6 ms·

Analysts: Oracle vs. Google May Hurt Future of Java as Dev Platform

31 points by msredmond 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago
Gee, you think?
- spooneybarger 16y ago
  Even "obvious" articles need to be written because there are many people out there for whom, they aren't obvious.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    i.e investors
    - Zak 16y ago
      Investors who can't see that suing people who use your technology might reduce the popularity of said technology should probably not be investing in technology. As Warren Buffett says: invest in what you know.
      - ig1 16y ago
        Suing people who use your technology without licensing it is typically a net positive. Hence it needs to be pointed out why that isn't the case here.
gamble 16y ago
Maybe with open-source developers, but not with Java's corporate bread-and-butter. They might actually like the warm security blanket provided by purchasing official Java licenses, support contracts, certifications, etc that Sun wasn't quite corporatey enough to provide.
auxbuss 16y ago
Of course, Oracle's action threatens what we know as Sun's Java. Indeed, it kills Java ME stone dead. But it was dead a couple of years ago. So no loss there. However, I'm not clear how this affects Android, since Android is not Java. When I code Android I 'feel' like I'm coding Java, because the syntax is the same. But I'm not running Java. I know that, and I feel that. So, if Oracle want to attack Java, or protect its patents, take your pick, I say: knock yourself out. Here in Android world, it's no concern of mine as I'm not using Java. Attacking Java isn't an attack on Android development. Although that appears to be what Oracle thinks it is doing.
- alec 16y ago
  My reaction was the opposite. They're not going after people who use their Java implementation or OpenJDK, they're going after the distributors of an alternate implementation of something like Java that is infringing on the patents related to language implementation. Oracle's (formerly Sun's) Java versions, including ME and EE, still look safe.
ig1 16y ago
Java is practically dead in the water now. Oracle will be lucky if their database product doesn't get badly damaged. The best developers at Sun were already leaving, with this ? - if I was a recruiter I'd be outside their offices on monday handing out flyers. Oracle has committed seppuku. They simply won't be able to hire good developers any more, they've horribly tainted their brand. For the next 3-5 years while the lawsuit goes on they're going to be the SCO of the developer world. No decent developer is going to want to touch them. Any time one of their developers introduces themselves as "I work as a developer for Oracle" to another developer at a party, conference, meetup etc. what do you think the topic of conversation is going to be ? Once software development companies are no-longer able to hire the best developers there's only one direction for the company to go in.
- swilliams 16y ago
  I dunno, there was already a stereotype (maybe even of stigma) of working at Oracle. I've always held the notion that they cared more about selling their products than developing them. It's not like super talented hackers were beating down the door to work there already (with maybe the exception of their core database team).
- gamble 16y ago
  If Oracle was worried about looking evil, they've had thirty years to come to their senses. If their employees are concerned about working for an evil company, they haven't been paying attention.
- diego_moita 16y ago
  Bad reputations don't hurt anyone in this business. Up until the 90's no other company had a bully reputation as bad as IBM (e.g.: their Hollerith machines were used by Hitler to control who was going to the gas chambers). But still, no other company in the world has attracted so many bright minds (Jon Von Neuman, John Backus, Ted Cobb, etc), got so many Nobel prizes or made so many important technological achievements.
  - ig1 16y ago
whyenot 16y ago
What I wonder is, long term, how does Oracle's willingness to pursue lawsuits like this affect the adoption of other JVM languages like Scala, Clojure, Jython, etc. If you were contemplating starting a new project using Clojure, for instance, would this lawsuit give you pause? I think I would worry about it, at least a little.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- cemerick 16y ago
