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Oracle's Newest Audit Tactic: Focusing on Java

131 points by Garbage 8y ago

engineer_uk 8y ago
I don't know anyone who buys new softwares from Oracle. Only few large companies are going after Oracle new services and software, mostly because some selfish company executives.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  I am on the other side, the large majority of our customers ride on SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, SAP and there is hardly any plan to move away from them.
  - tvbusy 8y ago
    This is the problem with large company. They always "want" the applications to be "enterprise" level. Even if it's just a report generation tool to automate some simple task, use Oracle because they already have a large team that will take care of the database, why use mySQL and risk unforeseen issues down the road? I have even seen a super super tool that simply allow user to go through a questionnaire, which a paper print out will more than likely enough and faster, to be implemented as an Oracle database, with the business logic embedded inside the database, and a super thin UI. User will need to know the correct schema name to use though, because they use schemas for versioning, and it's not like 1.0 and 1.1, it's latest_with_iso_compliace, test_only_production_for_customer_A and beta_for_production or similar.
- arethuza 8y ago
  "I don't know anyone who buys new softwares from Oracle." I do - I doubt that there are many organisations licensing just the Oracle database these days - I suspect most of their sales are in the ERP/finance areas where there are relatively few competitors. How many competitors are there for Hyperion FM/Planning? Edit: Note that I'm definitely not defending Oracle, but the market for their products is quite complex and much wider than a relational database engine.
  - toyg 8y ago
    Do I know you? :) As for competitors to hfm/epm: there are a few (onestream, tagetik, whatever sap is peddling...). But it doesn’t matter, all this thing about auditing will go away when every Oracle customer is forced at gunpoint to move to cloud versions - where they can be squeezed for more money at the touch of a button. Hfm licenses, for example, are basically not sold anymore unless you get special blessing from an Oracle VP; it’s FCCS or nothing.
    - arethuza 8y ago
      Its been ~4 years since I was involved in that area - I know at that time Oracle was trying to recruit some of my colleagues for their cloud team. I don't think anyone took them up on the offer! I did a lot of integration work with HFM for my previous employer - I was actually rather proud of the reporting solution we built on top of HFM, infinitely better than the reporting tools that Oracle provided. I sometimes wish that we'd productized that and sold it!
- mhd 8y ago
  The enterprise sector is full of this. And why wouldn't it? It's basically never-ending circle of highly-paid consultants, in-house employees with very specific skillsets, never mind corporate kickbacks for devs and their managers. Opening this up would ruin your own revenue. No consultant ever got complaints from his successors for choosing IBM. We look down on what's going on in the pharma industry, but the software world isn't all sunshine and lilies.
jarym 8y ago
Having worked there myself before and leaving in disgust this is definitely how it goes down. Further, I always suspected some kind of dodgy dealing at some clients I’d visit since there’d be an army of their employees who’d be negative about Oracle but always a single big-wig that managed to be super passionate about Oracle. Of course I never found evidence of anything dodgy - just a number of clients where this was a notable pattern.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  I'm sure some big companies like to make it easier on the higher-ups to accept their products (and the lower class be damned), because that would explain a lot of crap being sold by those "big companies" It would be very interesting if some evidence came to light in an FCPA filing.
- wil421 8y ago
  I’ve worked at BigCorp(s) and seen similar things but from the other side. Most people absolutely hated oracle from the director who ran the teams to the admins and devs. The only people who liked Oracle were VP and above. They were so short sighted they signed a deal with Oracle after they drastically cut support costs the first year. They were so shocked in year 2 when costs went north of 1 million. Making Oracle much much more expensive than the competitors who also bid. Everyone knew the competitors were less expensive in the long run and actually good products. Not to mention the time they were audited and owed big time due to a webservice sending changes to our ERP system.
- vb6lives 8y ago
  I've seen the same. We were close to finalizing a sale for a huge company before some non-technical exec insisted on using Oracle for the backend. Then it became a huge sticking point. Our cto joked that he must be getting a kickback.
raesene9 8y ago
When there are so many software options that don't involve buying from companies that use these kind of tactics, it's difficult to see how this will work out for Oracle in the long term. Sure in the short-term they'll rinse companies for large amounts of money, but people tend to remember when that's been done to them, and aren't exactly keen to have it happen again. Whilst I have no direct experience, a quick search indicates that IBM have similar practices. I wonder when/if that'll bleed across into Redhat.
