Oi! You got a loicence for that Java, mate? More devs turn to OpenJDK to swerve Oracle fee

Just 9 per cent of Java devs pay for a supported version of the Java Development Kit (JDK), according to a new survey – despite Oracle introducing a licence fee for the official Oracle JDK from April 2019. The survey by snyk, a company that specialises in tools to find vulnerabilities in code and open-source libraries, is …

[TVU]

"Use of Oracle's JDK has declined from 70 per cent in 2018 to 34 per cent today. "There is a 72 per cent swing from Oracle JDK to alternate OpenJDK providers"."

That decline is 100% the fault of Oracle's litigation first policy that's putting off developers who understandably fear getting snared in a Larry lawsuit. These days, Oracle's a legal firm with an IT department (and a declining one at that).

[a_yank_lurker]

The Minions harass their own customers by shaking them down needlessly. They are forcing devs to look for alternatives including possibly moving away from Java altogether.

[JohnFen]

Where I work, we've already jettisoned over 90% of the Java code that we were using. That effort was completed a month ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

What have you switched to?

[JohnFen]

C++

[Anonymous Coward]

How much code did you bin?

Was it automated?

[JohnFen]

Re: How much code did you bin?

No, it was reimplemented, not ported. This was necessary in order to maintain reliability, maintainability, and performance.

The amount of code was not monumental, but it was significant. The reimplementation was performed by three engineers working for about 6 months (including QA).

[Anonymous Coward]

100%?

Is it though? Or is it just because they recently stopped releasing free Java 8 / 11 updates?

[DontFeedTheTrolls]

"Oracle's a legal firm"

Oracle's a legal firm troll

Much like Patent Trolls, profiting from penalties not the royalties, and no incentive to produce good products that people really want.

[Julz]

Nope, Oracle has always been a sales firm with a legal team attached.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The declining popularity of Eclipse is notable"

Remember when a lot of people said IDEs were a commodity and after Eclipse there was no need to develop another?

[Dan 55]

Re: "The declining popularity of Eclipse is notable"

Apart from the Java problem, some parts of Eclipse are practically on life support, especially C/C++. Remote development has been a shambles for years.

[JohnFen]

Re: "The declining popularity of Eclipse is notable"

I use Eclipse heavily for C/C++ development. It works well for me. But I'm not doing anything remote.

[Dan 55]

Re: "The declining popularity of Eclipse is notable"

It's pretty bad through ssh. It relies on OS support (no good for Windows) or half-completed built-in ssh support which means half the features in the IDE don't work.

[Mike Moyle]

Re: "The declining popularity of Eclipse is notable"

"Remember when a lot of people said IDEs were a commodity and after Eclipse there was no need to develop another?"

It's still software -- Has there EVER been any such that SOMEONE didn't feel the need to design one that works "the right way" (i.e.: HIS way)?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "The declining popularity of Eclipse is notable"

And then there is Systemd...

[RegGuy1]

Re: "The declining popularity of Eclipse is notable"

Ruin my day, why don't you.

[David 132]

Re: "The declining popularity of Eclipse is notable"

I really wish Poettering would implement an IDE within SystemD. That’d be great.

Especially if it had an Emacs implementation in there too.

Note trollface icon —->

[Anonymous Coward]

TeamCity

"In Continuous Integration, Jenkins is the choice of 58 per cent of those surveyed, a huge lead over the second placed GitLab (6 per cent), while the three most popular code repositories are GitLab (35 per cent), GitHub (31 per cent) and BitBucket (25 per cent). It seems that JVM developers love GitLab more than the average developer, since GitHub is reckoned to have a bigger market share overall."

Um, where does TeamCity come? I believed (perhaps wrongly) that it ranked similarly to Jenkins? Since its also a Jetbrains product along with IntelliJ, I would expect a high usage given its interaction with IntelliJ which we know has seen a significant uptake.

[Tim Anderson]

Re: TeamCity

TeamCity 5% in this survey, just below GitLab.

[werdsmith]

Re: TeamCity

There has been a github exodus, but it’s still embedded in so many instructional books, videos, courses and web examples etc so it will take a while to die.

[Cederic]

licence

The spelling is 'licence' you ignorant oiks.

What? It's a meme from some comedy programme not shown in the UK? I don't care. Licence. LICENCE.

Idiots.

[DJV]

Re: licence

Whoosh!

[Plest]

Re: licence

As my kids would say, much to my annoyance, "You been triggered, man!".

[buxtonmarauder]

Re: licence

Depends on the context to which you refer..

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/licence-license/

[Dave K]

Re: licence

Well obviously you'd expect El Reg to post basic, factual articles with no hint of slang, comment or other such colourful language popped in. I mean, they never use puns, cultural references, fake accents or anything else in headlines. Do they now...

[Lorribot]

If only SAP would move away from Java.....

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't, they're stuck to it like pine sap to a squirrel.

[werdsmith]

People need to move away from SAP.

[ecofeco]

This ^^

[Smartypantz]

ASAP!

