Oracle to charge for Java from Jan 2019 | Hacker News Reader

Oracle to charge for Java from Jan 2019

itassetmanagement.net

51 pointsPyppe32 comments

> Oracle have announced that, “after January 2019”, Java SE 8 public updates will not be available for “business, commercial or production use” without a commercial license.

This is blogspam and FUD. Java SE 8 will be past EOL at that point. Oracle has announced no intent to charge for updates to Java SE 11, which should be the current release, at that point.

What a shame. Just when I got my hopes up.

Isn't this heavily misleading? This still seems like the charges for continuing to use old versions of Java <= 8. The article doesn't confirm or deny that staying on the latest version remains free.

This is some _incredible_ clickbait. The latest JRE and JDK will continue to be free. What Oracle are charging for is continued Java 8 support.

What type of usage does Java 8 vs 9+ have in the real enterprise world? Isn't that still a significant amount of companies and applications?

A lot. For all practical purposes, it very hard to get projects to move to big version numbers in large enterprises.

Its not as simple as just recompiling code. Something like the entire ecosystem has to move, you will have plenty of compatibility problems, code breakage and catch-22 situations.

This is not good news for Java.

Also a lot of 'Architects' will be forced to think if they will be made to pay for Java later. Hence should they use something else to build their latest projects?

Moving to something else entirely is even more costly than just moving to the next major version.

The EOL for JDK 8 has been known for quite some time now.

Architects who haven’t taken that into account yet have been negligent regardless of Oracle charging for future updates or not.

Migrations almost always require quite some effort but there was plenty of time to prepare in this case.

Im not talking about the existing projects.

Either way, if it comes to a point where you have to pay for something like using a programming language. Pay whatever you have to now. But start moving to something other tech over time.

And yeah, don't start new projects in Java.

You don’t have to pay for using Java. You have to pay for continued support for a specific Java version.

You can even continue using JDK 8 for free indefinitely. Just don’t expect any future updates from Oracle, security or otherwise.

If you absolutely have to use JDK 8 another option is OpenJDK, which unlike Oracle’s JDK probably will continue receiving updates even for version 8.

I also don’t see why one shouldn’t use Java for new projects. With its huge ecosystem and modern toolsets such as Spring Boot Java is a highly viable option for developing new applications.

Signaling is everything here. Once you've announced that you are going to charge for something like this, you've also in a way announced you could charge for other things as well.

At that point, you are just better off using something else to insulate you from things like these.

>>Just don’t expect any future updates from Oracle, security or otherwise.

That's a very big problem for most shops.

>>With its huge ecosystem and modern toolsets such as Spring Boot Java is a highly viable option for developing new applications.

Spring Boot isn't a configuration less framework. Its basically a only one configuration works framework, change something small and nothing works. Also code comes out so unmaintainable no one apart from the original authors generally understands anything about it.

Your last statement simply isn’t true. I’ve been using Spring Boot for years in a variety of configurations and it works absolutely fine.

As long as we're going with anecdata, I'll add that in my experience Spring is a goddamn nightmare. I've spent X too many times in dependency hell with it and have vowed to never voluntarily use it again.

That’s exactly the point of Spring Boot. It makes an opinionated choice of libraries that work well together so you don’t have to.

i worked on a project last year that upgraded to 1.7

OK, but from what I can tell this isn't a fee for using java in a commercial setting, it's a fee for access to continued support/patching of Java 8.

Java 9 is out. Java 10 is out. I can see why oracle might want to cut down their support costs and retire their older versions more quickly.

However this will blow up in their faces if a lot of software gets exploited due to unpatched vulnerabilities.

I don’t see anything wrong with charging commercial users for support of an old product.

I’m no fan of Oracle of their sales practices but the title is very misleading by omission

That headline’s sensationalist and misleading. They’re going to charge for continued JDK 8 updates.

JDK (and JRE) 11 will be the latest version by then. Only companies which need or want to stay on the previous version will have to pay.

Poor journalism.

1. It's about EOL SE 8

2. "software running Java SE 8" - the article needs to be clear about Oracle Java, and Open JDK and others like Azul

Oracle will charge for support of Java 8, not for all Java versions.

Note: this applies to new updates to Java 8, as a result of the upcoming Java 11 taking over as the LTS version. Oracle is not charging for Java in general.

As a result the headline and article come across as a bit FUDdy to me.

Cached version https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VvTCsb...

Even though the clickbait title is false, I wouldn't be surprised if Oracle at some point decided it makes sense to kill Java by "monetizing" current releases it in this way.

This changes things. For one, Red Hat is now offering OpenJDK support for Windows.

right from the weasel's mouth: https://java.com/en/download/release_notice.jsp

I'm not sure what the big deal is, they are charging for older version support. Not only this, I've been using and would recommend people switch to openjdk.

After all those years of endlessly arguing back and forth about which programming language is the best, the poor Java evangelists have had the blocks knocked out from underneath them, because now you can instantly counter any number of technical pro-Java arguments and win the argument in one word, by simply be saying the name "Oracle", and sadly shaking your head in pity.

And what a turnaround for the CLR. People used to say, "Sure, C# is a better Java, but Microsoft and closed-source etc..." Or, "Sure F# looks cool, pity about..."

Microsoft's reputation isn't what Sun's was, but it's miles better than it was under Ballmer and light-years ahead of Oracle's. Looks like the bulk of .NET code is released under permissive licenses, too (?)

I don't know how much "hacker goodwill" buys you when you make old-people tech, but Java has definitely lost ground to its main competitor. Maybe their recent uptick in language development velocity will help things.

You need "hacker goodwill" to hire and retain great people like James Gosling and Anders Hejlsberg. Oracle doesn't have a snowflake's chance in hell of ever hiring anyone who can hold a candle to them.

Beyond that, its also reasonable for them to charge for Java. Java is huge, the ecosystem, the libraries and the software built using it. Its like you have to spend money to build a technology which every one is using to build awesome things, and you have to not only continue investing in it, but give it away for free.

Sun spent like millions of dollars on Java, without earning a penny in return. At some point in time you are a company and have to make profits.

Sending all that big money down the drain for others benefits, and no profits for yourself is something no company will do.

No. Fully open source, community supported OpenJDK will the best thing that happened to Java. https://adoptopenjdk.net/

blogspam / FUD or not, Kotlin is the beautiful future

What is a "named user plus"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com