At what point do we finally draw the line on Oracle and say enough is enough, we're forking?
Oracle clearly seem interested only in trying to exploit Java developer and users. Why are we still stuck to them?
Oracle clearly seem interested only in trying to exploit Java developer and users. Why are we still stuck to them?
So, like it or not, this is the reality of open source. A lot of companies are happy to use it freely but less happy to contribute the significant resources necessary to build it.
(I work at Oracle on OpenJDK, but I speak only on behalf of myself)
Because even literally the most used Java library - JUnit is struggling financially, because everyone wants to use great technologies for free and donations and open-source contributions are never considered.
I worked in huge financial institutions once, they heavily relay on some ant plugin. The plugin had a bug, probably like a day of fixing for me. The company decided to stop using the plugin, rewrite the whole configuration in bash, which took almost 4 weeks of 4 people, than contribute to opensource during working hours and fix the bug for everyone.
They've even been involved in getting the open community up and running.
I sincerely can't imagine what more you could want from a corporate steward.
To generally not try to pull the rug from under you by changing licenses?
I do agree though it isn't a completed product yet, but what's already there is fairly capable depending on what you're working on.
.NET 3.0 will close the gap, but there are lots of .NET Framework features that aren't even on the migration roadmap.
Enterprise stacks are a different animal than plain web sites, where integration between existing platforms plays a major role.
The likes of SAP, Oracle, Rational, Enterprise Architect and similar software are not yet there.
A different business model than suing their customers?
Don't forget many of their customers are pretty dodgy/incompetent also.
https://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-cloud-sales-2015-7
https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-customer-explains-aud...
Enterprise licensing is extremely complex. Add to that that vendors often play hardball with customers.
If I, as a vendor, want to find you in breach of the licensing agreement. I will.
Source: I worked for a database vendor and was stunned about the dirty tricks pulled in enterprise software sales.
That's the point: they are suing users because they demand those users pay licensing fees.
What other programming language and/or software stack comes with that risk?
Basically any software stack sold with a commercial license.
But, until .Net Core, .Net was considered a part of Windows. There was no separate license.
As far as the support lifecycle, you get three years of support for the LTS releases of .Net Core and you don’t pay MS for it.
https://www.microsoft.com/net/platform/support-policy
For .Net Framework, it’s tied to the support lifecycle of the version of Windows it was introduced with.
Ah, you never used Enterprise frameworks with VS plugins it seems.
The joy of building Sharepoint plugins
.NET applications are for the customers, not for running on our computers.
Before it went open source we surely needed Studio to do any kind of meaningful development and respective production deployments.
They just ended support for VS 2008 in April of this year.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/04/10/end...
There is also, of course, projects such as Mono.
I don't recall Mono developers having ever been sued. In fact I recall that the people behind Mono were actually hired and paid a big chunk of cash to work for Microsoft.
I did several ports from .NET to Java as means to have the software run on UNIX platforms.
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/microsoft-just-sued-ip-address...
Same thing, Oracle only sued companies using Java licenses illegally.
Although Microsoft makes a lot of money on development tools, it seems to think that giving away versions of those tools can help drive demand for Windows. Sun tried the same thing, but then advertised Java as making the operating system and hardware irrelevant, so free JDKs don’t appear to have sold many Solaris systems.
Those free versions of Visual Studio weren't allowed for production when they were called Visual Studio Express.
Visual Studio Community only allows production use for companies up to 5 employees, with a specific yearly revenue. Better read the licenses.
And on the server, majority of .NET Web applications are a typically variation of Sharepoint, SiteCore, Orchard and similar CMS, usually deployed on IIS.
.NET Core might do the circles around HN and Reddit, but it is still largely ignored in the typical .NET shops.
After the comma I have listed other .NET Web platforms.
That's news to me, and not only I'm from Europe but also I've actually worked on developing UI applications for laboratory equipment.
I have seen zero instances of WPF being used anywhere at all. Ever.
At this point I'm thoroughly convinced that you're just trolling HN and wasting everyone's time with a constant stream of jibberish.
https://www.zeiss.com/microscopy/int/products/imaging-system...
https://books.google.de/books?id=U5AMFXjNmugC&pg=PA247&lpg=P...
https://www.labmanautomation.com/
As for trolling, I find sad that on a web site created for people starting business, many feel entitled to get their tools for free, unlike every other professionals.
You have to compete with the market as it exists. All of the focus of development and all of the money is going into web and mobile. Every platform vendor except Microsoft is giving away their development environment.
I’m a .Net fan but I can’t imagine living in the hell like landscape of doing WPF development knowing that the industry is passing me by.
If I were going to do desktop development in 2018, it’s going to be working in C/C++ writing really specialized, highly optimized software where I could command a huge premium.
Not everyone does fashion driven consultancy development.
It looks like today you’re explicitly allowed to use the free Visual Studio for open source work, noncommercial work, academic work, and small commercial work (“small” defined in terms of team size). If that doesn’t cover your project, you have to try to fit in the BizSpark rules for a temporary fee waiver.