- threeseed 8y ago
  This practice has been going on for decades. And Oracle isn't close to be the only company. But don't worry you shouldn't feel sympathy for enterprise companies as they are often just as bad as the vendors.
  - raesene9 8y ago
    Whilst I may or may not feel sympathy for the companies themselves (although not everyone who uses Oracle software is an "enterprise" by any means), I can feel sympathy for the poor IT teams who would have to deal with a surprise audit from a vendor.
  - chris_wot 8y ago
    Has deployments of Oracle software gone up over the long term, or are people beginning to migrate away from Oracle software?
    - threeseed 8y ago
      Just from my limit experience they are very slowly migrating away as they transition from on-premise to the cloud. Not just Oracle but pretty much anything that is standalone software.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Easy, Oracle bashers keep forgetting that Oracle and IBM pay the majority of salaries on OpenJDK developers. Then again, there are plenty of other JVMs available since the 2000's, and many customers do pay for them.
pjmlp 8y ago
Intel's newest audit tactic, focusing on illegal installations from VTune, Intel C++, Intel Fortran, .... Want to use commercial software? Pay accordingly. Not wanting to pay for it? Plenty of options available. https://adoptopenjdk.net/ https://adoptopenjdk.net/ https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/ https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/ https://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/ https://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/ https://www.eclipse.org/openj9/ https://www.eclipse.org/openj9/ https://developers.redhat.com/products/openjdk/download/ https://developers.redhat.com/products/openjdk/download/
- rickette 8y ago
  These are great options. If you don't want to pay up to Oracle. Just use one of the OpenJDK distributions. Java is still free and the JVM is still an amazing piece of tech.
  - mort96 8y ago
    Isn't it nicer to just... not use anything related to Oracle though? Oracle still holds a tremendous amount of power over OpenJDK, right? Oracle has also demonstrated in court that the Java API is their intellectual property, and that they are willing to go after people for reimplementing them. OpenJDK might be blessed, but I'd still be afraid of having anything to do with their intellectual property. That's also one of the primary reasons I'm not very excited about ZFS.
    - gst 8y ago
      > Oracle has also demonstrated in court that the Java API is their intellectual property, and that they are willing to go after people for reimplementing them. OpenJDK might be blessed, but I'd still be afraid of having anything to do with their intellectual property. That's also one of the primary reasons I'm not very excited about ZFS. If you use OpenJDK you get an implicit patent grant to run OpenJDK (as it's licensed under the GPL). If you use any other non-OpenJDK runtime you might still violate some of Oracle's patents, but you don't get any patent grant. So if you're concerned about patents then using OpenJDK (instead of not using it) would actually be the safer way to go.
theredbox 8y ago
Oracle wanted to be the apple of enterprise to offer an all in one oracle package that would be deeply integrated but they failed to assess the market. It is not about Oracle not having competitive producta or services but about Oracle being stuck with their thinking in the 1991-2008 era.
dana321 8y ago
Once Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, i became dis-interested in Java all round. I would rather use a programming language not licensed by a huge corporation. The reason they are a huge company is the way they are predatory towards their customers. Probably why sun didn't survive as well, its kind of sad that this is the way of the world.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  You should give C# a try. It's pretty open these days (bonus: it's a much nicer language than Java)
  - thefounder 8y ago
    Or better use Go! It's 100% open/BSD license.
    - mustardo 8y ago
      sigh... I'll just rewrite my 500k LOC products, abandon all of the great open source libraries instead of just using an open JRE https://adoptopenjdk.net/ https://adoptopenjdk.net/ Go fanboys are the worst
      - dana321 8y ago
        Its all still encumbered by patents, its not free. Its "open"
      - currysausage 8y ago
        To be fair, grandfather did write: "I would rather use a programming language not licensed by a huge corporation."
        mustardo 8y ago
        Isn't Go out of Google...
    - 8y ago
chris_wot 8y ago
Thank goodness LibreOffice split from OpenOffice.org. A true blessing in disguise!
elygre 8y ago
But then the four last sentences say that they don't actually audit so much -- but they will, in five years' time! It’s too soon. Give it five years when you’re stuck in Oracle’s ecosystem and Oracle needs money. Then they’ll start auditing. Right now, there’s so much buzz going on around Java, they don’t have to audit.
- brown9-2 8y ago
  That’s the trap the author is trying to warn people about falling into.
thecleaner 8y ago
Lets assume that as an individual I want to move away from Java for backend development and currently I use Spring. Is there another ecosystem with a great IDE, type safety (or just type annotations), limits that allow one to not shoot yourself in the foot, a good debugger, memory safety and lastly speed ? Python really shines in most of the above except for the speed part.
