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Comment by dkjaudyeqooe | Hacker News Reader

I'm under the impression that the Community Edition version of GraalVM is neutered by a limited garbage collector and some other limitations when producing native binaries.

Anyone know if this true?

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This is partly true. CE has the "serial GC," yes, and no access to G1 GC by default. But Oracle GraalVM (formerly "GraalVM Enterprise Edition," which no longer exists) was released under a much less restrictive license:

https://blogs.oracle.com/java/post/graalvm-free-license

So, yes, GraalVM CE is slightly nerfed (the performance difference across all EE features is like 30% maximum, at peak, in limited circumstances). You also do not need to use GraalVM CE in as many places anymore, and Oracle GraalVM with G1 is a free download. Many free projects like Pkl use the full-blown VM.

https://www.graalvm.org/latest/reference-manual/native-image...

Serial GC is still very performant. It's great for things like command line tools which don't need a low-pause long-running GC like G1.

So the runtime and libraies incorporated into native applications compiled by Oracle GraalVM is freely licensed? I tried to find that information but it's all a sea of legalese.

Yes. Native Image is covered by this license IIRC

IIRC there base kit like garbage collector and runtime are all the same between community and enterprise. The biggest feature that comes to mind that is behind the enterprise-only wall (or at least used to be) is Profile Guided optimization.

Could Oracle neuter it more in an update to push the commercial edition?

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