8 ms·
UK unis to cough up to £10M on Java to keep Oracle off their backs
- axus 1y agoCould they use Amazon Corretto instead?
- PeterStuer 1y agoOf course, but making multi-million 'deals' makes them feel important. It's not coming out of their salary anyway.
- 4b11b4 1y agoIt's the end times for Oracle..?
- Iwan-Zotow 1y agoDo not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle
- ninjin 1y agoFrom "Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of Illumos" by Bryan Cantrill at LISA'11 [1]. Utterly amazing talk and I almost feel like it is given a disservice by everyone simply quoting that (albeit great) line. [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc https://youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc
- miles 1y agoThank you for sharing the attribution and link. Quote begins around 38m28s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s
- burnt-resistor 1y agoHe's a 4A: An Asshole Amongst Assholes. That's how Oracle and Microsoft made their fortunes: unrestrained greed.
- CamperBob2 1y agoMore like "lack of effective competition."
- dkbrk 1y agoI actually think that it does a disservice to not go to Nazi allegory, because if I don't use Nazi allegory when referring to Oracle there is some critical understanding that I have left on the table; there is an element of the story that you can't possibly understand. In fact, as I have said before and I emphatically believe, if you had to explain the Nazis to somebody who had never heard of WWII but was an Oracle customer, there's a very good chance that you actually explain the Nazis in Oracle allegory. So, it's like: "Really, wow, a whole country?"; "Yes, Larry Ellison has an entire country"; "Oh my god, the humanity! The License Audits!"; "Yeah, you should talk to Poland about it, it was bad. Bad, it was a blitzkrieg license audit." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79fvDDPaIoY&t=1459s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79fvDDPaIoY&t=1459s
- PeterStuer 1y agoThe actual Nazis went with IBM though. Oracle wasn't born yet. There is a lineage argument as Java built on IBM's CORBA.
- lyu07282 1y agoIt's like that with sarcasm, nobody on the internet understands what an analogy is either.
- charcircuit 1y agoUniversities should be setting a moral standard. They should have never been ilegally using Java in the first place.
- notpushkin 1y agoThey should have never been using (Oracle) Java in the first place.
- revendell_elf 1y ago[dead]
- wiseowise 1y agoThis is probably one of those stupid online jokes, but I’ll bite: what should they use instead?
- charcircuit 1y agoThey should have properly licensed it from the start or have used another runtime.
- wiseowise 1y agoDid you modify your comment? I don’t remember “illegal” part.
- charcircuit 1y agoNo, that comment was unedited. In my other comment I edited "legally licensed" to "properly licensed. "
- bccdee 1y agoThey should set the standard that it's wrong to pay Oracle for anything. That's rewarding bad behaviour. The only problem with what they did is that they ultimately paid Oracle in the end. They should have stolen and then gotten away with it.
- cookiengineer 1y ago[flagged]
- jimbob45 1y agoThere are legitimate use cases where you would want first-party support from Oracle and would be willing to pay for it. I know we clown on those who didn’t just start with OpenJDK but let’s not forget that Oracle actually sells a top-tier product for those who need it.
- cookiengineer 1y agoA top tier product isn't one that changes its licensing terms this way.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoTell that to every bank.
- revendell_elf 1y agoIt's not about Java but Oracle and their shady licencing practice. Java (and it's derivatives) is an amazing language and JVM is nothing short of an engineering miracle. It's highly useful in building reliable enterprise services.
- foobazgt 1y agoThis is so backwards, it's hard not to take it as a troll. There is zero risk to using Java. People standardly use OpenJDK builds, which are freely and widely available under open source licensing (GLPv2 + classpath exception). In regards to maintenance, Java continues to be one of the most highly invested languages in existence.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cookiengineer 1y ago
- animex 1y agoOracle threatened our organization with 10m in fines because of some rogue apps here and there, gave us 5 days to remediate it. I believe they went with a mix of OpenJDK & Corretto. (100k+ org)
- throwaway48476 1y agoDoes anyone block oracle domains to prevent a rogue employee accidentally downloading java?
- trollbridge 1y agoYep!
- tclover 1y agoOur company does this too, but it sucks when you are googling for some info and it’s on oracle page. Still there is no better solution unfortunately
- cstuder 1y agoYes, the previous company I worked at redirected the Oracle download pages to a custom page explaining the problem and offering alternatives. That was nice.
