Hacker News Reader

Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

Isn't much of the excitement gone due to Oracle's license for its JDK?

https://adoptopenjdk.net/ fixes most of the issues.

We hope not, and if it is, it's a misunderstanding. Java is freer and more open than it ever has been. There are many downstream builds under open source licenses, including one from Oracle at http://jdk.java.net

> Java is freer and more open than it ever has been

but pron of Oracle says, a few comments over:

> No one offers free LTS ... those "free LTS" distributions you should know that you're using a JDK that's not fully maintained ... Maintaining a JDK is a lot of work ... For real support for an old version you must pay.

So it doesn't sound like it's really free. If the free version doesn't get security updates you can't really use it in practice.

Why? OpenJDK is free, and if you don't need the Oracle support you don't need to use their JDK, they are almost the same except the support.

Why? There are at least 10 other vendors that provide a free version?

No because anyone that actually works with Java knows the difference between various Java implementations.

That might not be completely fair. In our sister organization, we had a 20 year Java veteran switch his teams to Elixir because he was concerned about Oracle's licensing. Even though it was a misunderstanding, I wouldn't assume "anyone that actually works with Java knows the difference".

Furthermore, it's a little bit of gatekeeping for those who may be entirely new to understand the difference between something like OpenJ9 vs AdoptOpenJdk vs Amazon Corretto.... you get the point.

Which makes sense when you think about it for a moment. Being an expert Java developer doesn't make you good at--or necessarily even interested in becoming good at--legalese.

I get the point that there are still people that don't get that Java is like C, with OpenJDK playing the role of ISO C.

It was quite clear since the beginning, plenty of Code ONE, Devoxx, NDC, JavaZone, Jax, InfoQ talks

Conferences that I expect any veteran to spend some of their learning budget, or at very least read some of the related articles on Java magazines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com