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Comment by Ajunne | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a non-issue to me. People using Oracle JDK for their applications can easily switch to one of the OpenJDK variants (Temurin, Corretto, you name it, heck even Microsoft or AliBaba if you really hate yourself), if they haven't so already (Oracle has been charging money for their JDK for quite some time, while there are more than enough free alternatives). The only reason to stick with the Oracle JDK would be to use an application that only supports that specific JDK (like WebLogic), which probably means another Oracle product, so you are giving them $$$ already, so that won't make a difference.

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> I recall hearing recently something along the lines of- assuming you'd made the mistake of having signed up with Oracle in the first place- the contract you agreed to states that in the event of switching to another compatible variant, you're still required to pay Oracle their fees regardless. > I also vaguely recall that this clause was indefinite(?)

Can this be true?

If the contract says that I don't see how it could be enforceable. Where's the consideration?

Their lawyers will argue that the consideration was that the allowed you to use the Oracle software in the first place.

They'll probably also argue that you continue to benefit from using the Oracle software to develop your software even if you stop, although that's not necessary for consideration. That's more of an argument against unconscionability.

I don't know if their contract actually has that provision, but if so, it's another reason to stay away from Oracle altogether. I really don't understand the companies that seem to say "You know what would be great? Working with Oracle!" It seems insane to me.

I don't know if that's true, but that would qualify as a "suckers clause".

Most people would not only laugh at that but also terminate every business with Oracle just because of that.

But.. there's a percentage of clients who just say "Ohh dear.. ok then." and in many of these organizations the people who make these decisions aren't even close to the source of revenue ( mostly public sector )

My guess is that these companies who are paying for the Oracle version are unaware of the open source version they could use at no cost.

They're all well aware. But companies like paying for things. They don't like legal gray areas about licensing, patents, copyrights. They just want to pay for a license and get indemnification and some kind of assurance they won't get sued or extorted later by some trolls.

A little bit of that.

A lot of it is also they like having the capability of picking up the phone and getting someone to prioritize / look at an issue they care about. Good luck trying to get an OSS dev to do that for you if you're in an industry that dev doesn't like (i.e. military development).

With a negotiated support contract you have assurances that developers are willing to deal with you, that they're probably not going to just up and vanish, and that they've at least agreed to at least consider issues that you run into.

> A lot of it is also they like having the capability of picking up the phone and getting someone to prioritize / look at an issue they care about.

Good luck trying to get any large software vendor to do that.

Eh read the reviews:

https://www.trustradius.com/products/oracle-java-se-subscrip...

Almost all of them say that their tickets are attended to within hours of filing, and Oracle offer support in over 20 languages so they must have a pretty big team to be able to do that.

Yes, the Oracle support is probably the best among the large software distributors.

And no, it won't solve some problem you detected. It will only help you if it was already solved by development.

Anyway, time to attend to a ticket is a useless metric. I bet Microsoft fares better on this than Oracle, but their support is absolutely counterproductive. (What I mean literally, you will get your problem solved faster if you don't try to deal with them.)

Yes, this is nothing but purest anti Java FUD.

But FUD that appears to have a substantial dollar amount attached to it for certain Java users.

I have never worked in any environment where exchanging the used JRE would have been more than trivial.

Are there any applications that just won't run on non-oracle JREs or are forbidden from running on them? Some Oracle SQL shite?

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