- jtdev 8y ago
  The Python speed issue in my experience is almost never a material concern. It’s fast enough using the CPython reference implementation, and there are numerous options (PyPy, Cython) to squeeze out better performance if you really need it.
- djhworld 8y ago
  Why not just use openJDK? Seems a bit drastic to do a full rewrite.
  - thecleaner 8y ago
    I agree. I wouldn't consider a full re-write but for further development.
- erpellan 8y ago
  You could look into dart. Take a look at http://aqueduct.io/ http://aqueduct.io/ for an example.
  - thosakwe 8y ago
    I have to plug Angel, too: https://angel-dart.github.io/ https://angel-dart.github.io/
- patja 8y ago
  Sounds like you might be looking for C#, but I'm sure you've considered it already.
- zeckalpha 8y ago
nova22033 8y ago
Huh? >That’s why I think Oracle is sort of hedging its bets with Java audits and not going in there as strongly. It’s too soon. Give it five years when you’re stuck in Oracle’s ecosystem and Oracle needs money. Then they’ll start auditing. This is burying the lede...
pron 8y ago
As someone who works at Oracle on the JDK (i.e. OpenJDK), I’d like to point out a couple of things, as the interviewee was someone who directly benefits from any fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding Java (but this is not an official comment, and I speak only for myself): * Under the old BCL license the Oracle JDK was a mix of free and commercial features. Using the commercial features required explicitly turning them on with the flag `-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures`. You could not use them accidentally. Current JDKs no longer contain any commercial features, as explained below. * Starting with JDK 11, Oracle has completed open sourcing the JDK[1], which no longer contains any commercial features. Rather than a mixed free/commercial license, Oracle now offers the same software under two different licenses, the commercial OTN lincense, intended for those who wish to but a support subscription from Oracle, and a free and open-source license, for those who don't[2]. The commercial license download page[3] clearly states the different options: Oracle Customers and ISVs targeting Oracle LTS releases: Oracle JDK is Oracle's supported Java SE version for customers and for developing, testing, prototyping or demonstrating your Java applications. End users and developers looking for free JDK versions: Oracle OpenJDK offers the same features and performance as Oracle JDK under the GPL license (with the non-viral "Classpath Exception") The page also links to the free option. The particular commercial JDK download page[4] also contains a big bright warning and links to the downlad page for the free license. * That Oracle now only offers six months of free support (as oppsoed to before) is misleading. For at least the past seven years, Java had a major release every 3 or so years, and "update releases" (containing substantial new features, but no language or API changes) every six months, plus quarterly security and bug fixes[5]. The releases were also not supported for more than six months, and to be up to date on security, one was always required to upgrade to the semi-annual update releases. What changed recently, due to community demand, is how the features are distributed among the releases. There are no more major Java releases. The last one (ever) was JDK 9. Starting with JDK 10, the semi-annual releases are not major releases but "feature releases," that are allowed to contain API and language changes, but are small, so that instead of a major upgrade every three years, the upgrade process is more gradual (e.g. compare JDK 9, the last major release, with JDK 11, a feature release[6]). The feature releases are therefore somewhere between a major release and an update release but much closer to the latter. While major releases were supported for a number of years and the feature releases only for six months, the feature relases are by no stretch of the imagination major releases. * Similarly sized runtimes/languages -- Apple's Swift/iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's .NET -- are all part of ecosystems entirely or largely under the control of the companies owning the projects, and that generate billions of dollars annually, and so fund the development of the platform. Oracle has no control over the Java ecosystem, and so must fund the development of OpenJDK somehow. This is now done by offering long-term support for some of the feature releases, for companies that don't wish to upgrade to every feature release (in the past the funding came partly through the commercial features, which have now all been open sourced, and the annoying search toolbar that came with the JRE, which is gone now, too). * Oracle employs hundreds of full-time developers who manage the OpenJDK project and contribute the lion's share of OpenJDK development[7]. While Oracle developers will continue to contribute most of the work, including security updates to current OpenJDK versions, they will not commit to backporting those contributions to old feature releases via OpenJDK's "JDK update" projects. Other companies have said they will do that work, so that there will likely be OpenJDK update releases for some feature releases, probably those that correspond to Oracle's LTS versions. Oracle encourages other members of the OpenJDK community to contribute even more. [1] https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for-java-11-and-later https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-rele... [2] http://jdk.java.net/ http://jdk.java.net/ [3] https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/ind... [4] https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk11-downloads-5066655.html https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk... [5] https://java.com/en/download/faq/release_dates.xml https://java.com/en/download/faq/release_dates.xml [6] https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/ https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/ vs. https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/ https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/ [7] https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11-together https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11...