  Why, exactly? Will the impact (if any) on android change those languages? I can't see how. Those fretting about "Oracle's stewardship of Java" all need to take a breath. Honestly, things can't be worse than they were under Sun -- except perhaps in the eyes of those that make platform decisions based on the patent-management policies of multinational corporations. If FUD or "morale" or "community" is the chief concern for others, then they've forgotten the lessons of Java's history: i.e. the shit keeps hitting the fan in different ways, yet code running on JVMs is everywhere, and that'll continue to be the case for decades. Anyway, I honestly can't see how this has any bearing on "userspace" as it were. If I were a VM vendor, I'd be very concerned, but application and library developers would seem to be entirely unaffected by the suit.
  - DougBTX 16y ago
    > Why, exactly? Imagine you are developing a new language to run on the JVM, and it turns out that to get a 10x performance improvement, it would be really great to have this new bytecode instruction added to the JVM. To get it into every JVM, you would have to go through Oracle anyway, so nothing changes there. But if you wanted to distribute your own variation, a hypothetical openJVM+, Oracle is saying that they may well go after you with patent suits. Good for people happy with the current JVM, looking for stability. Bad for people wanting to bring innovations to the JVM without explicit consent from Oracle.
    - cemerick 16y ago
technomancy 16y ago
I've been thinking an openJDK fork would be inevitable ever since the Sun acquisiton was announced. The one upside to this announcement is it may just accelerate the fork by making Oracle's hostility to free software more obvious. The community should be able to get the JVM moving forward again.
- tzs 16y ago
  What would be the point of a fork? If the fork subsets or supersets Java, or if it fails to comply to the Java specification, I believe that Sun's patent promise does not apply, and so the fork would be vulnerable to Oracle patent suits.
  - hga 16y ago
    And you can't prove compliance without getting a JTCK license from ... Oracle. Which Sun wasn't very interested in supplying to the Apache Harmony project, and when I checked into the terms a few months ago they're still very restrictive. Basically if you aren't furthering openJDK, forget it.
Hoff 16y ago
Depending on the outcome of the negotiations, Google (and somewhat less directly, the telcos and end-users) will have clearly taken hit points against a critical part of the Android stack. A discussion of vertical integration and competition and of maintaining control over the key parts of the product stacks, of managing outside dependencies, of Adobe, and of Google and J2ME, from a few months back: http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-is-a-genius-control-freak-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-is-a-genius-contro... And what Oracle might seek in return here will be interesting. Buckets of money would be the most obvious, but Oracle can also play a much longer game.
sliverstorm 16y ago
That would be just dandy. I wonder how many decades school will continue teaching Java after it has truly and finally become obsolete?
jdc 16y ago
Is anyone else's reaction to the situation: "Oracle is dispensable"?
- hga 16y ago
  Well, not any time soon (the Java/JVM ecosystem is too big, too rich). But in the long term, at the moment I agree with this observation in the article which captures the most relevant and important issue for me: Forrester Research analyst John Rymer agrees [ this will have a chilling effect on developers ]: "I think this lawsuit casts the die on Java’s future," he said. "It will become a slow-evolving legacy technology. Oracle’s lawsuit links deep innovation in Java with license fees, and that will kill deep innovation in Java by anyone outside Oracle or startups hoping to sell out to Oracle. Software innovation just doesn’t do well in the kind of environment Oracle just created." "Deep innovation" in e.g. JVM GC for functional languages (Clojure) is exactly the sort of thing I'm interested in ... and that's now at best on hold while I get a better grasp of this mess and its implications. But the real scope of the implications probably won't become clear for years and I'm certainly not going to wait that long.
contol-m 16y ago
I'm wondering if the lawsuit has anything to do with Apple. Ellison and Jobs are best friends, as far as I know.
mkramlich 16y ago
Just the latest event to make the LNPP/LNPR stack more attractive. (Linux, Nginx, PostgreSQL, Python/Ruby)
matrix 16y ago
For me, the big question is: where does all this leave IBM? IBM has a huge investment in Java, but now Oracle has made it clear that they're not going to play nice. The senior guys at IBM have to be thinking long and hard about that...
sabat 16y ago
Oracle vs. Google May Hurt Future of Java as Dev Platform Maybe that's not such a bad thing.
imasr 16y ago
Does anyone think Google didn't plan for this? Isn't this a great excuse to displace Java and use their own language? I'm already scared.

