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Can someone give some background on the reasoning? I'm glad it's not completely Oracle's call. I see this as a power move. Nashorn is part of OpenJDK, which is

Can someone give some background on the reasoning? I'm glad it's not completely Oracle's call. I see this as a power move. Nashorn is part of OpenJDK, which is becoming less and less Oracle-specific. Graal/Truffle however are squarely under Oracle's umbrella. > With the rapid pace at which ECMAScript language constructs, along with APIs, are adapted and modified, we have found Nashorn challenging to maintain. [...] GraalJS using Oracle Labs' Truffle technology may soon be publicly available as a Java module. It is understood that GraalJS provides most of the same functionality as Nashorn along with better performance. So, one is too challenging to maintain but the other isn't? Why don't you just come out and say it? You are shifting resources to your more proprietary impl that you have a premium version of. And if no other OpenJDK maintainers want to step up and maintain Nashorn, I say remove it. But everyone should be clear about Oracle's motives here. I expect we'll start seeing this more and more like we do with mission control...Oracle is going to dedicate fewer and fewer resources to OpenJDK, the Oracle version of which no longer carries reasonable benefits on its own. More ancillary products around the JVM will be focused on. Makes sense, but I sure wish an alternative Oracle-effort-sized OpenJDK maintainer existed. And for those of you that have used Nashorn and need it to do work, remember what is happening here. And those of you starting the same thing with Graal/Truffle, watch what is happening here. Lots of us work w/ the core of the JDK, but beware of building new products on Oracle tech.

tetha 8y ago
What actual reason is there to build anything new on oracle? MySQL is obsoleted by one of MariaDB, Postgres or Galera, especially for new things - and in my book, OracleDB is as well for new things. The OpenJDK supplies enough java to build big things and even the use of java might be debated. This changed during the last decade, but at this point, oracle thrives on things large corporates depend upon. There is no reason to start anything outside of a large enterprise with Oracle investment with any oracle dependency. Quite the opposite.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- flafla2 8y ago
  I think Microsoft is trying (and, so far, succeeding) to consume this market with their C#/.NET offerings. Their open-sourcing of .NET Core and their commitment to cross-platform makes C# (which, of course, has similar syntax and standard libraries to java) an ever more attractive option.
  - sjellis 8y ago
    "I think Microsoft is trying (and, so far, succeeding) to consume this market with their C#/.NET offerings. Their open-sourcing of .NET Core and their commitment to cross-platform makes C# (which, of course, has similar syntax and standard libraries to java) an ever more attractive option." I've seen an interview with one of the managers for .NET who said that directly: they specifically want to compete with Java, and made the platform cross-platform and Open Source partly because Java is those things.
TAForObvReasons 8y ago
Oracle's highly litigious nature ensures no Oracle-effort-sized company would pick up the OpenJDK mantle. It's just asking for trouble.
AlphaSite 8y ago
Truffle is just easier to maintain and much faster from what I’ve seen.
- kodablah 8y ago
  I don't doubt that at all. I have investigated its language creation properties myself. I understand the want to move to that for Oracle and stop maintaining two JS impls. It should just be clear it's less open and be clear where Oracle's resources are wrt OpenJDK vs Graal/Truffle, that's all.
aseipp 8y ago
> Can someone give some background on the reasoning? ... So, one is too challenging to maintain but the other isn't? I'm not sure why you're posing this as some absurd position, you literally answered your own question 2 seconds later... it's a completely valid reason to deprecate something from a maintainer POV, especially if you believe it's rarely used -- in fact the submitter mentions that Nashorn usage is very difficult to track, so ideally any pushback will inform whether this JEP goes through or not. The actual schedule mentions nothing of actual removal, anyway. Graal and Truffle, from a license point of view, at least aren't really a problem. Graal is already shipped with OpenJDK 10 and you can use it today for your workloads (yes, the regular OpenJDK) with no problem, and Truffle is just a library you install from Maven and can use on any compatible JVM to make interpreters faster, if Graal is there. (It's LGPLv2 I believe.) In fact any of the Truffle-built languages like TruffleRuby could run on an ordinary JVM without Graal, I believe -- they would just be slow, like Nashorn. So I don't really get your comments about proprietary implementation -- you can literally just keep using OpenJDK and ignore it. The actual "GraalVM distribution" they advertise is just a branded, QA'd version of JDK 8 with Graal enabled. The bigger questions around things like the copyright/API lawsuits is something else. That I can't comment about (and I'm not going to trust random HN users on their interpretation of the law.) The Enterprise Edition is weird but I suspect Oracle is going to find out quickly that very few people are willing to pay for compiler optimizations (IME, as a former compiler person). They're basically rent seekers, and they'll eventually dump it like they did with JMC/Flight Recorder once they move onto something else. There is also the issue that they employ the main developers, so there's an argument for being a SPOF -- but if anything, Oracle has proven repeatedly they can lay off a team of developers like assholes and the OpenJDK community will pick up the slack (IcedTea, security updates etc), due to the immense existing inertia. (Flight Recorder has a JEP now and I'm willing to bet it will go through, and JMC will be picked up again, because they're both very valuable.) The fact Oracle are annoying-ass rent seekers and litigous is one thing, but realistically like all of the important tech is in OpenJDK anyway -- so unless they're submarining the whole freakin' ecosystem at this point in a blaze of glory, you probably have nothing to worry about. Graal may even make some of your systems perform better for nothing at all... > Makes sense, but I sure wish an alternative Oracle-effort-sized OpenJDK maintainer existed. They're called Red Hat.
- 8y ago
jnermut 8y ago
> Can someone give some background on the reasoning See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JLhwsbMvjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JLhwsbMvjQ

