5 ms·

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 pi

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.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    I think GP is pointing out that it would be far safer to not use Java in the first place. One day Oracle could decide to kill OpenJDK, and since they have a history of aggression towards non-Oracle distributions of Java you would be trapped if you depend on Java.
    - gst 8y ago
      There are already lots of non-Oracle distributions of OpenJDK: Azul's Zulu, AdoptOpenJDK, Amazon's Corretto and I'm not aware of any aggression towards those projects. The lawsuit against Google targets an implementation that didn't derive from OpenJDK and is thus not covered by any of the patent grants. Furthermore, OpenJDK is licensed under the GPL. Even if Oracle stopped contributing to OpenJDK the GPL license would ensure that OpenJDK and all derivative works can still be freely distributed and are still subject to Oracle's original implicit patent grant.
      - mort96 8y ago
        > There are already lots of non-Oracle distributions of OpenJDK: Azul's Zulu, AdoptOpenJDK, Amazon's Corretto and I'm not aware of any aggression towards those projects. I don't see how that's relevant? I wasn't aware of any aggression towards Google, until Oracle suddenly decided to aggress. The fact that Oracle hasn't been aggressive towards non-Oracle OpenJDK distributions in the past doesn't mean they won't be aggressive in the future.
        pron 8y ago
        OpenJDK is licensed by Oracle under an open source license (and Google has made use of this license, and even internally forked OpenJDK, both during the trial and now). The court trial was over an unlicensed use of Java (Google claimed they didn't need a license because the APIs weren't Oracle's to license, but in any event, that lawsuit has absolutely nothing to do with OpenJDK).
        mort96 8y ago
        Oh, that wasn't intended as an argument that OpenJDK is unsafe, I was just asking why it's relevant that Oracle hasn't shown aggression towards non-Oracle OpenJDK distributions yet, when nobody has brought up concerns about how Oracle already is aggressive towards OpenJDK distributions. I can probably agree that Oracle is relatively unlikely to start coming after people for patent infringement related to using OpenJDK or forks thereof, when OpenJDK is licensed under a license with a patent grant. My biggest concern is just that Oracle seems like a thoroughly evil and unpredictable company, and I wouldn't like to use technology they own and which uses patents they own. I wouldn't have imagined that Oracle would ever come after people for re-implementing their API; I can't imagine what Oracle will do in the future, but I won't build a business or institution around the assumption that they will do nothing. It's not like there aren't a plethora of other solutions for anything developed by Oracle, most of which are better than Oracle's alternatives.
DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
> JVM is still an amazing piece of tech It’s hard to say that when we’re still clamouring for generics without type-erasure. It’s been over 14 years since the CLR had it and it’s definitely holding back the Java ecosystem in my opinion.
- RhodesianHunter 8y ago
  That's a Java thing, not a JVM thing. Try Kotlin for example.
  - mruts 8y ago
    That’s not true. Type erasure is certainly a part of the JVM. I’m not familiar with Kotlin but maybe it does automatic type tagging? But in response to GP, type erasure sucks and makes a lot of things harder.
    - pron 8y ago
      > Type erasure is certainly a part of the JVM No, it is not. Most JVM languages (except Ceylon, I think) choose to erase generics, as that's the right thing to do if you want good polyglot interop.
      - mruts 8y ago
        No, I mean that the JVM itself doesn’t have opcodes for storing generics type info. Hence why it was done for backward compatability, they didn’t need to add or change instructions.
        pron 8y ago
        That's incorrect. You could specialize classes on the fly (and the opcodes for all reference types are the same, anyway). It's just that it's a bad idea to reify generics of reference (and so subtypable) types. You gain little and lose much.

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.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  I think GP is pointing out that it would be far safer to not use Java in the first place. One day Oracle could decide to kill OpenJDK, and since they have a history of aggression towards non-Oracle distributions of Java you would be trapped if you depend on Java.
  - gst 8y ago
    There are already lots of non-Oracle distributions of OpenJDK: Azul's Zulu, AdoptOpenJDK, Amazon's Corretto and I'm not aware of any aggression towards those projects. The lawsuit against Google targets an implementation that didn't derive from OpenJDK and is thus not covered by any of the patent grants. Furthermore, OpenJDK is licensed under the GPL. Even if Oracle stopped contributing to OpenJDK the GPL license would ensure that OpenJDK and all derivative works can still be freely distributed and are still subject to Oracle's original implicit patent grant.
    - mort96 8y ago
      > There are already lots of non-Oracle distributions of OpenJDK: Azul's Zulu, AdoptOpenJDK, Amazon's Corretto and I'm not aware of any aggression towards those projects. I don't see how that's relevant? I wasn't aware of any aggression towards Google, until Oracle suddenly decided to aggress. The fact that Oracle hasn't been aggressive towards non-Oracle OpenJDK distributions in the past doesn't mean they won't be aggressive in the future.
      - pron 8y ago
        OpenJDK is licensed by Oracle under an open source license (and Google has made use of this license, and even internally forked OpenJDK, both during the trial and now). The court trial was over an unlicensed use of Java (Google claimed they didn't need a license because the APIs weren't Oracle's to license, but in any event, that lawsuit has absolutely nothing to do with OpenJDK).
        mort96 8y ago
        Oh, that wasn't intended as an argument that OpenJDK is unsafe, I was just asking why it's relevant that Oracle hasn't shown aggression towards non-Oracle OpenJDK distributions yet, when nobody has brought up concerns about how Oracle already is aggressive towards OpenJDK distributions. I can probably agree that Oracle is relatively unlikely to start coming after people for patent infringement related to using OpenJDK or forks thereof, when OpenJDK is licensed under a license with a patent grant. My biggest concern is just that Oracle seems like a thoroughly evil and unpredictable company, and I wouldn't like to use technology they own and which uses patents they own. I wouldn't have imagined that Oracle would ever come after people for re-implementing their API; I can't imagine what Oracle will do in the future, but I won't build a business or institution around the assumption that they will do nothing. It's not like there aren't a plethora of other solutions for anything developed by Oracle, most of which are better than Oracle's alternatives.

DaiPlusPlus 8y ago

> JVM is still an amazing piece of tech It’s hard to say that when we’re still clamouring for generics without type-erasure. It’s been over 14 years since the CLR had it and it’s definitely holding back the Java ecosystem in my opinion.

RhodesianHunter 8y ago
That's a Java thing, not a JVM thing. Try Kotlin for example.
- mruts 8y ago
  That’s not true. Type erasure is certainly a part of the JVM. I’m not familiar with Kotlin but maybe it does automatic type tagging? But in response to GP, type erasure sucks and makes a lot of things harder.
  - pron 8y ago
    > Type erasure is certainly a part of the JVM No, it is not. Most JVM languages (except Ceylon, I think) choose to erase generics, as that's the right thing to do if you want good polyglot interop.
    - mruts 8y ago
      No, I mean that the JVM itself doesn’t have opcodes for storing generics type info. Hence why it was done for backward compatability, they didn’t need to add or change instructions.
      - pron 8y ago
        That's incorrect. You could specialize classes on the fly (and the opcodes for all reference types are the same, anyway). It's just that it's a bad idea to reify generics of reference (and so subtypable) types. You gain little and lose much.