jmartrican 8y ago
I see articles like this and then see a bunch of comments about not wanting to use Java because of Oracle. But these articles are somewhat misleading in that there are free versions of Java out there. I think the authors of said articles just wants to stir the pot. This is old news and not really relevant with all the free alternatives. Even on our Ubuntu builds, when we install Java it's the open jdk variant that gets installed by default.
- brown9-2 8y ago
  There’s a response to this in the article - those free versions are only supported for 6 months.
  - IntelMiner 8y ago
    I think what they mean is OpenJRE, versus Oracle JRE
    - ethbro 8y ago
      To expand: in the waning days of Sun, they open sourced large parts of the Java development kit (JDK). This became OpenJDK, and is GPL v2 licensed (with a linking exception). Initially, not all code was available under a GPL license. Separately at the same time, Apache led the Harmony project to produce an open source implementation of Java SE 5 & 6. This was successful. As time passed, Sun (and maybe Oracle) open sourced more code into OpenJDK, leading to supporters switching from Harmony to OpenJDK. Additionally, Sun made the unfriendly move of licensing the TCK in a way that precluded any non-OpenJDk release from ever being able to claim Java compatibility. In response, Apache resigned from the Java board. And as of 2011, the Harmony project was stopped. Because of the platform-independent goal of Java, there's a lot of ancillary "not-Java, but needed" libraries to build and run Java. These were not all open sourced by Sun / Oracle, but were reimplemented by RedHat under a project called IcedTea. So, in summary, you can run OpenJDK/IcedTea and tell Oracle to pound sand. The primary risk is that Oracle withdraws the things they do still control from the OpenJDK project, or stops working with the project to coordinate new releases. But they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they did.
Chris_Chambers 8y ago
How does Oracle even know if you use Java on the backend? Does it phone home?
suyash 8y ago
Another biased article by Java hater who has no clue what he is talking about. Make Java Great Again!
karianna 8y ago
Hi all - I help run https://adoptopenjdk.net https://adoptopenjdk.net - I genuinely think that the article is spreading some FUD, but I also understand if folks feel strongly about looking at alternatives then you can read the full background https://medium.com/@javachampions/java-is-still-free-c02aef8c9e04 https://medium.com/@javachampions/java-is-still-free-c02aef8... and I'm happy to answer Q's here as well
gst 8y ago
I actually think that is the best long-term approach for all of the parties involved: In the past OpenJDK was missing critical features so that companies often used the commercial closed-source Oracle JDK. At the same time even then Oracle JDK was somewhat of a trap when it comes to licensing, as it included features not covered by the free licence that might be accidentally used by developers. With Java 11 there is finally feature parity: Oracle contributed missing features to OpenJDK. Features that couldn't be contributed (due to licensing issues) were removed from the commercial Oracle JDK. So starting with Java 11 those two versions of the JDK are pretty much equal. With Java 11 there's no reason to use the commercial Oracle JDK. Most of the companies that used the Oracle JDK before are better served by using one of the open-source OpenJDK builds: Either Oracle's OpenJDK build (which is only going to provide support for 6 months after each release), or one of the third-party builds that most likely are also going to track LTS releases such as Azul's Zulu or AdoptOpenJDK. Oracle is very upfront about those changes: When you try to download Java 11+ from Oracle's website there's a huge yellow box with a warning about the license changes. In addition, that box also links to the GPL-licensed OpenJDK version. As a Java developer I'm very happy about that new approach: With the feature parity between OpenJDK and the commercial release it's finally possible to develop and run Java applications on a 100% open-source stack, which is something that was much harder to do with earlier OpenJDK releases.
exabrial 8y ago
Or... Just run openjdk! Problem solved
thomasdullien 8y ago
Perhaps this is a stupid question, and someone please enlighten me - but would not the vast majority of JVM deployments be on either CentOS or Debian-derived base images with good support for an OpenJDK package? I thought that the main differences between OpenJDK and Oracle java was the nicer font rendering and some Swing-ish stuff, is there a good comparison as to why people even use the Oracle Java?

