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Comment by pron | Hacker News Reader

That was true for Java 8; we're at Java 15 now. No need to tune anymore (except in extraordinary circumstances).

It’s still true for Java 8, because a lot of people still use Java 8, because Oracle changed the licensing model.

Yes, Oracle changed the JDK's licensing model from part-proprietary/part-open, part-free/part-paid to 100% open and free (as of JDK 11). What confused some people is that the old website for the semi-free JDK is now for Oracle support customers who pay for support (even though that page directs non-customers to the free version) and Oracle provides the free JDK over at http://jdk.java.net/

It is… definitely not that simple. Not for everyone, at least.

What is the less simple part?

Hi Ron. If you're still employed by Oracle, it might not be a bad idea to disclose that, either in the specific comments where you may be talking (semi-)authoritatively about Java and its licensing / commercial model, or within your HN profile. I recall the last talk I saw from you was an AMA at QCon London in 2019 about Java, where you were with Oracle.

I found the comments really clueful but also appreciate when others like e.g. @_msw_ are very overt with disclosure of their employment and interests whilst talking about $employer's stuff on HN (and in his case that'd be AWS and EC2).

Hey Alex! Yes I am with Oracle, and indeed I always make sure to disclose my affiliation: I do so on HN every couple of months or whenever it's relevant (when saying something that could be biased/controversial). It's not just a nice thing to do, but it's also company policy.

OpenJDK is still available under the GPL.

We have Java 15 now?? Java 9 came out literally 3 years ago...

Biannual release cadence now. 8, 11, and 17 (eventually) are LTS releases. Every 3 years.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_version_history

They switched to 2 releases per year

Java 15 defaults to a pause free garbage collector with bounded space overhead? Citation needed.

Edit: also, did they replace the JIT with AOT?

> Java 15 defaults to a pause free garbage collector with bounded space overhead? Citation needed.

No, OpenJDK 15 defaults to G1 (since JDK 9), but it is very different from G1 in JDK 8 and rarely requires tuning: https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/g1/

Plus, ZGC, the low-latency collector (which gives a ~1-2ms max pause times on heaps of up to 16TB in JDK 16) was introduced in 11 and made production-ready in 15.

> Edit: also, did they replace the JIT with AOT?

Replace? Why would anyone want to do that? But there is an AOT compiler available: https://www.graalvm.org/reference-manual/native-image/

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