8 ms·

Oracle cooks up free and premium JVMs

65 points by alt_ 16y ago

mahmud 16y ago
Oracle doesn't do fremium. All their evil aside, you gotta respect their "FU, pay me" attitude.
- dschobel 16y ago
  How is it any different from other massive enterprise focussed company (IBM, MS, et al) and why does it merit respect?
  - mahmud 16y ago
    You mean, the MS and IBM that are releasing free software and generally trying to create and foster communities? Instead of MS and IBM, we should compare Oracle to Sun, and see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts.
    - davidw 16y ago
      > see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts. Like "making money"? Kidding aside, I think you can mix free with proprietary in a way that's beneficial to the community without giving away too much. Google seems to do a lot of open source these days even though there is tons of stuff they keep to themselves. They seem to have a decent image for the work they do perform. Sun had sort of a weird image, IMO - they were kind of heel-draggers in some ways, ahead of the curve in others. More than anything they just seemed confused. I don't think that, overall, they ever really figured out open source and what they should do with it. Oracle's ideas about open source seem to be along the lines of "take what we can, give as little as possible back". We'll see though...
      - 8ren 16y ago
        Sun's revenue came from workstations, which got disrupted by PCs. Everything else drove that.
        lani 16y ago
        1) enterprise servers 2) Java which drives enterprise computing which runs on any platform. Didn't these two things work against each other for Sun ?
        badmash69 16y ago
        Not really. Remember Sun's stock during the dotcom boom. Sun failed because of poor execution. They blew the cloud computing opportunity. Their sales people did not chase orders like the HP guys did (this is for a personal experience ). Their Java application server sucked when compared to Websphere and Weblogic. They could not deliver a good story with MySQL acquisition. They let Linux get ahead of Solaris , at least in mind share.
        gaius 16y ago
        Exactly. I'm old enough to remember when Sun's stock ticker wasn't JAVA it was SUNW... W for workstation.
        fauigerzigerk 16y ago
        Good to hear you're more than 3 years old ;-)
    - dschobel 16y ago
      No, I mean the MS headed by the man who famously called Linux "a cancer” and still operates on the premise the kernel is in violation of MS patents (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-amazon-patent-deal-covers-kindle-linux.ars http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-amaz...) I mean the IBM which pulled the rug out from under the Apache Harmony project not a month ago to jump in bed with Oracle. What you're talking about is in actuality a difference of degrees between the three.
    - gaius 16y ago
      Right now, on Debian you can do # apt-get install oracle-xe And get the free version of Oracle, as easily as you can get MySQL. You can't do that with DB2. Oracle has a public Yum server too: http://public-yum.oracle.com/ http://public-yum.oracle.com/
dreur 16y ago
Just after announcing that IBM will be working with them on OpenJDK
j23tom 16y ago
solution is simple - www.go-mono.org
lukev 16y ago
I have no problem with them releasing a commercial JVM with extra bells and whistles and middleware - most people don't need that anyway, and the few who do are more than willing to pay. But they had better not nerf OpenJDK relative to what it can do now.
- skymt 16y ago
  Fortunately they can't do that. It's GPL'd, no take-backs. They could conceivably remove things from future releases, but I'd expect to see a community fork in that case.
  - pquerna 16y ago
    There is no patent license in the GPLv2. Their decision to keep it on GPL v2 is very very explicit.
tommi 16y ago
I wonder if Apple's decision to deprecate Java on Mac was based on these plans.
- lwhi 16y ago
  How would Apple have known about them?
  - eitland 16y ago
    Hint: The company that aquired Sun is Oracle. They have a proven track record for monetizing stuff.
    - lwhi 16y ago
      I don't think Apple would have made this decision based upon a simple assumption. In any case, there's still a free JVM available.
badmash69 16y ago
To programmers, Sun seemed earnest about its intentions. Thats why we adopted its Platform. Could anyone name one guy like James Gosling in Oracle ? Didn't thinks so. With Oracle, everything they do with Java seems to be slimy. Suing Google, JCP elections ( Hologic ?? ). premium for JVM . I fear this trend is to continue. There are those who think that Oracle would continue to invest in Open JDK and continue to evolve it. I am sure they also believe that MySQl has an even brighter future ahead of it. The unfortunate sideffect is that cool new languages like Scala and Clojure could end up as collateral damage as JVM is no longer seen as a viable and open platform. I just might have to bite the bullet and learn me some Haskell after all !! Or GO programming language.
- gaius 16y ago
  I was going to say Bob Miner and Ed Oates but I've just checked and neither of them is a current Oracle employee. Why is "suing Google" automatically slimy? They're a corporation like any other. In fact they're not unlike Oracle was at a similar age...
  - badmash69 16y ago
    IMHO all law suites over patents in software are slimy. This my opinion as a programmer. If you are indeed a programmer, please feel free to look at this and tell me if you see any of the stuff mentioned in the lawsuit not fairly obvious. http://www.theserverside.com/report/The-Oracle-Google-Patent-Lawsuit-Demystified http://www.theserverside.com/report/The-Oracle-Google-Patent... . I do not think algorithms should be patentable as this stifles innovation. Oracle vs. Google lawsuit would be fun to watch -- if you like the "SAW" movies.
    - gaius 16y ago
      Like it or not, this is how the game is played. If the situation were reversed, Google's lawyers would be all over Oracle like a cheap suit. They'd be neglecting their responsibility to their shareholders if they weren't. If you think Google is "different" from any other multinational public corporation then you've fallen hook, line and sinker for their PR.
DjDarkman 16y ago
I really wonder 5 years from now what will be the impact of all this. It seems that Oracle's strategy is to squeeze out every bit of penny from the assets acquired from Sun, which is fine I guess, but I think they are taking it too far. I am starting not to trust Java,MySQL and all other products, they really give me the impression that these will all be commercial-only.
runT1ME 16y ago
I think people are reading too much into this. Redhat has RHEL and Fedora, there is Jboss Community Edition, and JBoss Professional edition. Nothing is nerfed, in fact the 'premium' offerings are usually behind the free versions in terms of features, but they do offer better management, upgrade options, etc.
- ShabbyDoo 16y ago
  JBoss has a long tradition of not leaving anything out of its free versions. To the contrary, as you noted, one usually does not get support for the more bleeding edge features under a support agreement (although one JBoss project group I know personally of has tended to provide that support in practice to paying customers). I think the fear is that the "good stuff" for the JVM will only be available in paid form. SpringSource now employs a pretty high percentage of the Tomcat committers and offers it's "TC server," a non-free version of Tomcat with a bunch of managability features on top. No one seems too upset about this. Perhaps because there are so many other servlet container choices out there?
bmelton 16y ago
JRockit was already a premium JVM. OpenJDK was already free. This isn't really an announcement, per se, but what I like about it is that it means they're going to continue working on JRockit (that they got from BEA's acquisition). I've seen gains of over 100% using JRockit with Weblogic, which I also worried might fall by the wayside with Oracle's acquisition. I'm still not 100% sure on which way Webcenter is headed, and what exactly it's based on (as I'm not in that particular business anymore) -- but hopefully it scrapped all the aging AquaLogic code that BEA was still peddling as 'cutting edge'.
linuxhansl 16y ago
As much as I believe that Oracle squandered a unique opportunity to generate a lot of good will without much cost, this is not all bad news. If I read this correctly the jRocket VM will be part of the OpenJDK and hence be open source.
tomaszkubacki 16y ago
Dear java users - time to move to mono ! www.go-mono.org