- bapak 1y agoHow bad was the problem that they had to set up a browser extension for this specific problem? It's not something DNS alone can fix due to HSTS
- jjav 1y agoYes, we redirect to Open JDK
- dyl000 1y agoUsing anything from Oracle as a business risk
- gonzo41 1y agoit's surprising that Oracle doesn't see that it has become it's own risk. sure they have a lot of legacy lock in, but who in this day and age is making the choice to buy Oracle.
- wiseowise 1y agoGovernment.
- immibis 1y agoThey make enough sales, so it's obvious from the evidence that their strategy isn't hurting them.
- pyman 1y agoTrue... they're going to squeeze every last cent out of it
- 7952 1y agoYeah surprised they haven't released a paid product to block other Oracle products.
- neilv 1y agoI remember when my university had a relationship with Sun that let us see Java (Oak) early. And then -- given that Java was smart, OO, in the Web browser, going big, and free -- built an intro CS curriculum around it. Like many universities. That history of universities promoting the adoption of Java, and training a generation of Fortune 500 corporate coders in it, has not gone unpunished.
- joaomacp 1y agoUniversities should also have adjusted: Java has been commercial for long now, and there are many other popular, less commercially-aggressive programming languages that would fit curriculum nicely: Python, Golang, etc.
- chii 1y agogolang should not be on the list of corriculums. Neither should any language owned by a corporation. The only language that can be on the list are open standards language that has multiple implementations, and is "free" (as in libre). Not to mention it should be a language that demonstrates an idea - such as python for procedural, haskell for functional, and LISP-likes for well, lisps.
- JetSetIlly 1y agoThe Google version of Go uses a 3-clause BSD like license. There are other implementations besides the one maintained by Google, and there is a complete specification for the language freely available. The language is not owned by Google.
- PeterStuer 1y agoWhy would universities need Oracle Java specifically?
- gavinsyancey 1y agoBecause some students (or teachers), not knowing any better, downloaded it / are using it on the university network. The university has no idea who and no real way to get them to stop.
- HPsquared 1y agoAm I right in thinking this resembles the the "bracelet scam"? A person (in this case a big company) gives you something, acts like it's free, then demands money.
- lmz 1y agoThere's are that are allowed and there are uses that are not allowed by the free license. Not sure how this is different from companies offering e.g. a free database, as long as you don't use it to offer hosting and compete with them.
- lyu07282 1y ago[flagged]
- lmz 1y agoJust saying that "free for certain purposes only with a possible lawsuit for using it in a way we don't like" isn't exclusively an Oracle invention.
- tsimionescu 1y agoIt's not, it's just generally a deceptive business practice. And while others may be doing it in good faith, it's very very very well established by now that Oracle is not. They very specifically do things this way, knowing that it will make it impossible for large orgs to police this, and can then extract money from the org, whether it's really owed or not.
- jakozaur 1y agoIt’s similar to the Oracle database. It's easy to mistakenly use an extra feature, and later, you are hit with non-compliance that can go away with a new purchase. I’m a founder of Quesma to make migrations easier, and regularly hear horror stories. It
- delusional 1y agoI love the idea of a dense foliage of companies that offset the licensing practice of Oracle. It's such and odd and unexpected occurrence, yet I can't think of any other way to eat oracle's lunch. You're basically betting on Oracle being evil, Corporations still buying their product, and those same corporations being surprised when Oracle screws them over. That seems like a sure thing to me.
- eklavya 1y agoThe comments make it sound as if Oracle can just demand money from any Java user. That's not the case, if you were already paying for Oracle Java and support, there seems to have been a change of terms. If you don't need the support, just use openjdk, what's the problem? What's with the insistence on providing something for free or however much you want to pay for it? Get better terms or switch vendors! Java is an abundant ecosystem with multiple paid support providers.
- pjmlp 1y agoI would assume universities had clever enough people to use OpenJDK distributions instead of Oracle Java installers. It is like complaining they are paying for Visual Studio and Apple XCode developer licenses (Apple tax, anual membership, whatever you feel like calling it), instead of using plain GCC or clang. But hey, lets hate Oracle for the universities broken decision making process.
- kstrauser 1y agoI think it’s ok to tsk at both parties. The universities should’ve known better, and Oracle shouldn’t have gone after them even if they’re technically allowed to. I mean, I know the latter is like getting mad at a dog for eating a steak laying on the floor. That’s just what they do. But still.
- palmfacehn 1y agoI imagine if they had a preinstalled OpenJDK policy, they'd be stuck on a horribly out of date version.