tetha 8y ago

What actual reason is there to build anything new on oracle? MySQL is obsoleted by one of MariaDB, Postgres or Galera, especially for new things - and in my book, OracleDB is as well for new things. The OpenJDK supplies enough java to build big things and even the use of java might be debated. This changed during the last decade, but at this point, oracle thrives on things large corporates depend upon. There is no reason to start anything outside of a large enterprise with Oracle investment with any oracle dependency. Quite the opposite.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
flafla2 8y ago
I think Microsoft is trying (and, so far, succeeding) to consume this market with their C#/.NET offerings. Their open-sourcing of .NET Core and their commitment to cross-platform makes C# (which, of course, has similar syntax and standard libraries to java) an ever more attractive option.
- sjellis 8y ago
  "I think Microsoft is trying (and, so far, succeeding) to consume this market with their C#/.NET offerings. Their open-sourcing of .NET Core and their commitment to cross-platform makes C# (which, of course, has similar syntax and standard libraries to java) an ever more attractive option." I've seen an interview with one of the managers for .NET who said that directly: they specifically want to compete with Java, and made the platform cross-platform and Open Source partly because Java is those things.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago

Oracle's highly litigious nature ensures no Oracle-effort-sized company would pick up the OpenJDK mantle. It's just asking for trouble.

AlphaSite 8y ago

Truffle is just easier to maintain and much faster from what I’ve seen.

kodablah 8y ago
I don't doubt that at all. I have investigated its language creation properties myself. I understand the want to move to that for Oracle and stop maintaining two JS impls. It should just be clear it's less open and be clear where Oracle's resources are wrt OpenJDK vs Graal/Truffle, that's all.

aseipp 8y ago

> Can someone give some background on the reasoning? ... So, one is too challenging to maintain but the other isn't? I'm not sure why you're posing this as some absurd position, you literally answered your own question 2 seconds later... it's a completely valid reason to deprecate something from a maintainer POV, especially if you believe it's rarely used -- in fact the submitter mentions that Nashorn usage is very difficult to track, so ideally any pushback will inform whether this JEP goes through or not. The actual schedule mentions nothing of actual removal, anyway. Graal and Truffle, from a license point of view, at least aren't really a problem. Graal is already shipped with OpenJDK 10 and you can use it today for your workloads (yes, the regular OpenJDK) with no problem, and Truffle is just a library you install from Maven and can use on any compatible JVM to make interpreters faster, if Graal is there. (It's LGPLv2 I believe.) In fact any of the Truffle-built languages like TruffleRuby could run on an ordinary JVM without Graal, I believe -- they would just be slow, like Nashorn. So I don't really get your comments about proprietary implementation -- you can literally just keep using OpenJDK and ignore it. The actual "GraalVM distribution" they advertise is just a branded, QA'd version of JDK 8 with Graal enabled. The bigger questions around things like the copyright/API lawsuits is something else. That I can't comment about (and I'm not going to trust random HN users on their interpretation of the law.) The Enterprise Edition is weird but I suspect Oracle is going to find out quickly that very few people are willing to pay for compiler optimizations (IME, as a former compiler person). They're basically rent seekers, and they'll eventually dump it like they did with JMC/Flight Recorder once they move onto something else. There is also the issue that they employ the main developers, so there's an argument for being a SPOF -- but if anything, Oracle has proven repeatedly they can lay off a team of developers like assholes and the OpenJDK community will pick up the slack (IcedTea, security updates etc), due to the immense existing inertia. (Flight Recorder has a JEP now and I'm willing to bet it will go through, and JMC will be picked up again, because they're both very valuable.) The fact Oracle are annoying-ass rent seekers and litigous is one thing, but realistically like all of the important tech is in OpenJDK anyway -- so unless they're submarining the whole freakin' ecosystem at this point in a blaze of glory, you probably have nothing to worry about. Graal may even make some of your systems perform better for nothing at all... > Makes sense, but I sure wish an alternative Oracle-effort-sized OpenJDK maintainer existed. They're called Red Hat.

8y ago

jnermut 8y ago

> Can someone give some background on the reasoning See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JLhwsbMvjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JLhwsbMvjQ