Red Hat has taken control of two popular versions of the open source Java implementation, so developers can continue to build apps after Oracle’s support ends.
A big deal to enterprise users and Minecraft players, but I can’t really muster any form of excitement over this. Then again, every bit less of Oracle in this world is good news.
Thom Holwerda,
I’m curious Thom, what languages do you muster any form of excitement over? Haha.
You’ve overseen many of our programming discussions (in osnews comments), but do you ever take anything away from it?
I’m unsure how much of an improvement this really is. Yes, Red Hat is surely less evil than Oracle, but I’m not sure I believe they are that much better.
FlyingJester,
Also, it should be mentioned that Red Hat is now owned & controlled by IBM, so the comparison may be between IBM and Oracle.
It’s a big enough deal that Amazon made an entire OpenJDK 8/11 fork (Coretto) to avoid Oracle’s bullshit here. What this move today does is give us two separate LTS supported JDK families, which is good for the whole JVM ecosystem.
https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/
Ah, repackaging the work done by developers on Oracle’s pay checks.
Lets see how much Amazon will contribute to improve Java.
moondevil,
I get your point, however honest question here: how much has oracle done to improve java themselves since they took it over from sun? Admittedly this is ancient history and I don’t use it much any more, but personally I feel oracle hasn’t done as good a job as sun. There have been three separate instances when I’ve needed to use java applets for work and oracle has broken all of them such that I needed to rollback java in order to fix it. Many people weren’t fans of java to begin with, but I still think it’s been worse under oracle.
Honestly, Oracle has done a shit ton of work on Java since acquiring it from Sun, in a lot shorter release intervals too. Yes, they removed support for Java applets because they were a security risk and the vast majority of the world has moved on from them. That is a win and not a drawback in any IT security person’s book, and I completely understand not wanting to continue to maintain a technology that hardly anyone uses anymore.
Java had basically been stagnating for years under Sun leadership, and Oracle finally whipped it into shape. They do deserve quite a bit of credit for that IMHO. Aside from the simple fact that they managed to transition to a regular release schedule, the top achievements since the Oracle takeover off the top of my head:
– Completely rewrote/ported the Mac implementation of Java, replacing the partially proprietary and outdated one originally provided by Apple, thus allowing Macs to receive simultaneous releases of OpenJDK-based JDK/JVMs along with Windows and Linux. This alone is a pretty big deal, since Macs are at least as popular in developer circles as they are among consumers, if not moreso. This took over a year IIRC, to get an idea of all it entailed see here: https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/MacOSXPort/Mac+OS+X+Port+Project+Status
– Integrated the best bits of the JRockit JVM into the HotSpot JVM.
– Guided and implemented the efforts behind landmark features such as lambdas, streams and modules.
– Implemented improved garbage collector “G1”.
– Implemented a new JVM “GraalVM” with improved cross-language support.
… the list goes on and on really. Java was close to dying before Oracle picked it up; the fact that it has done so well in spite of itself for the past 10 years has a lot to do with the reinvigoration that Oracle did.
I’m not an Oracle fanboy by any means; I find their (recently revised for the worse) licensing practices, their litigation against Google, and the way they let certain other projects stagnate objectionable. However, credit ought to be given where it is due.
Moochman,
I’ll be honest too, when updates break necessary business functionality and users are forced to run older versions, that’s not great either.
Yeah, apple has a tendency of dropping the ball on technologies that aren’t “front and center”, it probably would have been better for everyone had they left the java development to others.
I’m not sure this is fair though. Sun’s java market-share in the enterprise was substantial, far from dead. Has it gotten any significant growth since then? I’m not really sure, but I’m inclined to think java’s role in enterprise is very similar to mainframe: very strong presence in the long term enterprise market but not highly sought by new players, leaving it with a strong market share of legacy applications. I’ll grant you that java’s market share was dying in consumer markets under Sun, but it’s not clear to me that Oracle’s done any better there… Thom’s mention of minecraft was humorous, but not too far off.
Replying to this post again because OSNews won’t let me reply to your nested comment.
I looked into it, and automatic updates of the JRE shouldn’t be breaking anything about your Java applets. Applets and Web Start are still supported in JRE 8, which is currently still the version that Oracle “pushes” on you as an update, as well as the version Oracle tells you to download on java.com, the consumer-facing Java portal. Could it be that you manually downloaded a newer version from oracle.com?
Moonchman,
Well, the problem isn’t w/automatic updates per say. We’re just unable to install updates past a certain point because of broken compatibility. At least we’re not forced to update like what microsoft has done to windows update, then things would be much worse because it would force us to replace thousands of dollars worth of hardware.
