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FOSS community (or anyone else for that matter) shouldn't touch anything coming out of Oracle with a bargepole. Given the level of maliciousness, their Open Sou

by jeswin 9y ago

FOSS community (or anyone else for that matter) shouldn't touch anything coming out of Oracle with a bargepole. Given the level of maliciousness, their Open Source work should be considered a minefield.

holydude 9y ago
Yeah yeah lets abandon perfectly usable piece of technology because some john smith from the internet hates oracle.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > Yeah yeah lets abandon perfectly usable piece of technology because some john smith from the internet hates oracle It's doesn't need to be hate, anyone concerned about the well-being of this industry should be wary of being an enabler/complicit. Oracle is actively malicious: remember this is the company that was actively trying to make API's copyrightable[1]. How many APIs do you use in a day do you think such a ruling would have impacted? You wouldn't be able to have drop-in replacement libraries (or web-services). Hell, it would have made it illegal to fork an open source project unless you got the copyright to the API as well. Given a viable choice between an Oracle project and a non-Oracle project, always go for the latter. [1]https://www.computerworld.com/article/2857293/legal/oracle-asks-supreme-court-to-reject-android-copyright-case.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2857293/legal/oracle-a... edit: changed to past tense: I had forgotten the supreme court refused the case, but that just means the argument hasn't been tested in the courts.
  - carterehsmith 9y ago
    >> Given a viable choice between an Oracle project and a non-Oracle project, always go for the latter. Why? Consider VirtualBox, Java, and MySql. Did anyone get in trouble for using these?
    - TheDong 9y ago
      Google infamously got in a ton of trouble for using Java since oracle wanted a slice of that pie. There's a reason the MariaDB fork exists.
      - carterehsmith 9y ago
        >> Google infamously got in a ton of trouble for using Java since oracle wanted a slice of that pie. They sure did, by... being reckless, and possibly stupid. You can use OpenJDK (and bazillions people do), and noone will bother you. But if you get something trademarked "Java", and then change it to your liking, and you still call it "Java", and release it under trademarked name, then you do deserve the lawsuit & c.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Rightly so, after they pulled a Microsoft into Java. Now any Java developer writing libraries is forced to write Android specific versions thanks to how Google forked Java. No 100% support for all JVM bytecodes, so no invokedynamic support. Cherry picked packages and classes from Java 6, 7 and 8. It will only get worse with the current Java roadmap.
        sangnoir 9y ago
        > Now any Java developer writing libraries is forced to write Android specific versions thanks to how Google forked Java. This is inaccurate. The Apache Project (Harmony) forked Java in the Sun days and Sun refused[1] to provide the compatibility tests (JCK) in order to prove that Harmony was Java. Google adopted the pre-forked Apache Harmony because Sun, in its brilliance, decided that J2ME and only J2ME was to be allowed on mobile. Incidentally, Oracle supported Apache Harmony before buying Sun, unsurprisingly Oracle changed their tune when they became custodians of Java and bribed/negotiated with IBM for IBM to recant its support for Harmony. 1. https://www.cnet.com/news/apache-grouses-about-java-compatibility-checker/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apache-grouses-about-java-compatib...
        9y ago
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I am not able to use random Java library from Maven central in Android thanks Google. Thanks Google, only Java libraries written with Android Java in mind do actually work flawlessly in Android. Forcing many of us to have either two versions of a Java library or resort to a common subset. Yeah Google is not malicious at all.
floatboth 9y ago
ex-Sun team != Oracle execs
carterehsmith 9y ago
>> their Open Source work should be considered a minefield.) Well, any license can be a minefield. E.g. FB React had some questionable license... (they changed it) and so on. Indeed, one should check a license before using a product. Meantime, is Oracle that bad? I mean, people have been using VirtualBox, Java (OpenJDK), MySql, MySqlWorkbench, NetBeans, maybe more. All of those provided by Oracle with no fee required, and a liberal license. And, I do not see people being sued by Oracle over those.
jacques_chester 9y ago
I think Oracle's push into cloud is changing their approach. If only because a) Java is still slightly more than half of the enterprise app workload (the rest is .NET), b) those customers like opensource because it gives them options. Right now it's a buyer's market and Oracle are way behind AWS, Azure and GCP, with Alibaba trying to smash through the side door. Which is another thing. Oracle went on a hiring spree and pulled people from the other three willy-nilly. A large fraction of whom will have never really been fans of the classical Oracle way of doing things.

