10 ms·

And a thank you to Oracle for being a good steward of the language.

by panny 1y ago

reactordev 1y ago
[flagged]
- ecshafer 1y ago
  OpenJDK is the specification implementation. A huge amount of the OpenJDK development is paid for by Oracle (And others).
  - reactordev 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - dialogbox 1y ago
      Why do you think a good steward shouldn't have a financial interest?
    - Twirrim 1y ago
      What rug pull do you picture could happen at this stage? OpenJDK is the reference spec. Fully open source. Stewarded by multiple companies. Even if Oracle somehow managed to force the whole thing closed source (not sure that's even possible?) you've got all the other contributors who'd "hell no", fork and away you go. Which version of Java do you think the community would go with? There's no way it'd work.
- exabrial 1y ago
  `sdk install java 21.0.8.fx-librca` No pre-core fee needed.
- pron 1y ago
  The only thing that's paid is support, and the OpenJDK folks are Oracle employees (well, the ~90% of them who do ~95% of the work on OpenJDK). OpenJDK is an Oracle project in the same sense that Chromium is a Google project. In fact, OpenJDK (even more precisely - the OpenJDK JDK) is the name given to Oracle's implementation of the Java SE specification, but we do get contributions from other companies, such as this particular great enhancement to JFR (even external contributions also involve significant work by Oracle employees). Anyway, if you don't want to buy a support service, either from Oracle or any of the other companies that sell it, the use of the JDK is free. There is no "enterprise" flavour of the JDK, paid features, or use restrictions as there used to be under Sun's management. Java is obviously freer now - as in beer or in speech - than it was 20 years ago.
  - reactordev 1y ago
    Then why is it every time the Oracle reps come around, we are audited by our use of Java, what machines they are on, how many cores, etc as additional line items to our Oracle agreements that we have to fight, every year, to get removed? They state themselves, they charge per-employee, not per core now… While everything you say sounds true, it’s not free - it’s gunpoint, it’s a lie, and if you’re big enough Oracle will come after you for subscription fees. RedHat does the same crap. Heaven forbid you run RHEL on RHEL in containers, you’re gonna get fleeced.
    - carlwgeorge 1y ago
      > Heaven forbid you run RHEL on RHEL in containers, you’re gonna get fleeced. You can run unlimited RHEL containers on a subscribed RHEL system. It's even set up where if you run a UBI container (a redistributable subset of RHEL content) on a subscribed RHEL system it automatically upgrades to full RHEL.
    - pron 1y ago
      Your company has bought support from Oracle - either for the JDK or for some other product bundle - and that's part of the terms of whatever commercial service your company bought. There are no audits and no cost for people who just download and use the JDK. Oracle doesn't collect names or contacts, you don't need to provide any when you download the JDK, and the licence expressly permits commercial use (even if you choose the non-open-source licence; the download page for the non-opensource distribution says [1]: "JDK N binaries are free to use in production and free to redistribute, at no cost"). There used to be lots of use restrictions back in the Sun days, but Oracle removed them. [1]: https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/ https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/
  - Moomoomoo309 1y ago
    There is an enterprise flavor of the JDK. It's called GraalVM enterprise edition.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Nope, people keep forgetting no one wanted to buy Sun, not even Google after torpedoing it (which would save them from their J++ like lawsuit). IBM kind of thought of it, but ended up withdrawing the offer. So the anti-Oracle folks would have seen Java wither and die in version 6, and the MaximeVM technology would never had been released as GraalVM.
stickfigure 1y ago
I really don't want to upvote this sentiment but I must anyway. The fact is, despite Oracle being a menace to the tech industry, Java under their watch is thriving. Which is weird, because I don't know anyone who gives them money for Java. I'm genuinely curious who these companies are and what their incentives are!
- didip 1y ago
  For real. When Sun got bought, I thought to myself: “At least they would also destroy Java…”. But nooo, Java thrives and flourish under Oracle protection.
  - api 1y ago
    Java gets more hate than it deserves. "There are languages everyone complains about and languages nobody uses." Most of the hate comes from the overly complicated "enterprise design patterns" crap that took over the ecosystem in the late 90s into the 2000s, not the language itself. It's quite possible to write clean, clear, appropriately complex, well performing Java code. On the plus side, of all the languages I've used Java is one of the absolute best when it comes to long term maintainability of code. This is why it's used so heavily in large enterprises with long-lived business critical code bases. Being the "COBOL of the 1990s/2000s" is not an insult, and as a language it is far superior to COBOL in every way. It's not a bad language to program in at all, while COBOL will make you hate your life. It's also a safe language unless you break out of the JVM with JNI. It's the first safe language to get huge deployment if you don't count scripting languages. Safe doesn't mean you can't have security bugs of course, it just means you're not likely to have certain kinds of security bugs and stability problems like memory errors. The JVM is really a fantastic piece of engineering and IMHO represents a whole direction in computing I feel sad that we didn't take. We opted to stay close to the metal with all the security, portability, code reuse, and other headaches that entails, instead of going into managed execution environments that make all kinds of compatibility and reuse and portability problems mostly go away. The biggest current knock against Java I see is JNI, which unlike the core language is absolutely horrible. The second biggest knock is that the JVM is still kind of a memory pig. CPU performance is great, sometimes converging with C or Rust performance depending on work load, but it still hogs RAM.
parttimenerd 1y ago
And a thank you to all the other amazing companies. The work on the JEP is chiefly sponsored by SAP (with help from Datadog and Amazon).
ksec 1y ago
Thank You for giving credit where credit is due, especially on Oracle. The pendulum is shifting on HN. We can finally give credit to Oracle and Facebook.