131 points by Garbage 8y ago

I don't know anyone who buys new softwares from Oracle. Only few large companies are going after Oracle new services and software, mostly because some selfish company executives.

pjmlp 8y ago
I am on the other side, the large majority of our customers ride on SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, SAP and there is hardly any plan to move away from them.
- tvbusy 8y ago
  This is the problem with large company. They always "want" the applications to be "enterprise" level. Even if it's just a report generation tool to automate some simple task, use Oracle because they already have a large team that will take care of the database, why use mySQL and risk unforeseen issues down the road? I have even seen a super super tool that simply allow user to go through a questionnaire, which a paper print out will more than likely enough and faster, to be implemented as an Oracle database, with the business logic embedded inside the database, and a super thin UI. User will need to know the correct schema name to use though, because they use schemas for versioning, and it's not like 1.0 and 1.1, it's latest_with_iso_compliace, test_only_production_for_customer_A and beta_for_production or similar.
arethuza 8y ago
"I don't know anyone who buys new softwares from Oracle." I do - I doubt that there are many organisations licensing just the Oracle database these days - I suspect most of their sales are in the ERP/finance areas where there are relatively few competitors. How many competitors are there for Hyperion FM/Planning? Edit: Note that I'm definitely not defending Oracle, but the market for their products is quite complex and much wider than a relational database engine.
- toyg 8y ago
  Do I know you? :) As for competitors to hfm/epm: there are a few (onestream, tagetik, whatever sap is peddling...). But it doesn’t matter, all this thing about auditing will go away when every Oracle customer is forced at gunpoint to move to cloud versions - where they can be squeezed for more money at the touch of a button. Hfm licenses, for example, are basically not sold anymore unless you get special blessing from an Oracle VP; it’s FCCS or nothing.
  - arethuza 8y ago
    Its been ~4 years since I was involved in that area - I know at that time Oracle was trying to recruit some of my colleagues for their cloud team. I don't think anyone took them up on the offer! I did a lot of integration work with HFM for my previous employer - I was actually rather proud of the reporting solution we built on top of HFM, infinitely better than the reporting tools that Oracle provided. I sometimes wish that we'd productized that and sold it!
mhd 8y ago
The enterprise sector is full of this. And why wouldn't it? It's basically never-ending circle of highly-paid consultants, in-house employees with very specific skillsets, never mind corporate kickbacks for devs and their managers. Opening this up would ruin your own revenue. No consultant ever got complaints from his successors for choosing IBM. We look down on what's going on in the pharma industry, but the software world isn't all sunshine and lilies.

jarym 8y ago

Having worked there myself before and leaving in disgust this is definitely how it goes down. Further, I always suspected some kind of dodgy dealing at some clients I’d visit since there’d be an army of their employees who’d be negative about Oracle but always a single big-wig that managed to be super passionate about Oracle. Of course I never found evidence of anything dodgy - just a number of clients where this was a notable pattern.

raverbashing 8y ago
I'm sure some big companies like to make it easier on the higher-ups to accept their products (and the lower class be damned), because that would explain a lot of crap being sold by those "big companies" It would be very interesting if some evidence came to light in an FCPA filing.
wil421 8y ago
I’ve worked at BigCorp(s) and seen similar things but from the other side. Most people absolutely hated oracle from the director who ran the teams to the admins and devs. The only people who liked Oracle were VP and above. They were so short sighted they signed a deal with Oracle after they drastically cut support costs the first year. They were so shocked in year 2 when costs went north of 1 million. Making Oracle much much more expensive than the competitors who also bid. Everyone knew the competitors were less expensive in the long run and actually good products. Not to mention the time they were audited and owed big time due to a webservice sending changes to our ERP system.
vb6lives 8y ago
I've seen the same. We were close to finalizing a sale for a huge company before some non-technical exec insisted on using Oracle for the backend. Then it became a huge sticking point. Our cto joked that he must be getting a kickback.

raesene9 8y ago

When there are so many software options that don't involve buying from companies that use these kind of tactics, it's difficult to see how this will work out for Oracle in the long term. Sure in the short-term they'll rinse companies for large amounts of money, but people tend to remember when that's been done to them, and aren't exactly keen to have it happen again. Whilst I have no direct experience, a quick search indicates that IBM have similar practices. I wonder when/if that'll bleed across into Redhat.