- wiseowise 1y agoYou have Java software, you need Java, you say “Download Java”, first link is on Java.com which owned by Oracle. When you open the link there’s zero mention of potential million fees for using it. Oracle is doing scummy business here, just acknowledge it.
- jmyeet 1y agoI heard a story (unconfirmed) that at the time Oracle was buying Sun, it was pretty obvious that owning Java then suing people, most notably Google, was the whole point. Google not buying Sun may go down as one of their poorest decisions. I mean rumor has it, Google offered $6 billion to buy GroupOn (which they turned down). If GroupOn is worth $6B (it isn't) then owning Java is worth $7.5B. I suspect Google believed they had an implicit license from Sun to use Java on Android, otherwise this was a massive licensing failure. While Sun still existed, even buying a token license would've been cheap. Now Google ultimately prevailed in their lawsuit setting an important precedent but at what cost? It was over a decade of uncertainty and cost who knows how much in legal fees. And while it was ongoing, Android was under a cloud and Google had to abandon a bunch of things it was otherwise doing with Java. Oracle is just the worst.
- geokon 1y agoI'm not super versed in the detailed, but as a result haven't Android's Java and OpenJDK diverged substantially at this point? As far as I understand you can't just run Java code (post version 8 I think) on Android. It's why you can't for instance write a Clojure app for Android. Maybe someone who knows more could fill in the details
- biorach 1y agoThe legal fees were small change to Google
- croes 1y agoLet’s think about Cory Doctorow‘s idea about IP rights https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/ https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/
- hardwaresofton 1y agoCan anyone who still uses Java opine a bit on where it's better to use Oracle versus OpenJDK?
- philipwhiuk 1y agoOpenJDK isn’t a thing you can get. What you get is a distribution of OpenJDK, one of which is by Oracle. There’s also one by RedHat and by Eclipse and others. You may be thinking of the Hotspot JVM and the answer is that Hotspot offers negligible difference and I’m not sure even exists for the later versions of Java. If you use Oracle OpenJDK in production (past a specific patch point for some versions) to the best of my knowledge you are probably still on the hook for the licensing fees. (They allow it in development in order to get you to use it in production at which point the lawyers pounce). At my company we use RedHat OpenJDK on RedHat VMs and Eclipse Temurin OpenJDK in docker containers. (Other JVMs include Graal (also owned by Oracle)).
- hardwaresofton 1y agoThanks for the explanation -- back when I wrote Java, it was a choice between "Oracle Java" (i.e. Oracle JDK) and the OpenJDK -- where you downloaded was different and what you agreed to download was different. > If you use Oracle OpenJDK in production to the best of my knowledge you are probably still on the hook for the licensing fees. I'd be surprised by this but I guess that is par for the course. > At my company we use RedHat OpenJDK on RedHat VMs and Eclipse Temurin OpenJDK in docker containers. Thanks for clarifying -- do you find any differences that were important? Or is it more you've never needed the Oracle distribution so you never had reason to find out? I'm just wondering why anyone would choose Oracle's distribution in this day and age. Who are their main customers that are happy to be customers?
- joshuaissac 1y agoOpenJDK includes HotSpot and the class libraries. OpenJDK licences do not cost money, even if you use the one from Oracle past a certain patch point. Builds of OpenJDK from other vendors like Red Hat and Microsoft are based on the OpenJDK source code from Oracle. Oracle JDK is the non-free version that shares the same code base as OpenJDK. Oracle provides a restricted licence for this build, under which it is free to use in certain cases, up until specific patches. Later patches (usually a few years after the initial release date) require a licence fee. This does not apply to Oracle OpenJDK, which is released under the GPL. If you want to avoid HotSpot altogether, the other options include Graal (used with OpenJDK class libraries), IBM OpenJ9 and IKVM.NET.
- Havoc 1y agoPay the money. Make it day 1 case study in CS class on why selecting your tech stack carefully matters. Can probably use it for law classes too. And ethics.
- blu3h4t 1y agoWhen I first time had Linux class twenty years ago at a secondary school first thing the often gentoo ltsp server compiling teacher told us was how he wrote a bookkeeping program using some proprietary tech and then had to pay so much for like the rest of his life that it wasn’t funny at all, Now I know firsthand why rms calls cellphones tracking devices etc We are in the Middle Ages of software or something :D
- pyman 1y agoSame thing happens in Latin America with Microsoft. They give schools free Windows licenses, so we're expected to teach students how to code using C# instead of Python