Want to use commercial software? Pay accordingly.
Not wanting to pay for it? Plenty of options available.
https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/
https://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/
They are very aware that big companies wouldn't be nimble enough to switch to openjdk in time to avoid the license fees.
Additionally, they know that companies have 3rd party software that bundles what was once "free" oracle jdk. The end user gets to foot the bill for that rather than the 3rd party.
As to new JDKs, Oracle has open sourced (or discontinued) all previously commercial features so that now OpenJDK and Oracle JDK are the same software: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-rele...
Infamous or not, the licensing situation is now clearer and better than ever before: Oracle offers the same software under a commercial license for those who wish to buy support, or under a free license to those who don't. The download pages for either option clearly identify the license, and point the user to the other option, if that's what they want:
* https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/ind...
* https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk...
The "UnlockCommercialFeatures" doesn't catch everything either. For example, Oracle once added a clause about "embedded devices" needing a commercial license. With a very broad definition of embedded.
This is pretty clearly a cash grab.
Also, If the bits are truly the same as of version 11... what's the point of making people download a duplicate codebase where the only difference is one text license file?
No, field-of-use restrictions had applied under Sun, too, as licensing Java to mobile/embedded devices was Java's income source. Later, various commercial features were also a source of income. Oracle has now completely opened the JDK (and there are no field-of-use restrictions for the free license), opened all commercial features, and has switched to a support model.
Like all companies providing open source runtimes/languages, Oracle, too, must fund Java somehow (as I explained in another comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19069655). You're free to think that the funding model now is less preferable to you personally than the previous ones, but I don't think anyone can claim it is any more of a "cash grab" than the previous monetization strategies.
I think that if anyone claims that recent changes to Java's licensing and release models are not for the better, then they are either misled or misleading.
Not sure I understand the whole funding argument. Swift, golang, v8, typescript, etc, seem to be fine as open source.
In any case all this jockeying around with the license will certainly reduce the user base. From talking to my peers at other companies, we're all putting together our "get off of java" plans now.
I can tell you that the amount of software switching from other platforms to Java is significantly higher than that switching away. Those switching away are those with lesser requirements (e.g. in terms of performance, data size, management and tooling), and those switching to Java do that because they want the scalability and tooling. The full open-sourcing of the JDK and the new release cadence are big improvements that make Java even more attractive to those that were on the fence before, and the pipeline of major OpenJDK projects (Valhalla, Amber, Panama, Loom, Metropolis) is deeper than ever in Java's history.
A large majority of corporations aren't that allergic to software licenses, they have other issues on their top list.
Because with Java someone actually pays for its development.
Swift is reasonably independent from Apple these days. It’s stable starting version 5 and most new features are geared towards other applications than Cocoa.
So, those big companies would first have to switch to an affected version of the JDK anyway, so they could as well switch to OpenJDK.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think that even if it made sense to assign virtue judgments to corporations, it would be a huge stretch to claim that Oracle is any more evil than other companies of similar size, like Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Apple, but as I work for Oracle, I'm obviously biased.
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.
But in response to GP, type erasure sucks and makes a lot of things harder.
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.
On the other hand with my Java hat on, I look enviously to proper unsigned types, value types, explicit SIMD, and the language support for low level coding optimizations.
Still looking forward for Valhalla and Panama to arrive.
I wonder if C++ compilers "collapse" things like `vector<Foo⋆>` and `vector<Bar⋆>` (or even `vector<size_t>`) if they can figure out that all of their respective methods end up generating the same machine code... Maybe not?
(Stars because I can't seem to escape asterisks properly...)
[0] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050322-00/?p=...
Edited to add link.
I wonder what the standard says about it, what the linker can/could typically prove is "safe", and what performance/size changes are seen in practice.
The talk Diet Templates[1] has some suggestions for how to reduce template bloat.
[0] https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub36912
[1] https://accu.org/content/conf2011/Jonathan-Wakely-diet-templ...
Edited to add the second paragraph.
Anything oracle is tainted. And that's putting it lightly.
If you're using Java now, its probably a good idea to start looking at migration to something not Java. And until the API lawsuit is resolved, even things like Kotlin are probably not safe.
And well, if you choose Java now, you're just a fool :/ It is a footgun and the trigger is controlled by a pack of lawyers at Oracle.
BTW, Google has used OpenJDK extensively even throughout the court case, and still does, and has even forked it internally.
But isn't that their problem? The Oracle claim is that APIs themselves are copyrighted , and need permission from Oracle to even use the APIs?
It wouldn't matter of the software package was licensed. If Oracle's argument is accepted, then even invoking the APIs need a separate license outside the permission to copy JDK.
I really hope the judge finds in favor of Google. APIs should absolutely not be copyrightable.. But that's the main issue. And I still stand by my assessment that Java-anything is harmful for your health. And if your company has $$$, using Java is attracting sharks.