4 ms·

Just so that people understand, OpenJDK is the name of Oracle's implementation of Java, to which Red Hat, SAP, Intel, Azul, Google, Twitter and others contribut

by pron 6y ago

Just so that people understand, OpenJDK is the name of Oracle's implementation of Java, to which Red Hat, SAP, Intel, Azul, Google, Twitter and others contribute, but Oracle contributes ~90% of the work. "Oracle JDK" is Oracle's support subscription, but the source code to that software is OpenJDK. A couple of years ago Oracle completed open-sourcing the entire JDK, making the JDK fully free and open source for the first time in Java's history, and now it offers no proprietary features. It also started focusing more on, and shifting people's attention to, the OpenJDK brand. Because Oracle owns the OpenJDK code, only Oracle and companies that license the OpenJDK source code under a proprietary license from Oracle, like Azul, can release closed-source implementations of the JDK that are based on OpenJDK. (I work at Oracle on Java, i.e. OpenJDK)

syrrim 6y ago
If others contribute to it, how can oracle license it to azul?
- pron 6y ago
  Like other large open-source projects by Google, Microsoft and others, contributors sign a contributor's agreement that gives Oracle joint ownership. This means that, in addition to the GPL license, either you or Oracle can license that code as you or they please. This is a fairly standard practice.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
- Cullinet 6y ago
  there's so much confusion about this maybe a analogy, loath as I am, may help : call a architect and construction management company Oracle and a contractor interior designer / HVAC specialist Azul providing specific undertakings to complete a number of the apartments in different specifications from the Oracle standard. To obtain the opportunity to sell individual apartments for profit in the condo, Azul undertakes to complete a amount of general labor throughout the construction project. The two agreeing to build a condo both will both let apartments therein, however regardless of what proportionate contribution and value of labor Azul provides, the title absolute and whole equity demise to Oracle because there would be no project without Oracle. Hereby Azul are being paid for all their contributing work with the concession and ability to sublet their allocated apartments with variations in specifications independently and without any lien to Oracle once their part is done. Oracle being the project lead and majority financiers, contracted to retain the option of applying the same specifications and features built by Azul to their wholly owned apartments. of course the analogy breaks there because in software applying the Azul spec to more properties doesn't cost additional labor. Such is the intrinsic and amazing value of leading valuable software initiatives. I'm tempted to suspect that my analogy makes visible to see a unfortunate development in popular opinion concerning software that has emerged in this century : like with property there seems to be intrinsically personal and non objective assumption of illicit and unseen practices at work in creating the accrual to the capital investor which is their whole and fundamentally natural right to receive and enjoy. this worries me because it effectively co-opts the incredible natural beauty and value of software : labor free replication and reuse. I will go so far as - only because of the contexts in which I have recently been caused to defend / explain the economics, which have been not pleasant experiences - to say that this is a terrifying and insidious assault on the most important advance of capitalism itself. with the Times of London in 2018 revealing the record shows Harold Wilson when Prime Minister in 1958 was permitted to receive a prize for poetry composition awarded by the Soviet GDR of £20,000 then that would have bought properties worth over ten million pounds today... Wilson and May and Johnson all unelected and May creating laws for internal passport and visa civilian movement control only after the maximum 3 statutory refusals by Parliament (Lords rejecting) to pass the law before prerogative force majeur was used to force the legislation that devolved the entire legislation and executive implementation of British law to secret meetings without any reporting rules of any two members of the privy council... the last points you can research at statewatch.org and I must say that I profoundly wish I was inventing this but everything is entirely public information, as is how shortly after that "prize" award, Wilson told a delegation representing all Jewish members of Parliament who sought advice after the security services confirmed their relatives in Soviet counties were credibly threatened and being bullied to seek to cause a reversal to the British position on Palestine which wasn't to grant independence and create Israel at all. I never remember his Foreign Secretary of the time but if you find his long out of print memoir the names are named and it's fully revealed by the highest office concerned. and to this day people wonder why there's anti semitism rampant in the Labour Party. no shoot Sherlock, after Wilson slapped the official secrets act to conceal him throwing the members to the wind without any support or advice, obviously their colleagues considered the en bloc vote face to be treasonous betrayal. We're hiding known public history despite doing so causing incredible tension and racism and intolerance and neutering the only constitutional opposition party we have.. full disclosure : I'm child of a father born 1907 and my uncle who taught me to code b.1900 the one a banker and spy during the war and uncle director of the war office, so I grew up with traditional transatlantic political