Re-affirming Long-Term Support for Java in Amazon Linux
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Keeping everyone happy for the sake of profit and market share.
Only loser is Oracle who were a loser before so no change for them.
It's not like the hate for Apple, Microsoft or Google (which have enclaves of distrust) - in my experience Oracle seems universally hated.
It looks like, unlike Apple, Microsoft or Google they are motivated solely by the money. Not the monopoly, not the domination, not the technology, just the money.
If they can earn the same amount of money, without doing anything, they will happily do that. Yes, they have very good technologies, but they are just built for the money.
Every corporation is in for the money, but money is generally a byproduct of good services and technologies, however it's backwards for Oracle. Services, products, and technologies are a byproduct of money. Money is not needed for products. Products are needed for money.
This is why Oracle is used also as an acronym for Larry Ellison's character and material wealth.
Unlike Google? What other motivations Google have? MS and Apple have solid products (hardware and Office/Windows). What Google have?
I'd risk to say, any business is motivated solely by money :) The differentiator is what and how are they selling. Oracle sucks in the 'how' department. Google sucks in 'what' department - phishing for people's data mostly, and selling it to businesses.
If anything not enough companies actually ask themselves if there is a market for their product, and instead spent a lot of manhours on building products around 'ideas', when at the end of the day someone actually needs to buy your stuff.
That last part isn't the side-effect of a business, it's what it's about, and it generally makes both consumers and businesses better off.
First group earns way more money, produces way more higher quality goods, and people are happy to work with them, because don't feel ripped off or short changed. The second group makes you feel ripped off, produces inferior products and never supports you if something goes wrong.
Earning money is a side-effect for the first group. Yes, they earn money, but since they provide quality goods or services, they earn money without effort. For the second group since earning money is the primary target, they don't care about the products they provide unless the money stops flowing.
I didn't intend to imply that business shall be free. I tried to say that good business inevitably brings money in, and Oracle doesn't provide good business to earn money. They just want your money, and give you something in return to act as a memorial item and as an instrument to get more money from you.
He's virtually goading people into releasing discoveries to the public first (but of course they have already discovered these bugs and the fix was ready anyway - so THERE!).
Aren't we past the days when decompiling code would offer any real advantage?
It still doesn't excuse some of the things said in that post, though, of course.
It is and it has always been Oracle and Larry Ellison to dump on others tech to promote his own.[0]
Now you know why enterprise love Oracle so much.
This is not about love or hate, it's about how much value they provide and at what cost.
Yes, they spend a lot of money convincing execs that they need Oracle, but they actually do have a good product. And don't discount all the other things like support etc.. In many applications, the cost of a DB is simply not hugely material.
So I don't like them, don't care for them, Ellison is one of the bigger douche bags around. But I'd still buy their product if it made sense to.
I used to work with Oracle in my telco days, and RAC in particular was a nightmare to deal with. But then as now, the standard defense used to be "oh, the product is actually great, you just need to get set up right by one of the 3 Oracle DBAs on the planet who know what they're doing".
So, where people may have wanted the oracle jdk for mostly irrational / non functional reasons in the past, now they'll think twice.
Also OpenJDK lovers seem to keep handwaving the fact that the majority of its code is written by Oracle employees.
Elite GC and JIT compiler algorithms are not implemented for free during weekends and all nighters.
As of JDK 11, Oracle open sourced (or discontinued) all of the remaining commercial features in the Oracle JDK and contributed them to OpenJDK.
(I work on OpenJDK at Oracle, but speak only for myself)
An unsustainable situation will continue until it can't --some quote I'm butchering.
I'm inclined to agree with you that we need more contributions from outside Oracle.
Right now, Oracle is doing most of the work, but isn't happy with the money they're making. That allows those companies to contribute less back, but if Oracle stops doing that work, they'll have to step up, and I think they will. They'll shift some of that effort from internal forks to maintaining the base (those internal forks work well for them precisely because they're building on such a stable base).
While I acknowledge your frustrations, that's one of the points of free software. If someone takes OpenJDK, uses it, and has zero problems, they don't have any changes to contribute, and the license doesn't obligate them to contribute money.
I think these days, people are comparing to everyone else in the programming space. Lots of comparisons on past work (and existing ecosystem), present work, and future work can be done but we shouldn't rest on history when evaluating. The days of making real money on the language/runtime alone are probably gone.
Check how many of their key developers are on pay slips from multinationals, including Oracle.
Bills need to be paid and advanced compiler optimization research isn't doable as hobby.
However, the writing is on the wall. Oracle is desperately trying to monetize Java, and they will be successful for a little bit, this also dilutes their control of the ecosystem. That can lead to fragmentation. It also changes the equation about what kind of adoption corporations will be willing to do with java, and not have a lawyer worry about a per-vCPU licensing term.
We’ve started discussions about a long slow gradual transition from Java. I’m very very sure we are not the only one.
So hopefully other distros will also be able to support OpenJDK8 for a few years to come.
They are moving faster in the last 2-3 years.
So ... same as with Oracle. The "if you are willing to pay" part is what people are crying about.
There's fairly good business reason to think that, if OpenJDK continues to be popular and relevant (as I expect it will be), that Amazon will continue to extend that date, keeping it roughly four to five years in the future each time. They're giving confidence in the long-term support of Java on their platform, not making an indefinite promise about the future.