by jeswin 9y ago

holydude 9y ago

Yeah yeah lets abandon perfectly usable piece of technology because some john smith from the internet hates oracle.

sangnoir 9y ago
> Yeah yeah lets abandon perfectly usable piece of technology because some john smith from the internet hates oracle It's doesn't need to be hate, anyone concerned about the well-being of this industry should be wary of being an enabler/complicit. Oracle is actively malicious: remember this is the company that was actively trying to make API's copyrightable[1]. How many APIs do you use in a day do you think such a ruling would have impacted? You wouldn't be able to have drop-in replacement libraries (or web-services). Hell, it would have made it illegal to fork an open source project unless you got the copyright to the API as well. Given a viable choice between an Oracle project and a non-Oracle project, always go for the latter. [1]https://www.computerworld.com/article/2857293/legal/oracle-asks-supreme-court-to-reject-android-copyright-case.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2857293/legal/oracle-a... edit: changed to past tense: I had forgotten the supreme court refused the case, but that just means the argument hasn't been tested in the courts.
- carterehsmith 9y ago
  >> Given a viable choice between an Oracle project and a non-Oracle project, always go for the latter. Why? Consider VirtualBox, Java, and MySql. Did anyone get in trouble for using these?
  - TheDong 9y ago
    Google infamously got in a ton of trouble for using Java since oracle wanted a slice of that pie. There's a reason the MariaDB fork exists.
    - carterehsmith 9y ago
      >> Google infamously got in a ton of trouble for using Java since oracle wanted a slice of that pie. They sure did, by... being reckless, and possibly stupid. You can use OpenJDK (and bazillions people do), and noone will bother you. But if you get something trademarked "Java", and then change it to your liking, and you still call it "Java", and release it under trademarked name, then you do deserve the lawsuit & c.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Rightly so, after they pulled a Microsoft into Java. Now any Java developer writing libraries is forced to write Android specific versions thanks to how Google forked Java. No 100% support for all JVM bytecodes, so no invokedynamic support. Cherry picked packages and classes from Java 6, 7 and 8. It will only get worse with the current Java roadmap.
      - sangnoir 9y ago
        > Now any Java developer writing libraries is forced to write Android specific versions thanks to how Google forked Java. This is inaccurate. The Apache Project (Harmony) forked Java in the Sun days and Sun refused[1] to provide the compatibility tests (JCK) in order to prove that Harmony was Java. Google adopted the pre-forked Apache Harmony because Sun, in its brilliance, decided that J2ME and only J2ME was to be allowed on mobile. Incidentally, Oracle supported Apache Harmony before buying Sun, unsurprisingly Oracle changed their tune when they became custodians of Java and bribed/negotiated with IBM for IBM to recant its support for Harmony. 1. https://www.cnet.com/news/apache-grouses-about-java-compatibility-checker/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apache-grouses-about-java-compatib...
        9y ago
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I am not able to use random Java library from Maven central in Android thanks Google. Thanks Google, only Java libraries written with Android Java in mind do actually work flawlessly in Android. Forcing many of us to have either two versions of a Java library or resort to a common subset. Yeah Google is not malicious at all.

floatboth 9y ago

ex-Sun team != Oracle execs

carterehsmith 9y ago

>> their Open Source work should be considered a minefield.) Well, any license can be a minefield. E.g. FB React had some questionable license... (they changed it) and so on. Indeed, one should check a license before using a product. Meantime, is Oracle that bad? I mean, people have been using VirtualBox, Java (OpenJDK), MySql, MySqlWorkbench, NetBeans, maybe more. All of those provided by Oracle with no fee required, and a liberal license. And, I do not see people being sued by Oracle over those.

jacques_chester 9y ago

I think Oracle's push into cloud is changing their approach. If only because a) Java is still slightly more than half of the enterprise app workload (the rest is .NET), b) those customers like opensource because it gives them options. Right now it's a buyer's market and Oracle are way behind AWS, Azure and GCP, with Alibaba trying to smash through the side door. Which is another thing. Oracle went on a hiring spree and pulled people from the other three willy-nilly. A large fraction of whom will have never really been fans of the classical Oracle way of doing things.