4 ms·

Your fear of Oracle aggression is well placed. Please someone correct my perception here, but it looks the the goal of the rapid release cadence is now to get

Your fear of Oracle aggression is well placed. Please someone correct my perception here, but it looks the the goal of the rapid release cadence is now to get more enterprise support contracts: if you want to stay on LTS, you have to pay.

dnomad 9y ago
I think it's doubtful that anybody will be able to correct your FUD. Once you've bought into this delusion it really seems to trap people forever and rags like the Register are absolutely delighted to feed the fear with nonsense articles for precious clicks. Nothing can change the mindset. It doesn't matter that Java itself is completely open source (Open JDK), that Oracle isn't doing anything they haven't done before (you've always had to pay for support of EOL'd JDKs and JDK 8 is five years old like other EOL'd releases), or that, frankly, Oracle's actual track record here -- that is when you look at the actual actions taken by Oracle over the last ten years -- is generous to a fault. None of this matters to somebody who is committed to the FUD. In the end the thousands of businesses an thousands of open-source projects that use Java will continue to use Java. Others will invest in the FUD around Java and Oracle. Life will go on. It'll be interesting to see who comes out on top.
- IAmLiterallyAB 9y ago
  I guess the worry might be that they will now potentially EOL a lot faster. No one will port their codebase every 6 months (or year or whatever). Not sure what the official EOL strategy is now.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Isn't the support window for each iteration going to be like 6 months? http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html Aren't we talking about the company that wants to copyright api no matter what effect his has on the rest of the industry. The same oracle that buys and kills interesting project making the world a less interesting place. The people that are suing google for violations that the original owners of the IP tacitly allowed. You are awful quick to call criticism of oracle FUD and delusion. Are you sure you don't work there?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Google, Apple, Microsoft and IBM have taken similar actions when they see a need to pursuit such goals. All corporations are alike and many geeks are naive to assign human behavior to companies.
  - peterashford 9y ago
    How does this revoke the open source nature of the OpenJDK?
    - imglorp 9y ago
      It doesn't, rather I think Oracle's plan will end up driving people towards OpenJDK. It looks like they're firing their pesky B, C, D, and F customers and keeping their A ones, ie the ones who will pay millions in maintenance. The rest of us, who are currently tied to Sun Java for its stability and who aren't going to pay big maintenance, will have to switch to OpenJDK if we want stability. It's either that or constantly port every 6 months, and pray all the kabillion dependencies we have work okay.
  - imglorp 9y ago
    Yep, and remember they also are HUGE into suing or threatening their own customers for benchmarking their products [1], or perhaps pointing out security problems [2]. Etc. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886333 2. http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cso-goes-against-bug-bounties-and-security-researchers-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cso-goes-against-bug-b...
ksec 9y ago
Oracle is definitely not a nice company. But they sure do take good care of Java as a whole. And I don't see any "risk" or threat if you are using OpenJDK.
on_and_off 9y ago
Too bad Google did not buy Sun. That would have made a lot of people happy.

dnomad 9y ago

I think it's doubtful that anybody will be able to correct your FUD. Once you've bought into this delusion it really seems to trap people forever and rags like the Register are absolutely delighted to feed the fear with nonsense articles for precious clicks. Nothing can change the mindset. It doesn't matter that Java itself is completely open source (Open JDK), that Oracle isn't doing anything they haven't done before (you've always had to pay for support of EOL'd JDKs and JDK 8 is five years old like other EOL'd releases), or that, frankly, Oracle's actual track record here -- that is when you look at the actual actions taken by Oracle over the last ten years -- is generous to a fault. None of this matters to somebody who is committed to the FUD. In the end the thousands of businesses an thousands of open-source projects that use Java will continue to use Java. Others will invest in the FUD around Java and Oracle. Life will go on. It'll be interesting to see who comes out on top.

IAmLiterallyAB 9y ago
I guess the worry might be that they will now potentially EOL a lot faster. No one will port their codebase every 6 months (or year or whatever). Not sure what the official EOL strategy is now.
michaelmrose 9y ago
Isn't the support window for each iteration going to be like 6 months? http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html Aren't we talking about the company that wants to copyright api no matter what effect his has on the rest of the industry. The same oracle that buys and kills interesting project making the world a less interesting place. The people that are suing google for violations that the original owners of the IP tacitly allowed. You are awful quick to call criticism of oracle FUD and delusion. Are you sure you don't work there?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Google, Apple, Microsoft and IBM have taken similar actions when they see a need to pursuit such goals. All corporations are alike and many geeks are naive to assign human behavior to companies.
- peterashford 9y ago
  How does this revoke the open source nature of the OpenJDK?
  - imglorp 9y ago
    It doesn't, rather I think Oracle's plan will end up driving people towards OpenJDK. It looks like they're firing their pesky B, C, D, and F customers and keeping their A ones, ie the ones who will pay millions in maintenance. The rest of us, who are currently tied to Sun Java for its stability and who aren't going to pay big maintenance, will have to switch to OpenJDK if we want stability. It's either that or constantly port every 6 months, and pray all the kabillion dependencies we have work okay.
- imglorp 9y ago
  Yep, and remember they also are HUGE into suing or threatening their own customers for benchmarking their products [1], or perhaps pointing out security problems [2]. Etc. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886333 2. http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cso-goes-against-bug-bounties-and-security-researchers-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cso-goes-against-bug-b...

ksec 9y ago

Oracle is definitely not a nice company. But they sure do take good care of Java as a whole. And I don't see any "risk" or threat if you are using OpenJDK.

on_and_off 9y ago

Too bad Google did not buy Sun. That would have made a lot of people happy.