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I don’t understand the backlash for this. It seems people do react without investigating the issue when they hear Oracle name. What it is really happening is r

by 0xFFC 8y ago

I don’t understand the backlash for this. It seems people do react without investigating the issue when they hear Oracle name. What it is really happening is really simple. And I think acceptable approach. Think about how redhat company controls Redhat (distribution) and Fedora. Fedora is free. It will get updated. Redhat (company) is the real power behind Fedora. But it does not have any enterprise support. You want enterprise support, buy Redhat subscription. And it is not like Fedora does not get security update. It gets and it is very effective. The same relation is going to happen with Oracle Java SE and OpenJDK. Openjdk is free. It will get updated. Oracle is the real power behind Openjdk. But it does not have any enterprise support. You want enterprise support, buy OracleJdk subscription. And it is not like Openjdk does not get security update. It gets and it is very effective.

jcadam 8y ago
I hope you're right, that the current situation for OpenJDK users remains basically unchanged. I pretty much stick to OpenJDK these days, anyway. There used to be a lot of compatibility issues between the 'official' Sun/Oracle JDK and OpenJDK, but those seem to have been ironed out as of JDK8.
the_grue 8y ago
This is not about enterprise support. It's about security fixes and bugfixes. If you're a business, you will have to pay for these fixes or roll with their 6-months release cycle. Selling security fixes is quite unprecedented for a project of this scale. Furthermore, it emphasizes Oracle's power over its users, and let's not forget that these users are sometimes as big or bigger as Oracle itself (IBM and Google to name a couple). So they could potentially organize and take over stewardship of the project to ensure that no drastic changes of this sort will ever happen again. I don't see any reason not to. As far as I can tell, the reason Oracle is the sole maintainer of Java is mainly historical (Sun legacy) and because no one felt an urge to do anything about it before. I'm sure it's going to change now.
- 0xFFC 8y ago
  >If you're a business, you will have to pay for these fixes or roll with their 6-months release cycle. Or you can use Openjdk.
  - dwaite 8y ago
    If you are willing to support yourself, you can use OpenJDK. If you want to rely on a third party vendor (paid or free like a linux/BSD distribution) to stay on top of bugs and release patched versions, they'll likely use OpenJDK. This isn't the slimy Oracle play. That will be when they stop releasing bug fixes in advance into OpenJDK, and do so without any back ports, backing information or tests (see: MySQL)
- peoplewindow 8y ago
  How is selling security fixes unprecedented? That's basically the entire Red Hat business model in the early years - yes the fixes are "free" if you want to spend all your time downloading and recompiling software, or you can buy RHEL and get a steady stream of backported fixes to your server for years. But it'll cost you. As far as I can tell, the reason Oracle is the sole maintainer of Java is mainly historical (Sun legacy) and because no one felt an urge to do anything about it before. I'm sure it's going to change now. Why? Neither Google nor IBM particularly require Java bug fixes from Oracle. Google maintains an in-house OpenJDK already and IBM actually maintains an entirely separate JVM. Also Google is hardly famous for its long term commitment to stable APIs and old versions of software, quite the opposite. It doesn't make much sense for a company to pay for the expensive work of finding, fixing and backporting bug fixes to years old software .... all for free.
  - the_grue 8y ago
    > or you can buy RHEL Or use CentOS. Oh wait, that's exactly what tens or hundreds of thousands of small businesses did and keep doing even today. Besides, that's not even a good comparison - Red Hat Linux was and is mainly about packaging other vendors' software, as opposed to Java, which is a monolithic piece of software developed as a single project. > Google maintains an in-house OpenJDK Didn't know that. How can they do that while keeping compatibility with Oracle's OpenJDK? Well, this information just reinforces my point, actually. Google is already in position to ditch Oracle as an upstream and unite with other parties to build a new foundation for open-source Java. > Google is hardly famous for its long term commitment to stable APIs and old versions of software Nobody likes to use other people's buggy code. I think you are mixing up two different things. Google does iterate their own software at a fast pace, but that doesn't mean it doesn't want the underlying infrastructure to be as stable as possible.

by 0xFFC 8y ago

jcadam 8y ago

I hope you're right, that the current situation for OpenJDK users remains basically unchanged. I pretty much stick to OpenJDK these days, anyway. There used to be a lot of compatibility issues between the 'official' Sun/Oracle JDK and OpenJDK, but those seem to have been ironed out as of JDK8.

the_grue 8y ago

This is not about enterprise support. It's about security fixes and bugfixes. If you're a business, you will have to pay for these fixes or roll with their 6-months release cycle. Selling security fixes is quite unprecedented for a project of this scale. Furthermore, it emphasizes Oracle's power over its users, and let's not forget that these users are sometimes as big or bigger as Oracle itself (IBM and Google to name a couple). So they could potentially organize and take over stewardship of the project to ensure that no drastic changes of this sort will ever happen again. I don't see any reason not to. As far as I can tell, the reason Oracle is the sole maintainer of Java is mainly historical (Sun legacy) and because no one felt an urge to do anything about it before. I'm sure it's going to change now.

0xFFC 8y ago
>If you're a business, you will have to pay for these fixes or roll with their 6-months release cycle. Or you can use Openjdk.
- dwaite 8y ago
  If you are willing to support yourself, you can use OpenJDK. If you want to rely on a third party vendor (paid or free like a linux/BSD distribution) to stay on top of bugs and release patched versions, they'll likely use OpenJDK. This isn't the slimy Oracle play. That will be when they stop releasing bug fixes in advance into OpenJDK, and do so without any back ports, backing information or tests (see: MySQL)
peoplewindow 8y ago
How is selling security fixes unprecedented? That's basically the entire Red Hat business model in the early years - yes the fixes are "free" if you want to spend all your time downloading and recompiling software, or you can buy RHEL and get a steady stream of backported fixes to your server for years. But it'll cost you. As far as I can tell, the reason Oracle is the sole maintainer of Java is mainly historical (Sun legacy) and because no one felt an urge to do anything about it before. I'm sure it's going to change now. Why? Neither Google nor IBM particularly require Java bug fixes from Oracle. Google maintains an in-house OpenJDK already and IBM actually maintains an entirely separate JVM. Also Google is hardly famous for its long term commitment to stable APIs and old versions of software, quite the opposite. It doesn't make much sense for a company to pay for the expensive work of finding, fixing and backporting bug fixes to years old software .... all for free.
- the_grue 8y ago
  > or you can buy RHEL Or use CentOS. Oh wait, that's exactly what tens or hundreds of thousands of small businesses did and keep doing even today. Besides, that's not even a good comparison - Red Hat Linux was and is mainly about packaging other vendors' software, as opposed to Java, which is a monolithic piece of software developed as a single project. > Google maintains an in-house OpenJDK Didn't know that. How can they do that while keeping compatibility with Oracle's OpenJDK? Well, this information just reinforces my point, actually. Google is already in position to ditch Oracle as an upstream and unite with other parties to build a new foundation for open-source Java. > Google is hardly famous for its long term commitment to stable APIs and old versions of software Nobody likes to use other people's buggy code. I think you are mixing up two different things. Google does iterate their own software at a fast pace, but that doesn't mean it doesn't want the underlying infrastructure to be as stable as possible.