Oracle hatches 'incubator' OpenJDK APIs idea

Experimental and unfinished Java APIs could soon appear in new versions of Java under a plan from Oracle. So-called Incubator Modules have been proposed as a means of inserting promising features into the OpenJDK. OpenJDK is an open-source implementation and reference implementation of Java Standard Edition. Modules would …

[ArrZarr]

And of course, they could then attempt to sue you for using their copyrighted APIs like certain other companies using Java.

[Steve Davies 3]

Have an upvote

With that copyright API lawsuit with Google still in progress do they really think that anyone with half a brain will take up this offer while there is a risk that they'll get sued as well?

Dream on Oracle, dream on.

[Flocke Kroes]

Or the other way around:

Everyone and his dromedary who contributes to incubator APIs sues Oracle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is amazing that they didn't think about what they would do to Java with their Google lawsuit. Java was kind of losing steam before they pulled the patent troll lawsuits and now no commercial business is going to want to write in Java for fear of some lawsuit. They can't be sort of open source.

[Alistair]

Other concepts of "incubator"

....

Racks of petri dishes, filled with agar. And happy funtime wee buggies.

[Donkey Molestor X]

foot, meet bullet?

hey, if Oracle WANTS to scare people away from its enterprisey, bloated, cash cow programming language, far be it for us to stop them!

they can keep Java. i'd rather write Python anyway

[tekHedd]

Re: foot, meet bullet?

I like Python, but come on, admit it, Java's OK. As long as you stay away from the "magic inserted code and you're not sure why it works" type features that seem to be trendy in enterprise frameworks, it's nice.

[tekHedd]

How can we destablize OpenJDK and make it less useful in production?

...which will then encourage people to use our official java versions instead?

I know, let's insert a bunch of code that is unstable, unfinished, might be abandoned in the future, and might carry patent liabilities.

[hellwig]

Define "users"

Oracle believes the opt-in nature would avoid users becoming dependent on modules with warnings also issued of or when they are removed.

Here, Oracle seems to define a user as a developer making a Java application.

How does that help the real "users" of the application itself. Remember when you had to have multiple versions of Java installed on your machine because they were not compatible. How ridiculous was it to have to keep Java 1.6 when the world moved to 1.7 and 1.8? Oh wait, we STILL have that problem. And I don't see how this proposal would do anything other than make that even more complicated as it is.

Even if you don't distribute your Java app but only use it internally, does that really make it better? You have to keep your own systems on an old Java until you can afford to re-write your application to not reference now removed APIs? Seems more likely no one is ever going to use these APIs, and therefore there's no reason to include them in the first place.