Hacker News Reader

Comment by bborud | Hacker News Reader

Oracle makes Java a risk factor in all projects. I stopped approving new Java projects in my team 2 years ago after we switched to Go. This wasn’t a decision we took lightly and it took almost a decade for me to be comfortable with leaving Java behind.

But it is the right thing to do. Oracle is not trustworthy.

View on HN

Strange attitude to take when you can just target OpenJDK and then it is completely irrelevant what Oracle does or does not do.

The fact is that every single one of the largest companies has some Java or Scala code within their core platform. And none of them have ever raised Oracle as a risk.

In this case we have Oracle using the JEE namespace discussion as leverage to try to force the Eclipse Foundation to distribute their VM with their products.

If Oracle had succeeded, would that mean that every developer that downloaded the Eclipse IDE would be subject to Oracle's licensing and a possible audit target? I believe that it would.

https://developer.ibm.com/javasdk/support/commercial-licensi...

Everyone should move off of Oracle's VM. I think Oracle is going to be more agressive in discuraging this or making it more difficult.

The most valuable corporation in the world as of this date uses zero Java for anything “core”.

Anecdotally, nearly every CIO/CTO I’ve encountered in the last few sees Oracle as a huge risk. Most particularly with regards to databases, which are even sticker than applications which have shorter life cycles.

Very few developers have access to the decision making process (or risk management imperatives)of executives of large organizations (and vice versa). When big numbers are involved the actual story and what gets told to the public are often entirely different things. This is why the “but we have OpenJDK” argument is practically a non-sequitur, yet seems a valid argument to many.

Oracle is, as you say, on the radar primarily because of databases. But it is really the risk of dealing with a company that is likely to screw you if they can do so with sufficient ROI (where the investment is audits and litigation)

Developers and CxOs/company boards risk very different things and when things go bad, have very different downsides.

You mean the servers Apple has running on WebObjects, JEE and Clojure for iTunes, Apple Maps and their iCloud?

I'm guessing the use of "as of this date" means that the parent comment is referring to Microsoft and not Apple, as at the moment by market cap, Microsoft is more valuable than apple by about $13billion

Microsoft is currently the most valuable company in the world.

And they created a whole language and ecosystem (C# / .Net), even before Oracle bought Sun, so they wouldn't be dependent on a 3rd party for that.

Ironically, .NET was created because MS tried and failed to take over the Java ecosystem using an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish approach that ran afoul of SUN's licencing deal with them.

Less ironically, Google managed to create their J++.

iTunes is based on a 17 year old code base with a framework that hasn’t been updated in a decade. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Java.

Seeing that Apple started a project to rewrite Maps back in 2014, hopefully they didn’t decide to rewrite it using WebObjects (https://appleinsider.com/articles/14/07/01/apple-overhauling...)

What matters is that it brings money home.

Maps uses Clojure, and is partially developed here in Berlin.

Until you are out there trying to find another job in two years and people start looking at you like an old VB6 or PowerBuilder developer.....

You seem really traumatized with whatever happened there regarding jobs.

No job is secure.

That’s kind of the point. No job is secure that’s why it’s not a great idea for someone not to keep their skills current with the market and keep their heads down. It’s not hard to project that Windows only development is a dead end when even Microsoft is outright saying that all of its energy is going toward .Net Core and they have been moving toward cross platform development for the last half decade.

Developers that focus in only being good in tech, without any additional skill won't go far.

The days of pure coding jobs are over.

Even with being a reformed former team lead, Devops and plenty of AWS infrastructure and development experience and looking for a change to add on Docker and k8s, It still crazy not to have the table stakes of knowing the latest tech.

Plenty of customers still run stuff on premises without any desire to put their precious data on someone's else computer.

Docker and k8s are the NoSQL of 2019.

Wait, what, Apple Maps is partially developed in Berlin?

Yes, or at least it used to be around two years ago.

Just keep monitoring their job openings in Germany.

You're either disingenuous or ignorant of the history of programming languages. MS doesn't use Java because it's a direct competitor to MS's eco systems. Windows isn't required; enterprise software; taking away developer's mindset. Not a decision based on technical merit.

MS did have a Java clone 20 years ago, but gave up due to legal threat from Sun and the DOJ lawsuit.

Ironically, MS has quite a few of Android apps [0]. Has been for several years. I guess there is at least some Java there. Unless you don't consider Office "core".

[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mobileapps?activetab=pivot_1...

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Oracle employs a lot of/most of the developers who work on the OpenJDK.

So Oracle's attitude to OpenJDK and the possibility that it cuts back on development is a likely factor for people considering the platform.

It's likely that OpenJDK developers would be snapped up by other enterprise vendors. There's a serious market in the JDK now, which didn't exist before Oracle created it. Part of competing in that market is having upstream credibility.

> when you can just target OpenJDK and then it is completely irrelevant what Oracle does or does not do

Yeah, Google thought the same

That's not what Google did.

you can just target OpenJDK and then it is completely irrelevant what Oracle does or does not do

If Oracle's copyright argument holds up, then they can kill or cripple OpenJDK at will by denying it the ability to implement new Java APIs.

What's the relationship between OpenJDK and Oracle, exactly?

As somebody who's not deep in the Java ecosystem, the precise relationship is not clear to me, but it does seem that Oracle is a major contributor to OpenJDK at least, most likely also involved with the project steering.

AFAIK, Oracle's own JDK is being built from OpenJDK source and they work on OpenJDK source directly. The only difference is that there is no official LTS of OpenJDK by Oracle. You have to either keep upgrading to newer OpenJDK (with potential breaking changes) or pay Oracle license to use their LTS JDK

> You have to either keep upgrading to newer OpenJDK (with potential breaking changes) or pay Oracle license to use their LTS JDK

I don’t think this is accurate. Alpine and Debian OpenJDK have been getting point releases (u###) through the distribution package manager. I’ve got apps running on openjdk 8 and 11 (the LTS versions) and they are still getting u### releases with security fixes and bug fixes despite Java trunk already having moved past 11.

Edit: did some further research on this and it looks like various distros are providing the LTS support for java 11. For instance Amazon Linux will be supporting Java 11 through 2023. https://dzone.com/articles/oracle-continues-long-term-suppor...

It's sane to be leery about entering into any kind of contract with a counterparty as grasping and merciless as Oracle has proven to be. If they find an exploit in the GPL, Java projects are in for a bad time.

No, it is not irrelevant and people thinking it is makes it more dangerous.

> Oracle makes Java a risk factor in all projects.

Far as I understand having any Oracle products is a liability. They can't 'audit' you if you don't use any of their products.

Just curious, what makes you think Google trustworthy (in relation to Go)? It is not surprising that corporates control and drive the languages and ecosystems in their own favor. IMO, Rust and D are truly open source, even though D lacks the corporate sponsor like any other major language.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com