values that simply no longer exist for at least 30 years. I remember when Bangladesh made the core memory for the PDPs. Which stopped in 80 when Zia demanded Bangladesh cut off for Pakistan to support the CIA in Afghanistan. Samsung only opened a factory in Bangladesh 2 years ago at last. it shouldn't have been so grim and the betrayals are worse than there's time for a book how Britain throws people to the wolves to the advantage of the Soviet initiative. if you don't believe that continues, read the very good Buzz feed series on the assassinations in Britain and how May personally riled the USA and France to high heaven when she declared investigations into obviously professional hits shut and suicide despite a orgy of comic book evidence taunting the question "you can't work out how we did this ". I'm very grateful that critical parts of the software world remain American, as result, no matter how much I want to reintroduce the UK to its balls.
- Cullinet 6y ago
  genuine question: is there demand for a book in plain English describing the circumstances surrounding the constitution of the major software ecosystems in current use? because I am looking for a writing project and I have two decades of experience in IP law acting for my very small company in fields from advertising and trade dress and international trademark thru music royalties and as far as the limits of conceptual reduction for algorithm invention protection. I've put the proposal this became in my profile because I am imminently relaunching my 25 years old business as a education trust foundation for publishing technology and other works with radically improved economics especially for independent students not attending recognised institutions and the simply curious public for who I am going to publish plain English works about critically misunderstood technology initially financed by income from commercial rights I'm transferring.. this means that I can back up what I'm pondering here and back it up with some considerable preparation and immediately available support for anyone who thinks this is perfect lock down occupation and not charitable occupation I am not ever going to accept gifted writing or art under any circumstances nor will I ever pay below market / union. the very purposes of my work for years soon launching is to illuminate the media industry with open intelligible and easily operable legal mechanics and provide the lowest cost tools possible while retaining absolutely every possible revenue for the creator. I had better submit this instead of fretting about being moded down and how late I am with launching my foundation properly but this whole sub thread has screamed it is the very precise target for the most urgent need for clarity which I am set about providing already in other fields in readiness now and so it just feels wrong thinking about cutting out what I've said especially since its definitely not any form of promotion and I guess ironic trying to solve misunderstanding about licensing using a publishing organisation founded on another copy left licence agreement condition. I simply had gotten to be incapable to look at the screen any time I started reading another frustrated report about the poor state of open source software documentation and I looked around at all the brilliant efforts freely available but only on the Web and wondered what I have to do to make the already written good works provide for the development of the missing works desperately needed.. and I will shortly find out how good my solution really is check my profile if curious further...
Alupis 6y ago
This isn't true anymore. OpenJDK source is all GPL, except for any special bits that Oracle retained for their own JDK offering. A little over a year ago, Oracle stepped back as the "standard" JDK and became just another JDK vendor. Anyone is free to take OpenJDK sources, compile and offer prebuilt binaries now.
- pron 6y ago
  Yes, Oracle open sourced its entire JDK project, i.e. OpenJDK, but while anyone can offer builds under the GPL's license, Oracle and its licensees can publish builds under a proprietary license. Oracle hasn't stepped back from anything, and, in fact, has only increased its investment. OpenJDK is the Oracle implementation. We've just shifted branding focus to the OpenJDK brand rather than the "Oracle JDK" brand, which is now the name of a support subscription.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    We could be splitting hairs here - but Oracle has indeed stepped back from being the "official" offering. Each new LTS JDK release gets a "caretaker" which provides the "official" OpenJDK build for that release. Azul gets a turn, Oracle gets a turn, etc. This is a stark contrast to pre-JDK9 where Oracle was the only "official" build. Starting with JDK9, the licensing for an Oracle-provided JDK got a lot more murky, which seems to have been on purpose (to push Oracle into a support position instead of leader position). It cleared the way for Oracle to be "just another vendor offering paid support" along with IBM, Red Hat, AdoptOpenJDK, Azul, Amazon, etc. This transition was started around OpenJDK7, where Oracle made a lot of effort to make OpenJDK the "upstream" and "reference" implementation for all other JDK's and the language specification. While many OpenJDK contributors are on the payroll of Oracle, it wouldn't be fair to say they are steering the entire ship at this point, nor does anyone require a license agreement to offer OpenJDK binaries - with the exception of actually calling it "OpenJDK" (see agreement above for "sharing" LTS releases) - hence "AdoptOpenJDK" and "Zulu JDK", etc... all OpenJDK builds that don't call themselves OpenJDK. It was one of the more surprising things Oracle has done in years... and many applauded the changes.