threeseed 8y ago
This practice has been going on for decades. And Oracle isn't close to be the only company. But don't worry you shouldn't feel sympathy for enterprise companies as they are often just as bad as the vendors.
- raesene9 8y ago
  Whilst I may or may not feel sympathy for the companies themselves (although not everyone who uses Oracle software is an "enterprise" by any means), I can feel sympathy for the poor IT teams who would have to deal with a surprise audit from a vendor.
- chris_wot 8y ago
  Has deployments of Oracle software gone up over the long term, or are people beginning to migrate away from Oracle software?
  - threeseed 8y ago
    Just from my limit experience they are very slowly migrating away as they transition from on-premise to the cloud. Not just Oracle but pretty much anything that is standalone software.
pjmlp 8y ago
Easy, Oracle bashers keep forgetting that Oracle and IBM pay the majority of salaries on OpenJDK developers. Then again, there are plenty of other JVMs available since the 2000's, and many customers do pay for them.

pjmlp 8y ago

Intel's newest audit tactic, focusing on illegal installations from VTune, Intel C++, Intel Fortran, .... Want to use commercial software? Pay accordingly. Not wanting to pay for it? Plenty of options available. https://adoptopenjdk.net/ https://adoptopenjdk.net/ https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/ https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/ https://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/ https://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/ https://www.eclipse.org/openj9/ https://www.eclipse.org/openj9/ https://developers.redhat.com/products/openjdk/download/ https://developers.redhat.com/products/openjdk/download/

rickette 8y ago
These are great options. If you don't want to pay up to Oracle. Just use one of the OpenJDK distributions. Java is still free and the JVM is still an amazing piece of tech.
- mort96 8y ago
  Isn't it nicer to just... not use anything related to Oracle though? Oracle still holds a tremendous amount of power over OpenJDK, right? Oracle has also demonstrated in court that the Java API is their intellectual property, and that they are willing to go after people for reimplementing them. OpenJDK might be blessed, but I'd still be afraid of having anything to do with their intellectual property. That's also one of the primary reasons I'm not very excited about ZFS.
  - gst 8y ago
    > Oracle has also demonstrated in court that the Java API is their intellectual property, and that they are willing to go after people for reimplementing them. OpenJDK might be blessed, but I'd still be afraid of having anything to do with their intellectual property. That's also one of the primary reasons I'm not very excited about ZFS. If you use OpenJDK you get an implicit patent grant to run OpenJDK (as it's licensed under the GPL). If you use any other non-OpenJDK runtime you might still violate some of Oracle's patents, but you don't get any patent grant. So if you're concerned about patents then using OpenJDK (instead of not using it) would actually be the safer way to go.

theredbox 8y ago

Oracle wanted to be the apple of enterprise to offer an all in one oracle package that would be deeply integrated but they failed to assess the market. It is not about Oracle not having competitive producta or services but about Oracle being stuck with their thinking in the 1991-2008 era.

dana321 8y ago

Once Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, i became dis-interested in Java all round. I would rather use a programming language not licensed by a huge corporation. The reason they are a huge company is the way they are predatory towards their customers. Probably why sun didn't survive as well, its kind of sad that this is the way of the world.

nicoburns 8y ago
You should give C# a try. It's pretty open these days (bonus: it's a much nicer language than Java)
- thefounder 8y ago
  Or better use Go! It's 100% open/BSD license.
  - mustardo 8y ago
    sigh... I'll just rewrite my 500k LOC products, abandon all of the great open source libraries instead of just using an open JRE https://adoptopenjdk.net/ https://adoptopenjdk.net/ Go fanboys are the worst
    - dana321 8y ago
      Its all still encumbered by patents, its not free. Its "open"
    - currysausage 8y ago
      To be fair, grandfather did write: "I would rather use a programming language not licensed by a huge corporation."
      - mustardo 8y ago
        Isn't Go out of Google...
  - 8y ago

chris_wot 8y ago

Thank goodness LibreOffice split from OpenOffice.org. A true blessing in disguise!

elygre 8y ago

But then the four last sentences say that they don't actually audit so much -- but they will, in five years' time! It’s too soon. Give it five years when you’re stuck in Oracle’s ecosystem and Oracle needs money. Then they’ll start auditing. Right now, there’s so much buzz going on around Java, they don’t have to audit.

brown9-2 8y ago
That’s the trap the author is trying to warn people about falling into.