[Steve Davies 3]

How can OpenJDK etc carry on

if Oracle gets the SOCTUS to come down on their side in the API Copyright case against Google.

They will have rights to the API. The code behind it might be a cleanroom regen of the original SUN Java but the API will be their property.

An Oracle win could very well sound the death knell for all Java implimentations and products based on it.

I wish Oracle would just die quickly.

{A former Oracle DBA from a time before they got truly evil}

[DJV]

"A former Oracle DBA from a time before they got truly evil"

Ah, back when it was merely a full-time hobby for them...

[Dan 55]

Re: How can OpenJDK etc carry on

a time before they got truly evil [citation required]

[TVU]

Re: How can OpenJDK etc carry on

"I wish Oracle would just die quickly.

{A former Oracle DBA from a time before they got truly evil}"

This is only my view, but one of the very worst things ever to happen in the IT industry was the take over of open source-friendly Sun Microsystems by voracious (and it turns out thoroughly litigious too) Oracle.

[Tim99]

Re: How can OpenJDK etc carry on

You must have been around for a while. I realized that they were not people to do business with in 1991...

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: How can OpenJDK etc carry on

Substitute all API terms with their ROT13 pair version, which does not breach the trademark. Writing a compiler to deal with legacy programming is trivial. For instance "java" becomes "wnin". "FileOpenReadWrite" becomes "SvyrBcraErnqJevgr". (You may need an IDE that helps with longer method names.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How can OpenJDK etc carry on

IMHO java API ruling was wrong given that the API is never seen apart from java then is clearly part of the language and hence should come under the same rules as the language itself, i.e. the implementation should be protected but not the language itself.

I always wondered if the google/oracle case was setup

[Andy 73]

Oracle drives non-java uptake

Of course, money from an existing resource is 'free', so it doesn't matter if that resource is decimated in the process. No incentive for Oracle not to squeeze the pips for juice.

In the mean time, we start with languages that compile to JVM, but aren't Java. Then we get a VM that isn't Java and the whole world moves away from Oracle. Kotlin, Dart and all the others are the bridge away from Java, and if something like Spring suddenly starts to support those other languages, devs will be happy to move.

[Kubla Cant]

Re: Oracle drives non-java uptake

In the mean time, we start with languages that compile to JVM, but aren't Java. Then we get a VM that isn't Java and the whole world moves away from Oracle

Unfortunately, a big attraction of JVM-targeted languages* is that they can use Java runtime libraries. The bare language is of limited use. If Oracle succeeds in establishing that its API is proprietary, then using library routines, even in a re-engineered version, is going to cost.

* Some, at least. Not sure about Scala.

[Andy 73]

Re: Oracle drives non-java uptake

Very true, but then you get efforts like Flutter and slowly the libs get replaced as well. Again, if Spring provide top level support, then the reasons to stick with Java are eroded.

It's hard to overstate the value of the Java libs - you can get Java to do just about anything thanks to the vast, well supported and consistent APIs they provide. But... nothing is forever and there is always an incentive to build a 'free(er)' version if there is someone attempting to gate-keep.

[iGNgnorr]

Re: Oracle drives non-java uptake

"In the mean time, we start with languages that compile to JVM, but aren't Java."

I don't wish to give Oracle ideas, but once they've got the Java APIs nailed down (which given the makeup of SCOTUS seems at least somewhat likely,) if they then follow that up with the bytecodes supported by the JVM, then anything else using the JVM is also in deep ... stuff.

[tcmonkey]

"Note, though, that OpenJDK is official in that it is also maintained by Oracle."

So it has about 30 seconds to live, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

O.R.A.C.L.E...

Every time you see it, remember that it's an acronym.

[buxtonmarauder]

"Of those who do pay for JDK support, which is around 9 per cent of the survey participants, a whopping 55 per cent get it from Oracle"

so.. 9% of 2000 developers, of which 55% pay Oracle.. which equates to 99 developers.

not sure that 4.9% paying for subscriptions corresponds with "whopping"

I'd have said that was "paltry"

[Robert Halloran]

Oracle v. Eclipse Foundation: strong-arm tactics failed

check the post https://headcrashing.wordpress.com/2019/05/03/negotiations-failed-how-oracle-killed-java-ee/ about the 'negotiations' between Oracle & Eclipse about moving the javax.* classes over; Oracle only wanted Oracle or Oracle-approved JDKs to be permitted, which would have broken neutrality from Eclipse and might have jeopardized their non-profit status. Pretty obviously concerned about alternate suppliers such as IBM, Azul, etc.

The vote went completely against Oracle's proposal (theirs the only vote in favor), and the process requires unanimity so the only option was what will probably be labeled as "The Great Renaming". Any mods to javax.* now require renaming to avoid legal fireworks. EJB, JAX-RS, JPA will all have to change as well. Forklift upgrade coming.

With the shift to lighter frameworks like Spring, Oracle has successfully executed a footgun maneuver to alienate dev's from bothering with EE going forward.