and would probably sue any clean-room reimplementers under the "copyrighted API" legal theory that they got upheld against Google. The runtime behavior (GC, JIT, etc) would also diverge, since the optimizations, memory layout, etc. are not covered by a spec you can try to implement exactly. Today complex programs often take JVM implementation and optimization details into account (and sometimes can or have to be optimized for particular JVM versions, since e.g. the available GC algorithms have changed several times). Finally, some of those OpenJDK folk are Oracle employees, and they would leave. Even if IBM and RedHat and everyone else united against Oracle, which is uncertain at best (see: IBM's history with Apache Harmony), it would take a lot of new money & effort being poured in just to match Oracle Java development every version. And even if the new free fork was as good as Oracle Java, but not significantly better (technology and/or support wise), the market probably wouldn't shift. Today very many companies run Oracle Java and not OpenJDK Java on their production servers, even though they don't have Oracle support contracts, because there's a perception that Oracle Java is better or more stable. There are various other problems I can imagine. Maybe Oracle isn't obligated to keep providing the TCK for new Java versions to OpenJDK and its descendants. Sun licensed it to OpenJDK, but maybe Oracle could find a way around that, or just stop publishing the TCK at all and make sure it was in practice really hard to be 100% compatible with future Java.
- nradov 10y ago
  Sure they could. But in the long run that fragmentation would be the death of the Java ecosystem. None of the application vendors and open source projects (including alternative JVM languages like Clojure and Scala) would have a viable platform to target anymore. Everything would be perpetually stuck at Java SE 8 or 9 until either one of the major players gains a dominant position, or (more likely) all of the developers and users just gradually migrate to other platforms.
  - wbillingsley 10y ago
    Scala already has JS and native targets. JVM is no longer the only game in town.
- geodel 10y ago
  Oracle employees or affiliates are biggest contributors to OpenJDK without them OpenJDK will become a dead project.

by amyjess 10y ago

adakbar 10y ago

Purely curious, what if that happen? 100% proprietary, will it do damage to any alternative language that use JVM?

dwaite 10y ago

Without the JCP making Java a "standard" language, Java no longer meets the selection criteria for many government organizations for a programming language. Java is only usable by Oracle to write their own products if they let the JCP die.

virmundi 10y ago

Could the OpenJDK folk just say, "fuck off" and do their own thing? Basically break Java into, I don't know, Fresh Press and Orcalse Brew? All of the old IP made available to OpenJDK and new stuff being their own.

danarmak 10y ago
OpenJDK is GPLd, so anyone can fork it or continue development on their own, although they might lose the right to use the trademarked word Java to describe it. But they might not be able to support future Oracle Java versions and features, because Oracle wouldn't release the source for those under a liberal license and would probably sue any clean-room reimplementers under the "copyrighted API" legal theory that they got upheld against Google. The runtime behavior (GC, JIT, etc) would also diverge, since the optimizations, memory layout, etc. are not covered by a spec you can try to implement exactly. Today complex programs often take JVM implementation and optimization details into account (and sometimes can or have to be optimized for particular JVM versions, since e.g. the available GC algorithms have changed several times). Finally, some of those OpenJDK folk are Oracle employees, and they would leave. Even if IBM and RedHat and everyone else united against Oracle, which is uncertain at best (see: IBM's history with Apache Harmony), it would take a lot of new money & effort being poured in just to match Oracle Java development every version. And even if the new free fork was as good as Oracle Java, but not significantly better (technology and/or support wise), the market probably wouldn't shift. Today very many companies run Oracle Java and not OpenJDK Java on their production servers, even though they don't have Oracle support contracts, because there's a perception that Oracle Java is better or more stable. There are various other problems I can imagine. Maybe Oracle isn't obligated to keep providing the TCK for new Java versions to OpenJDK and its descendants. Sun licensed it to OpenJDK, but maybe Oracle could find a way around that, or just stop publishing the TCK at all and make sure it was in practice really hard to be 100% compatible with future Java.
nradov 10y ago
Sure they could. But in the long run that fragmentation would be the death of the Java ecosystem. None of the application vendors and open source projects (including alternative JVM languages like Clojure and Scala) would have a viable platform to target anymore. Everything would be perpetually stuck at Java SE 8 or 9 until either one of the major players gains a dominant position, or (more likely) all of the developers and users just gradually migrate to other platforms.
- wbillingsley 10y ago
  Scala already has JS and native targets. JVM is no longer the only game in town.
geodel 10y ago
Oracle employees or affiliates are biggest contributors to OpenJDK without them OpenJDK will become a dead project.