by pron 6y ago

syrrim 6y ago

If others contribute to it, how can oracle license it to azul?

pron 6y ago
Like other large open-source projects by Google, Microsoft and others, contributors sign a contributor's agreement that gives Oracle joint ownership. This means that, in addition to the GPL license, either you or Oracle can license that code as you or they please. This is a fairly standard practice.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
Cullinet 6y ago
there's so much confusion about this maybe a analogy, loath as I am, may help : call a architect and construction management company Oracle and a contractor interior designer / HVAC specialist Azul providing specific undertakings to complete a number of the apartments in different specifications from the Oracle standard. To obtain the opportunity to sell individual apartments for profit in the condo, Azul undertakes to complete a amount of general labor throughout the construction project. The two agreeing to build a condo both will both let apartments therein, however regardless of what proportionate contribution and value of labor Azul provides, the title absolute and whole equity demise to Oracle because there would be no project without Oracle. Hereby Azul are being paid for all their contributing work with the concession and ability to sublet their allocated apartments with variations in specifications independently and without any lien to Oracle once their part is done. Oracle being the project lead and majority financiers, contracted to retain the option of applying the same specifications and features built by Azul to their wholly owned apartments. of course the analogy breaks there because in software applying the Azul spec to more properties doesn't cost additional labor. Such is the intrinsic and amazing value of leading valuable software initiatives. I'm tempted to suspect that my analogy makes visible to see a unfortunate development in popular opinion concerning software that has emerged in this century : like with property there seems to be intrinsically personal and non objective assumption of illicit and unseen practices at work in creating the accrual to the capital investor which is their whole and fundamentally natural right to receive and enjoy. this worries me because it effectively co-opts the incredible natural beauty and value of software : labor free replication and reuse. I will go so far as - only because of the contexts in which I have recently been caused to defend / explain the economics, which have been not pleasant experiences - to say that this is a terrifying and insidious assault on the most important advance of capitalism itself. with the Times of London in 2018 revealing the record shows Harold Wilson when Prime Minister in 1958 was permitted to receive a prize for poetry composition awarded by the Soviet GDR of £20,000 then that would have bought properties worth over ten million pounds today... Wilson and May and Johnson all unelected and May creating laws for internal passport and visa civilian movement control only after the maximum 3 statutory refusals by Parliament (Lords rejecting) to pass the law before prerogative force majeur was used to force the legislation that devolved the entire legislation and executive implementation of British law to secret meetings without any reporting rules of any two members of the privy council... the last points you can research at statewatch.org and I must say that I profoundly wish I was inventing this but everything is entirely public information, as is how shortly after that "prize" award, Wilson told a delegation representing all Jewish members of Parliament who sought advice after the security services confirmed their relatives in Soviet counties were credibly threatened and being bullied to seek to cause a reversal to the British position on Palestine which wasn't to grant independence and create Israel at all. I never remember his Foreign Secretary of the time but if you find his long out of print memoir the names are named and it's fully revealed by the highest office concerned. and to this day people wonder why there's anti semitism rampant in the Labour Party. no shoot Sherlock, after Wilson slapped the official secrets act to conceal him throwing the members to the wind without any support or advice, obviously their colleagues considered the en bloc vote face to be treasonous betrayal. We're hiding known public history despite doing so causing incredible tension and racism and intolerance and neutering the only constitutional opposition party we have.. full disclosure : I'm child of a father born 1907 and my uncle who taught me to code b.1900 the one a banker and spy during the war and uncle director of the war office, so I grew up with traditional transatlantic political values that simply no longer exist for at least 30 years. I remember when Bangladesh made the core memory for the PDPs. Which stopped in 80 when Zia demanded Bangladesh cut off for Pakistan to support the CIA in Afghanistan. Samsung only opened a factory in Bangladesh 2 years ago at last. it shouldn't have been so grim and the betrayals are worse than there's time for a book how Britain throws people to the wolves to the advantage of the Soviet initiative. if you don't believe that continues, read the very good Buzz feed series on the assassinations in Britain and how May personally riled the USA and France to high heaven when she declared investigations into obviously professional hits shut and suicide despite a orgy of comic book evidence taunting the question "you can't work out how we did this ". I'm very grateful that critical parts of the software world remain American, as result, no matter how much I want to reintroduce the UK to its balls.
Cullinet 6y ago
genuine question: is there demand for a book in plain English describing the circumstances surrounding the constitution of the major software ecosystems in current use? because I am looking for a writing project and I have two decades of experience in IP law acting for my very small company in fields from advertising and trade dress and international trademark thru music royalties and as far as the limits of conceptual reduction for algorithm invention protection. I've put the proposal this became in my profile because I am imminently relaunching my 25 years old business as a education trust foundation for publishing technology and other works with radically improved economics especially for independent students not attending recognised institutions and the simply curious public for who I am going to publish plain English works about critically misunderstood technology initially financed by income from commercial rights I'm transferring.. this means that I can back up what I'm pondering here and back it up with some considerable preparation and immediately available support for anyone who thinks this is perfect lock down occupation and not charitable occupation I am not ever going to accept gifted writing or art under any circumstances nor will I ever pay below market / union. the very purposes of my work for years soon launching is to illuminate the media industry with open intelligible and easily operable legal mechanics and provide the lowest cost tools possible while retaining absolutely every possible revenue for the creator. I had better submit this instead of fretting about being moded down and how late I am with launching my foundation properly but this whole sub thread has screamed it is the very precise target for the most urgent need for clarity which I am set about providing already in other fields in readiness now and so it just feels wrong thinking about cutting out what I've said especially since its definitely not any form of promotion and I guess ironic trying to solve misunderstanding about licensing using a publishing organisation founded on another copy left licence agreement condition. I simply had gotten to be incapable to look at the screen any time I started reading another frustrated report about the poor state of open source software documentation and I looked around at all the brilliant efforts freely available but only on the Web and wondered what I have to do to make the already written good works provide for the development of the missing works desperately needed.. and I will shortly find out how good my solution really is check my profile if curious further...