65 points by alt_ 16y ago

mahmud 16y ago

Oracle doesn't do fremium. All their evil aside, you gotta respect their "FU, pay me" attitude.

dschobel 16y ago
How is it any different from other massive enterprise focussed company (IBM, MS, et al) and why does it merit respect?
- mahmud 16y ago
  You mean, the MS and IBM that are releasing free software and generally trying to create and foster communities? Instead of MS and IBM, we should compare Oracle to Sun, and see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts.
  - davidw 16y ago
    > see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts. Like "making money"? Kidding aside, I think you can mix free with proprietary in a way that's beneficial to the community without giving away too much. Google seems to do a lot of open source these days even though there is tons of stuff they keep to themselves. They seem to have a decent image for the work they do perform. Sun had sort of a weird image, IMO - they were kind of heel-draggers in some ways, ahead of the curve in others. More than anything they just seemed confused. I don't think that, overall, they ever really figured out open source and what they should do with it. Oracle's ideas about open source seem to be along the lines of "take what we can, give as little as possible back". We'll see though...
    - 8ren 16y ago
      Sun's revenue came from workstations, which got disrupted by PCs. Everything else drove that.
      - lani 16y ago
        1) enterprise servers 2) Java which drives enterprise computing which runs on any platform. Didn't these two things work against each other for Sun ?
        badmash69 16y ago
        Not really. Remember Sun's stock during the dotcom boom. Sun failed because of poor execution. They blew the cloud computing opportunity. Their sales people did not chase orders like the HP guys did (this is for a personal experience ). Their Java application server sucked when compared to Websphere and Weblogic. They could not deliver a good story with MySQL acquisition. They let Linux get ahead of Solaris , at least in mind share.
      - gaius 16y ago
        Exactly. I'm old enough to remember when Sun's stock ticker wasn't JAVA it was SUNW... W for workstation.
        fauigerzigerk 16y ago
        Good to hear you're more than 3 years old ;-)
  - dschobel 16y ago
    No, I mean the MS headed by the man who famously called Linux "a cancer” and still operates on the premise the kernel is in violation of MS patents (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-amazon-patent-deal-covers-kindle-linux.ars http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-amaz...) I mean the IBM which pulled the rug out from under the Apache Harmony project not a month ago to jump in bed with Oracle. What you're talking about is in actuality a difference of degrees between the three.
  - gaius 16y ago
    Right now, on Debian you can do # apt-get install oracle-xe And get the free version of Oracle, as easily as you can get MySQL. You can't do that with DB2. Oracle has a public Yum server too: http://public-yum.oracle.com/ http://public-yum.oracle.com/

dreur 16y ago

Just after announcing that IBM will be working with them on OpenJDK

j23tom 16y ago

solution is simple - www.go-mono.org

lukev 16y ago

I have no problem with them releasing a commercial JVM with extra bells and whistles and middleware - most people don't need that anyway, and the few who do are more than willing to pay. But they had better not nerf OpenJDK relative to what it can do now.