The new commercial JDK is like Microsoft suddenly asking expensive license fees for using .Net "in production" (which they actually do indirectly, and with clear-cut boundaries, through expensive enterprise Windows SKUs)
Every revision since 4.5.2 follows the support lifecycle of the parent OS (which generally is much more than 3 years)
.NET Framework has never had a license fee. An argument could be made that part of the cost of Windows OS is a .NET Framework licensing fee, but the fact is if you're developing for Framework then Windows is already in your purview.
Admittedly, the .NET Framework is not open source. But a good amount of its source code is available for review:
I wouldn’t bet my career on .Net framework or desktop development in general anymore than Webforms.
The last time I was looking for a job, there were companies that offering me architect positions paying $10K - $15K more than the job I accepted to lead projects that were doing ASP.Net MVC, Sql server, etc hosted on IIS using .Net framework.
I saw the writing on the wall, I took a job that was more or less a vertical salary move, and “self demoted” so I could jump on newer tech.
> 4. Can I use Express Editions for commercial use?
> Yes, there are no licensing restrictions for applications built using the Express Editions.
Visual Studio Express (and now Community) editions have always allowed for commercial development.
> With Visual C++ 2005 Express you can build both native and managed applications. Using the .NET Framework you can easily create Windows Forms, console, and class library applications. By downloading the Windows Platform SDK (freely available) you can build applications that take full advantage of the Win32 API. Web developers should use Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.
I mean, I'm pretty sure Win Forms, Console apps, and class libraries were all most of us were using .NET for back in 2005 (I wouldn't know for sure as I was in high school still).
Don't get me wrong, there were and are advantages to the non-free versions of Visual Studio. Notably, until 2017 I believe, was extensions. But there's just a lot of misunderstanding in this thread about the general licensing model of .NET and its toolchain.
Express versions were only allowed for education purposes, and only started to be available around Visual Studio 2008.
The original .NET SDK was a bare bones command line SDK without any of the tooling that actually makes development in .NET actually worthwhile.
https://forums.asp.net/t/1204510.aspx?visual+studio+express+...
Can I use Express Editions for commercial use? Yes, there are no licensing restrictions for applications built using Visual Studio Express Editions.
We couldn’t use it in 2008 because we needed to use the Windows Mobile emulator.
Database management - sql server management studio has always been a free tool.
Architecture modeling tools - not required for development.
Directs debugging - how many enterprise developers are doing anything with DirectX?
Share point - you couldn’t pay me enough to do Sharepoint development. That’s not exactly a popular use case these days.
That's not what we're talking about Oracle doing here to users of Java.
Any compiler writer that wants to write a conformant implementation needs to buy the ISO document, otherwise there is no guarantee that the compiler is actually ISO compliant.
Additionally most compiler vendors that care about ISO certification need to pay extra to companies that sell ISO validation suits like Dinkumware.
https://github.com/cplusplus/draft
https://www.iso.org/standard/68564.html
See I am even saving you the trouble to search where to buy it.
I know Oracle had sued Google for using Java some 3 years ago, and that amount ran into billions, but I thought that must be some issue exclusive to Big Corps.
https://www.bsa.org/?sc_lang=re-EM
Occasionally they organize surprise audits in collaboration with the respective countries customs police.
Here is an old report (in Portuguese) about 40 000 illegal copies being caught from several businesses.
This is just normal piracy as we know it. They don't appear to be developing anything using FOSS like C, C++?
Am I missing anything here?
The suit against Google was filed within a month of the Sun acquisition, it was part of their reasoning for buying Sun in the first place: so that they can sue Java users and get tons of money for nothing.
Gosling interview on "Oracle vs Google".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be...
Most of that is so they could wash their hands from the maintenance burden.
> finally the crown jewel the TCK
Can you give me more info here? I heard about EE, but I was not aware the full Java TCK (i.e. the one denied to Apache Harmony) is completely open now.
> I sincerely can't imagine what more you could want from a corporate steward
Simple, don't try to profit from the language itself. Imagine a commercial Go version, or imagine if some AOT parts of the .Net compiler were part of an enterprise edition, or imagine if a test suite for WASM compliance were selectively given only to some, etc.
Oracle are just not giving users of obsolete, deprecated versions of Java free patches anymore. They want everyone to keep up to date with the current version. The likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google just force push updates to achieve the same goal, but Oracle doesn't have that kind of control.
Yet even though Oracle don't want to support old versions anymore, they still offer support contracts for those organizations that truly need it. Which is a completely normal thing in the tech industry. What part of that is exploitation?
IIRC they are also making commercial (non-development) use of Oracle JVMs 11+ something that they will charge for.
I don't think this was true of earlier versions.
Sure, but you could use the Oracle-branded JVM in production, AFAICT, for free before.
Do you use Oracle specific features that are not in OpenJDK?
Please don't mistake my comments for complaints - I'm just noting that things have changed in the licensing terms for Oracle-branded JVMs.
There is an easy and simple way forward, to use OpenJDK, it's important to note the change and act accordingly. That's all.