thecleaner 8y ago

Lets assume that as an individual I want to move away from Java for backend development and currently I use Spring. Is there another ecosystem with a great IDE, type safety (or just type annotations), limits that allow one to not shoot yourself in the foot, a good debugger, memory safety and lastly speed ? Python really shines in most of the above except for the speed part.

jtdev 8y ago
The Python speed issue in my experience is almost never a material concern. It’s fast enough using the CPython reference implementation, and there are numerous options (PyPy, Cython) to squeeze out better performance if you really need it.
djhworld 8y ago
Why not just use openJDK? Seems a bit drastic to do a full rewrite.
- thecleaner 8y ago
  I agree. I wouldn't consider a full re-write but for further development.
erpellan 8y ago
You could look into dart. Take a look at http://aqueduct.io/ http://aqueduct.io/ for an example.
- thosakwe 8y ago
  I have to plug Angel, too: https://angel-dart.github.io/ https://angel-dart.github.io/
patja 8y ago
Sounds like you might be looking for C#, but I'm sure you've considered it already.
zeckalpha 8y ago

nova22033 8y ago

Huh? >That’s why I think Oracle is sort of hedging its bets with Java audits and not going in there as strongly. It’s too soon. Give it five years when you’re stuck in Oracle’s ecosystem and Oracle needs money. Then they’ll start auditing. This is burying the lede...

pron 8y ago

As someone who works at Oracle on the JDK (i.e. OpenJDK), I’d like to point out a couple of things, as the interviewee was someone who directly benefits from any fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding Java (but this is not an official comment, and I speak only for myself): * Under the old BCL license the Oracle JDK was a mix of free and commercial features. Using the commercial features required explicitly turning them on with the flag `-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures`. You could not use them accidentally. Current JDKs no longer contain any commercial features, as explained below. * Starting with JDK 11, Oracle has completed open sourcing the JDK[1], which no longer contains any commercial features. Rather than a mixed free/commercial license, Oracle now offers the same software under two different licenses, the commercial OTN lincense, intended for those who wish to but a support subscription from Oracle, and a free and open-source license, for those who don't[2]. The commercial license download page[3] clearly states the different options: Oracle Customers and ISVs targeting Oracle LTS releases: Oracle JDK is Oracle's supported Java SE version for customers and for developing, testing, prototyping or demonstrating your Java applications. End users and developers looking for free JDK versions: Oracle OpenJDK offers the same features and performance as Oracle JDK under the GPL license (with the non-viral "Classpath Exception") The page also links to the free option. The particular commercial JDK download page[4] also contains a big bright warning and links to the downlad page for the free license. * That Oracle now only offers six months of free support (as oppsoed to before) is misleading. For at least the past seven years, Java had a major release every 3 or so years, and "update releases" (containing substantial new features, but no language or API changes) every six months, plus quarterly security and bug fixes[5]. The releases were also not supported for more than six months, and to be up to date on security, one was always required to upgrade to the semi-annual update releases. What changed recently, due to community demand, is how the features are distributed among the releases. There are no more major Java releases. The last one (ever) was JDK 9. Starting with JDK 10, the semi-annual releases are not major releases but "feature releases," that are allowed to contain API and language changes, but are small, so that instead of a major upgrade every three years, the upgrade process is more gradual (e.g. compare JDK 9, the last major release, with JDK 11, a feature release[6]). The feature releases are therefore somewhere between a major release and an update release but much closer to the latter. While major releases were supported for a number of years and the feature releases only for six months, the feature relases are by no stretch of the imagination major releases. * Similarly sized runtimes/languages -- Apple's Swift/iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's .NET -- are all part of ecosystems entirely or largely under the control of the companies owning the projects, and that generate billions of dollars annually, and so fund the development of the platform. Oracle has no control over the Java ecosystem, and so must fund the development of OpenJDK somehow. This is now done by offering long-term support for some of the feature releases, for companies that don't wish to upgrade to every feature release (in the past the funding came partly through the commercial features, which have now all been open sourced, and the annoying search toolbar that came with the JRE, which is gone now, too). * Oracle employs hundreds of full-time developers who manage the OpenJDK project and contribute the lion's share of OpenJDK development[7]. While Oracle developers will continue to contribute most of the work, including security updates to current OpenJDK versions, they will not commit to backporting those contributions to old feature releases via OpenJDK's "JDK update" projects. Other companies have said they will do that work, so that there will likely be OpenJDK update releases for some feature releases, probably those that correspond to Oracle's LTS versions. Oracle encourages other members of the OpenJDK community to contribute even more. [1] https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for-java-11-and-later https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-rele... [2] http://jdk.java.net/ http://jdk.java.net/ [3] https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/ind... [4] https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk11-downloads-5066655.html https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk... [5] https://java.com/en/download/faq/release_dates.xml https://java.com/en/download/faq/release_dates.xml [6] https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/ https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/ vs. https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/ https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/ [7] https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11-together https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11...