And a thank you to Oracle for being a good steward of the language.

by panny 1y ago

And a thank you to Oracle for being a good steward of the language.

reactordev 1y ago

[flagged]

ecshafer 1y ago
OpenJDK is the specification implementation. A huge amount of the OpenJDK development is paid for by Oracle (And others).
- reactordev 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - dialogbox 1y ago
    Why do you think a good steward shouldn't have a financial interest?
  - Twirrim 1y ago
    What rug pull do you picture could happen at this stage? OpenJDK is the reference spec. Fully open source. Stewarded by multiple companies. Even if Oracle somehow managed to force the whole thing closed source (not sure that's even possible?) you've got all the other contributors who'd "hell no", fork and away you go. Which version of Java do you think the community would go with? There's no way it'd work.
exabrial 1y ago
`sdk install java 21.0.8.fx-librca` No pre-core fee needed.
pron 1y ago
The only thing that's paid is support, and the OpenJDK folks are Oracle employees (well, the ~90% of them who do ~95% of the work on OpenJDK). OpenJDK is an Oracle project in the same sense that Chromium is a Google project. In fact, OpenJDK (even more precisely - the OpenJDK JDK) is the name given to Oracle's implementation of the Java SE specification, but we do get contributions from other companies, such as this particular great enhancement to JFR (even external contributions also involve significant work by Oracle employees). Anyway, if you don't want to buy a support service, either from Oracle or any of the other companies that sell it, the use of the JDK is free. There is no "enterprise" flavour of the JDK, paid features, or use restrictions as there used to be under Sun's management. Java is obviously freer now - as in beer or in speech - than it was 20 years ago.
- reactordev 1y ago
  Then why is it every time the Oracle reps come around, we are audited by our use of Java, what machines they are on, how many cores, etc as additional line items to our Oracle agreements that we have to fight, every year, to get removed? They state themselves, they charge per-employee, not per core now… While everything you say sounds true, it’s not free - it’s gunpoint, it’s a lie, and if you’re big enough Oracle will come after you for subscription fees. RedHat does the same crap. Heaven forbid you run RHEL on RHEL in containers, you’re gonna get fleeced.
  - carlwgeorge 1y ago
    > Heaven forbid you run RHEL on RHEL in containers, you’re gonna get fleeced. You can run unlimited RHEL containers on a subscribed RHEL system. It's even set up where if you run a UBI container (a redistributable subset of RHEL content) on a subscribed RHEL system it automatically upgrades to full RHEL.
  - pron 1y ago
    Your company has bought support from Oracle - either for the JDK or for some other product bundle - and that's part of the terms of whatever commercial service your company bought. There are no audits and no cost for people who just download and use the JDK. Oracle doesn't collect names or contacts, you don't need to provide any when you download the JDK, and the licence expressly permits commercial use (even if you choose the non-open-source licence; the download page for the non-opensource distribution says [1]: "JDK N binaries are free to use in production and free to redistribute, at no cost"). There used to be lots of use restrictions back in the Sun days, but Oracle removed them. [1]: https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/ https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/
- Moomoomoo309 1y ago
  There is an enterprise flavor of the JDK. It's called GraalVM enterprise edition.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
pjmlp 1y ago
Nope, people keep forgetting no one wanted to buy Sun, not even Google after torpedoing it (which would save them from their J++ like lawsuit). IBM kind of thought of it, but ended up withdrawing the offer. So the anti-Oracle folks would have seen Java wither and die in version 6, and the MaximeVM technology would never had been released as GraalVM.

stickfigure 1y ago

I really don't want to upvote this sentiment but I must anyway. The fact is, despite Oracle being a menace to the tech industry, Java under their watch is thriving. Which is weird, because I don't know anyone who gives them money for Java. I'm genuinely curious who these companies are and what their incentives are!

didip 1y ago
For real. When Sun got bought, I thought to myself: “At least they would also destroy Java…”. But nooo, Java thrives and flourish under Oracle protection.
- api 1y ago
  Java gets more hate than it deserves. "There are languages everyone complains about and languages nobody uses." Most of the hate comes from the overly complicated "enterprise design patterns" crap that took over the ecosystem in the late 90s into the 2000s, not the language itself. It's quite possible to write clean, clear, appropriately complex, well performing Java code. On the plus side, of all the languages I've used Java is one of the absolute best when it comes to long term maintainability of code. This is why it's used so heavily in large enterprises with long-lived business critical code bases. Being the "COBOL of the 1990s/2000s" is not an insult, and as a language it is far superior to COBOL in every way. It's not a bad language to program in at all, while COBOL will make you hate your life. It's also a safe language unless you break out of the JVM with JNI. It's the first safe language to get huge deployment if you don't count scripting languages. Safe doesn't mean you can't have security bugs of course, it just means you're not likely to have certain kinds of security bugs and stability problems like memory errors. The JVM is really a fantastic piece of engineering and IMHO represents a whole direction in computing I feel sad that we didn't take. We opted to stay close to the metal with all the security, portability, code reuse, and other headaches that entails, instead of going into managed execution environments that make all kinds of compatibility and reuse and portability problems mostly go away. The biggest current knock against Java I see is JNI, which unlike the core language is absolutely horrible. The second biggest knock is that the JVM is still kind of a memory pig. CPU performance is great, sometimes converging with C or Rust performance depending on work load, but it still hogs RAM.

parttimenerd 1y ago

And a thank you to all the other amazing companies. The work on the JEP is chiefly sponsored by SAP (with help from Datadog and Amazon).

ksec 1y ago

Thank You for giving credit where credit is due, especially on Oracle. The pendulum is shifting on HN. We can finally give credit to Oracle and Facebook.