I believed in java’s moto of running anywhere, it was a good goal that increased the productivity for both users and developers, but both apple and google denied sun the ability to achieve that in the mobile space. Anyways it is what it is.
Pretty sure the general opinion is Oracle only bought Sun to sue Google by arguing the Java API itself can be patented (and thus get tons of free money from Android licensing agreements). Everything else like OpenOffice and actual work on Java seems to be something they’ve let die or done the bare minimum to support.
Yeah, but besides IBM’s timid proposal, no one cared to outbid Oracle, so it is not like everyone else was jumping in to save Sun.
Oracle arn’t beyond that themselves (oracle linux!)
Oracle own and will fight for java now. All these half supported forks are a nightmare for buissness. It’s hard enough keeping on top of tech debt of supported systems,but the bigger the divergence, the more bugs and headaches down the line
We are currently choosing how to move forward in java. The decision is fast becoming “which OS” rather than which java. Redhat/Amazon/CentOS. Maintaining a mix won’t be viable anymore
Adurebe,
I don’t really know if an amazon java has potential to be any good or not, do they have oracle’s blessing? Google learned the hard way that oracle is not keen on others forking the java language. The courts have deemed google guilty of infringement by sharing bits of the java API regardless of the implementation. “Open source” or not, it makes me wonder how much leeway java forks actually have.
All the companies that play by the rules to support standard Java, never had any issue either with Sun or Oracle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines#Proprietary_implementations
https://adoptopenjdk.net/sponsors.html
Google was well aware that they were screwing Sun and that Sun wouldn’t be able to sue them due to cash issues.
“Triangulation 245: James Gosling” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be&t=57m42s
If anything, Google learned that they should have bought Sun, instead of hoping that the company would sink without having anyone else to own their assets.
I bet buying Sun and owning Java would have been cheaper.
Now anyone writing Java libraries has to deal with standard Java and Android Java, Google has succeed where Microsoft failed, and we in the Java community get to enjoy Android J++.
I’m not sure MS “failed” in this area. They built .Net as I direct clone/competition and that seems to still have quite the market share!
moondevil,
That’s not too far off from the point I’m making though. With genuinely open source software, a fork isn’t restricted to innovate within the confines of the former author’s wishes. I can take ‘X’, rename it ‘Y’, and then proceed to do with it what *I* want to do. However with java I kind of feel that oracle broke that with that social contract, exerting it’s control over 3rd party projects in ways that aren’t really justified within the social expectations of FOSS.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you on this, but it just goes to show how open source software can unexpectedly become a two edged sword for both parties. 1) If you write software and release it as open source, then you should be prepared for others to take your work and possibly compete with you. 2) If you write software and incorporate open source headers&code in your project, you risk a lawsuit should the creator have a problem with your work, especially if it changes ownership.
You are right google could have bought sun, but regardless I’m very uncomfortable with #2 because it puts a lot of us at risk who don’t have the means to buy out the owners of open source projects. The whole point of open source is that we don’t have to do that, we merely have to comply with the open source license. They intentionally put code out in the open, and although there is a potential for frustration when a derived work become more popular than the original, IMHO it’s not reasonable to retaliate against the derived work of others.
On a related matter, trademarks exist, allowing an auther to define what it means to be “Java”. So for example, I could create a java-like language, but I couldn’t call it “java” without the trademark owner’s approval. However in the case of android they didn’t use the java trademarks.
So while I don’t have much sympathy for google, I nevertheless feel the case against them was extremely weak and the judge made a terrible ruling. The case was about android, but setting this precedent means there’s an implied risk for everyone incorporating open source into their own work. Of course most open source authors don’t set out to be intentionally malicious, but all it takes is for an “oracle” to buy them out and now their software can be used as a means to litigious ends.
Oracle. Last week I was working on a friends laptop trying to do a back up that required a java util. That Java util of course required the JRE, which isn’t installed anymore on windows home 10. Ok, head over to oracle to download. Ugh, need oracle account details. I reset password, cause I haven’t done this since 20012 or so. Reset password works, try to login… Their system is down… I just want JRE, but mighty huge Oracle corp can’t consistently keep their JRE available for download.
Apparently they’ve started only allowing you to download the newest JDK without a login. However, if all you need is the JRE, you can easily download it from https://www.java.com , no login required.
Honestly, I just googled for JRE and followed the oracle links. It was confusing as it also complained about my browser not being fully supported.