Alupis 6y ago

This isn't true anymore. OpenJDK source is all GPL, except for any special bits that Oracle retained for their own JDK offering. A little over a year ago, Oracle stepped back as the "standard" JDK and became just another JDK vendor. Anyone is free to take OpenJDK sources, compile and offer prebuilt binaries now.

pron 6y ago
Yes, Oracle open sourced its entire JDK project, i.e. OpenJDK, but while anyone can offer builds under the GPL's license, Oracle and its licensees can publish builds under a proprietary license. Oracle hasn't stepped back from anything, and, in fact, has only increased its investment. OpenJDK is the Oracle implementation. We've just shifted branding focus to the OpenJDK brand rather than the "Oracle JDK" brand, which is now the name of a support subscription.
- Alupis 6y ago
  We could be splitting hairs here - but Oracle has indeed stepped back from being the "official" offering. Each new LTS JDK release gets a "caretaker" which provides the "official" OpenJDK build for that release. Azul gets a turn, Oracle gets a turn, etc. This is a stark contrast to pre-JDK9 where Oracle was the only "official" build. Starting with JDK9, the licensing for an Oracle-provided JDK got a lot more murky, which seems to have been on purpose (to push Oracle into a support position instead of leader position). It cleared the way for Oracle to be "just another vendor offering paid support" along with IBM, Red Hat, AdoptOpenJDK, Azul, Amazon, etc. This transition was started around OpenJDK7, where Oracle made a lot of effort to make OpenJDK the "upstream" and "reference" implementation for all other JDK's and the language specification. While many OpenJDK contributors are on the payroll of Oracle, it wouldn't be fair to say they are steering the entire ship at this point, nor does anyone require a license agreement to offer OpenJDK binaries - with the exception of actually calling it "OpenJDK" (see agreement above for "sharing" LTS releases) - hence "AdoptOpenJDK" and "Zulu JDK", etc... all OpenJDK builds that don't call themselves OpenJDK. It was one of the more surprising things Oracle has done in years... and many applauded the changes.