31 points by msredmond 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago

Gee, you think?

spooneybarger 16y ago
Even "obvious" articles need to be written because there are many people out there for whom, they aren't obvious.
- krschultz 16y ago
  i.e investors
  - Zak 16y ago
    Investors who can't see that suing people who use your technology might reduce the popularity of said technology should probably not be investing in technology. As Warren Buffett says: invest in what you know.
    - ig1 16y ago
      Suing people who use your technology without licensing it is typically a net positive. Hence it needs to be pointed out why that isn't the case here.

gamble 16y ago

Maybe with open-source developers, but not with Java's corporate bread-and-butter. They might actually like the warm security blanket provided by purchasing official Java licenses, support contracts, certifications, etc that Sun wasn't quite corporatey enough to provide.

auxbuss 16y ago

Of course, Oracle's action threatens what we know as Sun's Java. Indeed, it kills Java ME stone dead. But it was dead a couple of years ago. So no loss there. However, I'm not clear how this affects Android, since Android is not Java. When I code Android I 'feel' like I'm coding Java, because the syntax is the same. But I'm not running Java. I know that, and I feel that. So, if Oracle want to attack Java, or protect its patents, take your pick, I say: knock yourself out. Here in Android world, it's no concern of mine as I'm not using Java. Attacking Java isn't an attack on Android development. Although that appears to be what Oracle thinks it is doing.

alec 16y ago
My reaction was the opposite. They're not going after people who use their Java implementation or OpenJDK, they're going after the distributors of an alternate implementation of something like Java that is infringing on the patents related to language implementation. Oracle's (formerly Sun's) Java versions, including ME and EE, still look safe.

ig1 16y ago

Java is practically dead in the water now. Oracle will be lucky if their database product doesn't get badly damaged. The best developers at Sun were already leaving, with this ? - if I was a recruiter I'd be outside their offices on monday handing out flyers. Oracle has committed seppuku. They simply won't be able to hire good developers any more, they've horribly tainted their brand. For the next 3-5 years while the lawsuit goes on they're going to be the SCO of the developer world. No decent developer is going to want to touch them. Any time one of their developers introduces themselves as "I work as a developer for Oracle" to another developer at a party, conference, meetup etc. what do you think the topic of conversation is going to be ? Once software development companies are no-longer able to hire the best developers there's only one direction for the company to go in.

swilliams 16y ago
I dunno, there was already a stereotype (maybe even of stigma) of working at Oracle. I've always held the notion that they cared more about selling their products than developing them. It's not like super talented hackers were beating down the door to work there already (with maybe the exception of their core database team).
gamble 16y ago
If Oracle was worried about looking evil, they've had thirty years to come to their senses. If their employees are concerned about working for an evil company, they haven't been paying attention.
diego_moita 16y ago
Bad reputations don't hurt anyone in this business. Up until the 90's no other company had a bully reputation as bad as IBM (e.g.: their Hollerith machines were used by Hitler to control who was going to the gas chambers). But still, no other company in the world has attracted so many bright minds (Jon Von Neuman, John Backus, Ted Cobb, etc), got so many Nobel prizes or made so many important technological achievements.
- ig1 16y ago

