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Yes. You can just use the latest OpenJDK. That's the open source version. But the enterprises want to use the Oracle version. Which they can, but they would ha

Yes. You can just use the latest OpenJDK. That's the open source version. But the enterprises want to use the Oracle version. Which they can, but they would have to pay for it. So, I assume, most of the hullabaloo is about Oracle charging for their JVM. Essentially, for whatever reason, there are people who don't like open source. So they don't want to use the open source JVM.

pron 8y ago
Enterprises would have to pay only if they want to buy support from Oracle. Oracle provides the JDK, without support, 100% free, for any use: http://jdk.java.net/ http://jdk.java.net/
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  Well, yeah. I was just assuming that the enterprises must want support? Because why else would they be so up in arms? As you correctly pointed out, they can download and use Oracle's JDK for free. So if they don't want support, then I really have no idea at all why they are raising such a stink?
huffstler 8y ago
I work in an organization that has bought support for Java (11, I think). Your comment is technically correct, but doesn't capture the whole situation I believe. We use OpenJDK11 currently. The reason we're buying support is because bug fixes and backports END for JDK11 once JDK12 is (already was) released. If you want security/bug fixes, you'll need to upgrade your application to the new JDK every 6 months. For a team like ours (~8) people, it's simply not viable for us to be in a state of continual upgrading. We wouldn't get anything else accomplished. Our job is to provide value to the business, not be stuck in perpetual runtime upgrades. Buying the license allows us time between upgrading JDK versions so that we can target jdk11 for new applications. For quite some time after jdk11 was released there was also a prevalent opinion by some of the more senior members on the team that Oracle was going to be gimping the OpenJDK release in some way or another. Even after being shown that that wasn't the case we had _multiple_ meetings where it was discussed that we shouldn't migrate to OpenJDK because of bugs that "existed in there, that don't in Oracle build". This is most certainly due to historical reasons, and I don't blame them for thinking it. I can't speak to why we don't rely on other LTS options, I was not a part of the meetings that decided our actions. Ideally, we would rely on something like adoptopenjdk, but the powers that be decided to pay Oracle instead.
- eropple 8y ago
  So I have been in Java versioning hell before, and I empathize--but that was, like, Java 5 to 6. My experiences with Java since then have been almost completely seamless. So, this may be a silly question, but I'd be curious: what is so disruptive to your workflow that upgrading a JDK, running your test suite under instrumentation to smoke out incompatibilities and noticeable perf/memory/etc. regressions, and deploying it would cause you to not "get anything else accomplished"?
  - nradov 8y ago
    I can't speak for the OP, but from what I've seen in other organizations a reluctance to upgrade JDK versions usually indicates a lack of confidence in their test automation suite. If they can't be confident that their tests will catch regression defects then a JDK upgrade seems risky and requires planning ahead for a major manual testing effort. This is just one area where getting to 100% automated functional testing delivers huge benefits.
    - huffstler 8y ago
      Pretty much right on the nose. As I mentioned elsewhere, testing is not required where I work. As such, there's no guarantee that upgrades to JDK won't break something behind the scenes now only to blow up later in production.
  - huffstler 8y ago
    That assumes we have (any) tests, or benchmarks to refer to. Plus, we have a decent amount of legacy java apps (java 6 - 7) and we'd be going straight to 11. On the project I'm on now, it's not a smooth transition.
    - eropple 8y ago
      I mean, yes, it does. But at that point...maybe you need it? :-/ (I know, politics. But also, sustainability.)
  - 8y ago
itronitron 8y ago
One of my previous employers, which happens to be exceedingly risk averse, switched to OpenJDK (and away from Oracle) for just this reason. Generally speaking, if someone is sufficiently paranoid, it doesn't matter which JVM they are using as their systems will be secured in other ways.

pron 8y ago

Enterprises would have to pay only if they want to buy support from Oracle. Oracle provides the JDK, without support, 100% free, for any use: http://jdk.java.net/ http://jdk.java.net/

bilbo0s 8y ago
Well, yeah. I was just assuming that the enterprises must want support? Because why else would they be so up in arms? As you correctly pointed out, they can download and use Oracle's JDK for free. So if they don't want support, then I really have no idea at all why they are raising such a stink?

huffstler 8y ago

I work in an organization that has bought support for Java (11, I think). Your comment is technically correct, but doesn't capture the whole situation I believe. We use OpenJDK11 currently. The reason we're buying support is because bug fixes and backports END for JDK11 once JDK12 is (already was) released. If you want security/bug fixes, you'll need to upgrade your application to the new JDK every 6 months. For a team like ours (~8) people, it's simply not viable for us to be in a state of continual upgrading. We wouldn't get anything else accomplished. Our job is to provide value to the business, not be stuck in perpetual runtime upgrades. Buying the license allows us time between upgrading JDK versions so that we can target jdk11 for new applications. For quite some time after jdk11 was released there was also a prevalent opinion by some of the more senior members on the team that Oracle was going to be gimping the OpenJDK release in some way or another. Even after being shown that that wasn't the case we had _multiple_ meetings where it was discussed that we shouldn't migrate to OpenJDK because of bugs that "existed in there, that don't in Oracle build". This is most certainly due to historical reasons, and I don't blame them for thinking it. I can't speak to why we don't rely on other LTS options, I was not a part of the meetings that decided our actions. Ideally, we would rely on something like adoptopenjdk, but the powers that be decided to pay Oracle instead.

eropple 8y ago
So I have been in Java versioning hell before, and I empathize--but that was, like, Java 5 to 6. My experiences with Java since then have been almost completely seamless. So, this may be a silly question, but I'd be curious: what is so disruptive to your workflow that upgrading a JDK, running your test suite under instrumentation to smoke out incompatibilities and noticeable perf/memory/etc. regressions, and deploying it would cause you to not "get anything else accomplished"?
- nradov 8y ago
  I can't speak for the OP, but from what I've seen in other organizations a reluctance to upgrade JDK versions usually indicates a lack of confidence in their test automation suite. If they can't be confident that their tests will catch regression defects then a JDK upgrade seems risky and requires planning ahead for a major manual testing effort. This is just one area where getting to 100% automated functional testing delivers huge benefits.
  - huffstler 8y ago
    Pretty much right on the nose. As I mentioned elsewhere, testing is not required where I work. As such, there's no guarantee that upgrades to JDK won't break something behind the scenes now only to blow up later in production.
- huffstler 8y ago
  That assumes we have (any) tests, or benchmarks to refer to. Plus, we have a decent amount of legacy java apps (java 6 - 7) and we'd be going straight to 11. On the project I'm on now, it's not a smooth transition.
  - eropple 8y ago
    I mean, yes, it does. But at that point...maybe you need it? :-/ (I know, politics. But also, sustainability.)
- 8y ago

itronitron 8y ago

One of my previous employers, which happens to be exceedingly risk averse, switched to OpenJDK (and away from Oracle) for just this reason. Generally speaking, if someone is sufficiently paranoid, it doesn't matter which JVM they are using as their systems will be secured in other ways.