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Comment by Pyxl101 | Hacker News Reader

The latest versions of Java will continue to be free. All you need to do to "pay" for that is remain up to date. Only maintenance on older versions of Java will be subscription based.

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.

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The complaints have nothing to do with staying up to date or support. OracleJDK is no longer free for commercial use. OpenJDK has always been been free for whatever use (it's GPL, with exceptions). The danger is that a developer is already using OracleJDK, and upgrades or inadvertently uses OracleJDK (because it was installed by their package manager perhaps), and then Oracle shows up and claims they owe a bunch of money.

Anyone with professional experience knows that licenses aren't set in stone, which is why any sane legal department does routine control of existing software deployments.

Oracle JDK has never been "packagable" in that way. Some people did it anyway or they hard-coded cookies into scripts and things, but those scripts and packages are all for fixed versions anyway. Linux distros do it right and ship OpenJDK. They'll upgrade to OpenJDK 11 without issue.

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?

Lol, I wish I could keep getting my _Oracle_ JDK updated from the package manager. Unfortunately that stopped being a thing after Java6 with some licensing changes that made it impossible for distributions to package Java (if I recall correctly).

The latest versions of Java will continue to be free. All you need to do to "pay" for that is remain up to date. Only maintenance on older versions of Java will be subscription based.

Only free for non-production use. This was on HN yesterday:

https://blog.joda.org/2018/09/do-not-fall-into-oracles-java-...

I believe you're mistaken. The article is saying that there are two versions of Java, and one has the license that you mentioned while the other is free and open source. From that article:

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.

Exactly! https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk... clearly says in a RED box that

"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"

To be fair, the relevant quote from that article (and from the terms) is:

> 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.

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