skymt 16y ago
Fortunately they can't do that. It's GPL'd, no take-backs. They could conceivably remove things from future releases, but I'd expect to see a community fork in that case.
- pquerna 16y ago
  There is no patent license in the GPLv2. Their decision to keep it on GPL v2 is very very explicit.

tommi 16y ago

I wonder if Apple's decision to deprecate Java on Mac was based on these plans.

lwhi 16y ago
How would Apple have known about them?
- eitland 16y ago
  Hint: The company that aquired Sun is Oracle. They have a proven track record for monetizing stuff.
  - lwhi 16y ago
    I don't think Apple would have made this decision based upon a simple assumption. In any case, there's still a free JVM available.

badmash69 16y ago

To programmers, Sun seemed earnest about its intentions. Thats why we adopted its Platform. Could anyone name one guy like James Gosling in Oracle ? Didn't thinks so. With Oracle, everything they do with Java seems to be slimy. Suing Google, JCP elections ( Hologic ?? ). premium for JVM . I fear this trend is to continue. There are those who think that Oracle would continue to invest in Open JDK and continue to evolve it. I am sure they also believe that MySQl has an even brighter future ahead of it. The unfortunate sideffect is that cool new languages like Scala and Clojure could end up as collateral damage as JVM is no longer seen as a viable and open platform. I just might have to bite the bullet and learn me some Haskell after all !! Or GO programming language.

gaius 16y ago
I was going to say Bob Miner and Ed Oates but I've just checked and neither of them is a current Oracle employee. Why is "suing Google" automatically slimy? They're a corporation like any other. In fact they're not unlike Oracle was at a similar age...
- badmash69 16y ago
  IMHO all law suites over patents in software are slimy. This my opinion as a programmer. If you are indeed a programmer, please feel free to look at this and tell me if you see any of the stuff mentioned in the lawsuit not fairly obvious. http://www.theserverside.com/report/The-Oracle-Google-Patent-Lawsuit-Demystified http://www.theserverside.com/report/The-Oracle-Google-Patent... . I do not think algorithms should be patentable as this stifles innovation. Oracle vs. Google lawsuit would be fun to watch -- if you like the "SAW" movies.
  - gaius 16y ago
    Like it or not, this is how the game is played. If the situation were reversed, Google's lawyers would be all over Oracle like a cheap suit. They'd be neglecting their responsibility to their shareholders if they weren't. If you think Google is "different" from any other multinational public corporation then you've fallen hook, line and sinker for their PR.

DjDarkman 16y ago

I really wonder 5 years from now what will be the impact of all this. It seems that Oracle's strategy is to squeeze out every bit of penny from the assets acquired from Sun, which is fine I guess, but I think they are taking it too far. I am starting not to trust Java,MySQL and all other products, they really give me the impression that these will all be commercial-only.

runT1ME 16y ago

I think people are reading too much into this. Redhat has RHEL and Fedora, there is Jboss Community Edition, and JBoss Professional edition. Nothing is nerfed, in fact the 'premium' offerings are usually behind the free versions in terms of features, but they do offer better management, upgrade options, etc.

ShabbyDoo 16y ago
JBoss has a long tradition of not leaving anything out of its free versions. To the contrary, as you noted, one usually does not get support for the more bleeding edge features under a support agreement (although one JBoss project group I know personally of has tended to provide that support in practice to paying customers). I think the fear is that the "good stuff" for the JVM will only be available in paid form. SpringSource now employs a pretty high percentage of the Tomcat committers and offers it's "TC server," a non-free version of Tomcat with a bunch of managability features on top. No one seems too upset about this. Perhaps because there are so many other servlet container choices out there?

bmelton 16y ago

JRockit was already a premium JVM. OpenJDK was already free. This isn't really an announcement, per se, but what I like about it is that it means they're going to continue working on JRockit (that they got from BEA's acquisition). I've seen gains of over 100% using JRockit with Weblogic, which I also worried might fall by the wayside with Oracle's acquisition. I'm still not 100% sure on which way Webcenter is headed, and what exactly it's based on (as I'm not in that particular business anymore) -- but hopefully it scrapped all the aging AquaLogic code that BEA was still peddling as 'cutting edge'.

linuxhansl 16y ago

As much as I believe that Oracle squandered a unique opportunity to generate a lot of good will without much cost, this is not all bad news. If I read this correctly the jRocket VM will be part of the OpenJDK and hence be open source.

tomaszkubacki 16y ago

Dear java users - time to move to mono ! www.go-mono.org