jmartrican 8y ago

I see articles like this and then see a bunch of comments about not wanting to use Java because of Oracle. But these articles are somewhat misleading in that there are free versions of Java out there. I think the authors of said articles just wants to stir the pot. This is old news and not really relevant with all the free alternatives. Even on our Ubuntu builds, when we install Java it's the open jdk variant that gets installed by default.

brown9-2 8y ago
There’s a response to this in the article - those free versions are only supported for 6 months.
- IntelMiner 8y ago
  I think what they mean is OpenJRE, versus Oracle JRE
  - ethbro 8y ago
    To expand: in the waning days of Sun, they open sourced large parts of the Java development kit (JDK). This became OpenJDK, and is GPL v2 licensed (with a linking exception). Initially, not all code was available under a GPL license. Separately at the same time, Apache led the Harmony project to produce an open source implementation of Java SE 5 & 6. This was successful. As time passed, Sun (and maybe Oracle) open sourced more code into OpenJDK, leading to supporters switching from Harmony to OpenJDK. Additionally, Sun made the unfriendly move of licensing the TCK in a way that precluded any non-OpenJDk release from ever being able to claim Java compatibility. In response, Apache resigned from the Java board. And as of 2011, the Harmony project was stopped. Because of the platform-independent goal of Java, there's a lot of ancillary "not-Java, but needed" libraries to build and run Java. These were not all open sourced by Sun / Oracle, but were reimplemented by RedHat under a project called IcedTea. So, in summary, you can run OpenJDK/IcedTea and tell Oracle to pound sand. The primary risk is that Oracle withdraws the things they do still control from the OpenJDK project, or stops working with the project to coordinate new releases. But they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they did.

Chris_Chambers 8y ago

How does Oracle even know if you use Java on the backend? Does it phone home?

suyash 8y ago

Another biased article by Java hater who has no clue what he is talking about. Make Java Great Again!

karianna 8y ago

Hi all - I help run https://adoptopenjdk.net https://adoptopenjdk.net - I genuinely think that the article is spreading some FUD, but I also understand if folks feel strongly about looking at alternatives then you can read the full background https://medium.com/@javachampions/java-is-still-free-c02aef8c9e04 https://medium.com/@javachampions/java-is-still-free-c02aef8... and I'm happy to answer Q's here as well

gst 8y ago

I actually think that is the best long-term approach for all of the parties involved: In the past OpenJDK was missing critical features so that companies often used the commercial closed-source Oracle JDK. At the same time even then Oracle JDK was somewhat of a trap when it comes to licensing, as it included features not covered by the free licence that might be accidentally used by developers. With Java 11 there is finally feature parity: Oracle contributed missing features to OpenJDK. Features that couldn't be contributed (due to licensing issues) were removed from the commercial Oracle JDK. So starting with Java 11 those two versions of the JDK are pretty much equal. With Java 11 there's no reason to use the commercial Oracle JDK. Most of the companies that used the Oracle JDK before are better served by using one of the open-source OpenJDK builds: Either Oracle's OpenJDK build (which is only going to provide support for 6 months after each release), or one of the third-party builds that most likely are also going to track LTS releases such as Azul's Zulu or AdoptOpenJDK. Oracle is very upfront about those changes: When you try to download Java 11+ from Oracle's website there's a huge yellow box with a warning about the license changes. In addition, that box also links to the GPL-licensed OpenJDK version. As a Java developer I'm very happy about that new approach: With the feature parity between OpenJDK and the commercial release it's finally possible to develop and run Java applications on a 100% open-source stack, which is something that was much harder to do with earlier OpenJDK releases.

exabrial 8y ago

Or... Just run openjdk! Problem solved

thomasdullien 8y ago

Perhaps this is a stupid question, and someone please enlighten me - but would not the vast majority of JVM deployments be on either CentOS or Debian-derived base images with good support for an OpenJDK package? I thought that the main differences between OpenJDK and Oracle java was the nicer font rendering and some Swing-ish stuff, is there a good comparison as to why people even use the Oracle Java?