whyenot 16y ago

What I wonder is, long term, how does Oracle's willingness to pursue lawsuits like this affect the adoption of other JVM languages like Scala, Clojure, Jython, etc. If you were contemplating starting a new project using Clojure, for instance, would this lawsuit give you pause? I think I would worry about it, at least a little.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
cemerick 16y ago
Why, exactly? Will the impact (if any) on android change those languages? I can't see how. Those fretting about "Oracle's stewardship of Java" all need to take a breath. Honestly, things can't be worse than they were under Sun -- except perhaps in the eyes of those that make platform decisions based on the patent-management policies of multinational corporations. If FUD or "morale" or "community" is the chief concern for others, then they've forgotten the lessons of Java's history: i.e. the shit keeps hitting the fan in different ways, yet code running on JVMs is everywhere, and that'll continue to be the case for decades. Anyway, I honestly can't see how this has any bearing on "userspace" as it were. If I were a VM vendor, I'd be very concerned, but application and library developers would seem to be entirely unaffected by the suit.
- DougBTX 16y ago
  > Why, exactly? Imagine you are developing a new language to run on the JVM, and it turns out that to get a 10x performance improvement, it would be really great to have this new bytecode instruction added to the JVM. To get it into every JVM, you would have to go through Oracle anyway, so nothing changes there. But if you wanted to distribute your own variation, a hypothetical openJVM+, Oracle is saying that they may well go after you with patent suits. Good for people happy with the current JVM, looking for stability. Bad for people wanting to bring innovations to the JVM without explicit consent from Oracle.
  - cemerick 16y ago

technomancy 16y ago

I've been thinking an openJDK fork would be inevitable ever since the Sun acquisiton was announced. The one upside to this announcement is it may just accelerate the fork by making Oracle's hostility to free software more obvious. The community should be able to get the JVM moving forward again.

tzs 16y ago
What would be the point of a fork? If the fork subsets or supersets Java, or if it fails to comply to the Java specification, I believe that Sun's patent promise does not apply, and so the fork would be vulnerable to Oracle patent suits.
- hga 16y ago
  And you can't prove compliance without getting a JTCK license from ... Oracle. Which Sun wasn't very interested in supplying to the Apache Harmony project, and when I checked into the terms a few months ago they're still very restrictive. Basically if you aren't furthering openJDK, forget it.

Hoff 16y ago

Depending on the outcome of the negotiations, Google (and somewhat less directly, the telcos and end-users) will have clearly taken hit points against a critical part of the Android stack. A discussion of vertical integration and competition and of maintaining control over the key parts of the product stacks, of managing outside dependencies, of Adobe, and of Google and J2ME, from a few months back: http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-is-a-genius-control-freak-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-is-a-genius-contro... And what Oracle might seek in return here will be interesting. Buckets of money would be the most obvious, but Oracle can also play a much longer game.

sliverstorm 16y ago

That would be just dandy. I wonder how many decades school will continue teaching Java after it has truly and finally become obsolete?

jdc 16y ago

Is anyone else's reaction to the situation: "Oracle is dispensable"?

hga 16y ago
Well, not any time soon (the Java/JVM ecosystem is too big, too rich). But in the long term, at the moment I agree with this observation in the article which captures the most relevant and important issue for me: Forrester Research analyst John Rymer agrees [ this will have a chilling effect on developers ]: "I think this lawsuit casts the die on Java’s future," he said. "It will become a slow-evolving legacy technology. Oracle’s lawsuit links deep innovation in Java with license fees, and that will kill deep innovation in Java by anyone outside Oracle or startups hoping to sell out to Oracle. Software innovation just doesn’t do well in the kind of environment Oracle just created." "Deep innovation" in e.g. JVM GC for functional languages (Clojure) is exactly the sort of thing I'm interested in ... and that's now at best on hold while I get a better grasp of this mess and its implications. But the real scope of the implications probably won't become clear for years and I'm certainly not going to wait that long.

contol-m 16y ago

I'm wondering if the lawsuit has anything to do with Apple. Ellison and Jobs are best friends, as far as I know.

mkramlich 16y ago

Just the latest event to make the LNPP/LNPR stack more attractive. (Linux, Nginx, PostgreSQL, Python/Ruby)

matrix 16y ago

For me, the big question is: where does all this leave IBM? IBM has a huge investment in Java, but now Oracle has made it clear that they're not going to play nice. The senior guys at IBM have to be thinking long and hard about that...

sabat 16y ago

Oracle vs. Google May Hurt Future of Java as Dev Platform Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

imasr 16y ago

Does anyone think Google didn't plan for this? Isn't this a great excuse to displace Java and use their own language? I'm already scared.