From Java 11 onwards the "Oracle JVM" is exactly the same as the "OpenJDK JVM". The only difference is that one has the Oracle name on it and if you buy it, has long term commercial support.
It's actually the other way around to what you think. Earlier versions had proprietary features you had to pay for. Now there are no proprietary features anymore. The only thing you pay for is support.
Simple rule: if it has "Oracle" in the front now, you have to pay to use it in production. If it has "Open" you don't.
And that you need to pay for it if you want to deploy the "Oracle" version. It's not optional paid support.
I am aware Oracle produce both, and that the OpenJDK build is every bit as 'official', I have no problem with this.
Please don't call me confused, my original statement is still true - Oracle branded JVMs will no longer be free for production use.
I was confused by the indignation in this thread. A JetBrains blog post [1] seems to say that if you have been coasting on OpenJDK in production, as long as you don't plan to use any OracleJDK-specific features now or in the future, and as long as you use Java 11 in all your implementations, then the license change is not a material difference to you. Not supporting older Java specs for free sounds reasonable to me, is there something wrong with that posture that someone can care to enlighten me upon?
[1] https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2018/09/using-java-11-in-pro...
I'm just noting the change in licensing. As I mentioned in the other fork of this thread we're going to move from Oracle 8 to OpenJDK 11 soon, and that's great. No problem at all.
Literally all I've tried to say is that there is a license change on the Oracle branded version, and you need to take note of it if you have been using the Oracle branded version and were going to continue. This is not really a complaint!
I'm not sure why this seems to be controversial.
But we already have OpenJDK. What would be gained by completely cutting ties with Oracle?
Also apparently many have a short memory regarding Sun and IBM's Java business pratices and hating Oracle is fun.
Plus it would be really hard to get adoption for the fork. The Java brand is huge and many of its users are late adopters or even laggards.
I don't see why the uproar about Oracle branded OpenJDK. We can use normal OpenJDK which is almost the same.
Previously, Oracle supplied the engineering resources to develop new features and to maintain old releases.
Now, Oracle provides the first but not the second. The community can step in and do the second. If it is forked, then the community needs to step in and do both.
So getting free of Oracle has a cost, the cost of losing engineering resources for new features. Whether it's worth it would depend on how much value you place on those two things.
Clearly Oracle is trying to steer people toward revenue-generating things. I don't see a problem with that in and of itself, especially if the community can provide a free alternative.
It seems like this could push things either direction. On the one hand, many companies may just pay Oracle for support and that may become a common (and expected) practice. So that would shift some control toward Oracle. On the other hand, Oracle is stimulating the community to get involved in maintenance, and that may build some momentum for community contributions, causing the community a larger role in Java development, which would shift some control away from Oracle.
Why is Oracle obliged to provide long-term binary support and updates for old free software? If you want long-term support for old Java versions, then I think it's reasonable to say: pay for a subscription (or don't complain). RedHad uses a similar business model.
Or keep using the latest versions which will continue to be free, and stay up to date. It seems like a reasonable proposition to me. I don't see what Oracle has done wrong here.
Only free for non-production use. This was on HN yesterday:
https://blog.joda.org/2018/09/do-not-fall-into-oracles-java-...
https://blog.joda.org/2018/09/do-not-fall-into-oracles-java-...
> As well as their commercial JDK, Oracle produce an OpenJDK build. It is $free, zero-cost and GPL licensed (with Classpath exception so safe for commercial use). Download $free Java here: https://jdk.java.net/11/
jdk.java.net/11 in turn says:
> This page provides production-ready open-source builds of the Java Development Kit, version 11, an implementation of the Java SE 11 Platform under the GNU General Public License, version 2, with the Classpath Exception.
"With JDK 11 Oracle has updated the license terms on which we offer the Oracle JDK. The new Oracle Technology Network License Agreement for Oracle Java SE is substantially different from the licenses under which previous versions of the JDK were offered. Please review the new terms carefully before downloading and using this product.
Oracle also offers this software under the GPL License on jdk.java.net/11"
> You may not: use the Programs for any data processing or any commercial, production, or internal business purposes other than developing, testing, prototyping, and demonstrating your Application;
Which seems to suggest that you can use the Oracle JDK to develop, test, prototype, and demonstrate your application, even in a commercial setting. You just can't run Oracle JDK in production without a license. But IANAL.
As for the JRE, I haven't really kept up. I'm not sure if there will be a separate Oracle JRE11 and what its license terms will be. Right now, only JDK11 is posted for download.
As far as I can tell Hacker News and reddit are overrun with hysterical developers who are desperate to believe Oracle is evil, but whose entire rationale boils down to "but I don't want to read I just want to download whatever I randomly find on the internet", a rationale that is oddly not sympathised with when open source license violations occur.
Oracle JDK doesn't even have any DRM or other controls to ensure license compliance, it's all trust based. And the download page even tells you to go download OpenJDK if you want the GPLd non-commercially-supported version. I'm starting to understand now why companies have to audit their customers. Apparently the world is full of employees who feel it's perfectly legitimate to ignore straightforward, trust based license agreements out of some odd sense of entitlement?