I bet this will be a hot topic at JavaOne.
...too soon?
Oracle’s put a price on Java SE and support: $25 per physical processor per month, and $2.50 per user per month on the desktop, or less if you buy lots for a long time. Big Red’s called this a Java SE Subscription and pitched it as “a commonly used model, popular with Linux distributions”. The company also reckons the new deal …
Finally a good reason to push OCaml past these blockheads... (because I will go medieval on the arse of the next person who says "why not use Node.js").
It looks like the Oracle Java SE standard is still free and only the "Advanced" issues needs licensing (and may also need additional licenses for Oracle WebLogic, Oracle DB or Oracle MySQL, and possible Oracle Oracle to consult on licenses).
Check your privilege here: Java SE Licensing Information User Manual via Java SE Downloads
too little (or in this case far too much $$$) and years too late.
Any business that signs up for this will no doubt get a visit from the Oracle 'goon squad' so that a proper bill can be sent. Instead of $25/server/month it will be $25 per item/month of every bit of IT kit you have because it could possibly run Java at some point in the future especially if it runs some form of Linux embedded or not. See that printer? Yes, that one over in the corner that has not been used for years...
That will be $25/month thank you very much.
Sceptic? this is more like septic if you ask me.
>Poor Quality Control is directly caused by prohibition.
No such thing as a completely safe drug (legal or illegal) as they all have potential side effects and what may be safer for one genetic grouping may have unexpected or deadly consequences for another.
It's an individuals choice but be fully aware of the risks and potential consequences, if it goes tits up don't say you weren't warned. If you can get by in life without pills and powders then that's one less landmine in life to step on.
Pay to play with the JVM?
The language was free, that was the come on to get everybody+dog using Java everywhere.
Drug pusher business model.
Will this impact OpenJDK?
Depends if Oracle think they can make money out of it like Dalvik... but the lawyers may wait a few years first until they think it's ripe for the picking.
So, if it were me, I wouldn't touch anything to do with Java with a bargepole.
Did anyone actually read the Java run-time license?
I did. ~15 years ago.
It does not take a genius lawyer to work out how it could go bad.
It did not take a KPMG accountant (cough couhg) to see how much money was being spent promoting Java and how little money was made from Java to see there was a big gaping cash hole that needed filling.
I avoided Java until OpenJDK came out. Then I only run the VM on Linux ... if I really really have to, for legacy.
We use the Azul certified builds of OpenJDK. Vanilla openjdk is also an option. I'm assuming Azul may step up their own LTS support. There will be some heavy interest in Java 8 support for some time. Java 9 and 10 were comparatively disruptive in terms of compatibility and really not widely adopted. The jury is out on 11 but it will take way more than 2 months for people to switch to that after it is released. That puts Oracle's notion of LTS in perspective. Beware what you are buying into.
IMHO there's very little reason to use Oracle builds it just exposes you to audits and it is effectively exactly the same stuff as the OSS builds from Red Hat, Ubuntu, or Azul minus a few completely irrelevant Oracle proprietary components. I think the LTS thing, or lack thereof (1.5 years is not LTS, sorry), is going to be an annoyance and the post LTS payed support is probably going to be a joke. Oracle is making increasingly good arguments for permanently cutting any dependencies on them. They've repeatedly demonstrated that they are bad stewards of the OSS they acquired with Sun. Hudson became Jenkins, MySql became MariaDB, OpenOffice became LibreOffice, etc.
I think short term a fork is unlikely but I do think many JVM languages like Kotlin, Scala, Clojure, etc. are already eyeing alternative vm technologies around e.g, llvm and de-emphasizing their dependence on Java. Kotlin has a native compiler in the works as well as javascript based backends and there is the ongoing efforts around WASM in browsers. I think clojure can also target javascript. Not sure about Scala. Then there are things like jruby that are basically just Ruby on the jvm, jython for python, etc. Java itself is becoming a legacy language. I see very little reason to use it and am actively transitioning away from it (and I was a very early adopter).
An OpenJDK fork is less likely. Oracle has demonstrated that it can be nasty in a courtroom, with e.g. Android and Apache Harmony (which was the basis for Android, and got shelved by IBM). A combination of patents, trademarks, and the bogus copyright stuff (IMHO Oracle will ultimately lose the case against Google) makes this less likely for bigger corporations to get involved with.
I would not be surprised to see Oracle initiate some layoffs shortly after Java 11 comes out. This smells like a plan to milk licensing as long as it lasts. Oracle is under pressure from its shareholders to generate revenue and software licensing from their traditional products is rapidly melting away and not quite offset by their cloud stuff or "consulting". Years of customer abuse have given them a bad reputation and this shit is not helping.
At the time, I pushed through a complete stop on any new Java investment when Oracle got their hands on it ... against HUGE resistance and with quite some bad blood. 2 years later we were de facto Java-Free (If I don't count Android).
I guess this bad blood will now be easily resolved over a (see icon) and a hearty laugh.
Next year or so, license and support cost will stay the same, just not per server though, but per Oracle licensed core.
All cores in a system to be licensed, as long as it isn't running Oracle VM.
Oh yes, of course, Vmware datacenters as a whole.
And no, it doesnt' matter how many or few cores in that datacenter actually run Java SE.
Theoretically, you could run it on all, couldn't you?
So here's your new license and support contract, adding 8192 cores * 25$/core/month * three years...
1) World + dog baulk at the sudden cost implications
2) Punitive licence audits by Oracle by staff
3) Gradual reduction in (Oracle) Java utilisation over next 5 years
4) Gradual uptake in OpenJVM utilisation over next 5 years
5) Larry throws in the towel, and says fuck it, dumps Java, sticks it on GitHub, and tells everyone to fuck off.
It appears they already are. Go to the website, when the cookies popup comes up select to only have minimum number of cookies and click "I accept". The message that comes up is:
"We are processing your request, this could take up to a few minutes to process."
And they aren't lying there is a microsoft style* progress bar and it really does take minutes as it talks to all their analytics hosts to update your preferences!
*That is gets to 99% and then just sits there for ages.
Options to replace Java without any Slurp of JVM are
> Go - Depends on the "ecosystem" and Google isn't company doing stable product support.
> Rust - Not yet, maybe not ever.
> Ruby - Fun language but ... no static typing, so no. Yes for scripts.
> Python - Fun language but ... no static typing, so no. Yes for scripts.
> C - You having a laf mate.
> C++ - Barely, and the manual no longer passes the "arm's length test". The Ada of today.
> Nim - No idea.
> Elixir - No static typing, good for agent-oriented programming, nice, but no cigar.
> Erlang - No static typing, good for agent-oriented programming, nice, but no cigar.
> Haskell - Not getting out academy fast, most programmers' heads would explode in any case.
> "The only real value to Java is the JVM" - Maybe, maybe
> "as the language itself is a misbegotten turd" - If it's good enough for biz, that's where the money is. Deal with it.
Why anyone would enter into a business arrangement with Oracle baffles me. Azul has a supported build of OpenJDK, as well as their commercial version of Java with a garbage collector that won't randomly pause your applications, along with a variety of other nice improvements. The only way I'd use Oracle Java is if I got the license "free" along with other Oracle products that I was using.
I teach programming at university and I'm struggling to find a suitable replacement for java as a 'learning to program' language. Python is the obvious choice, but the syntax is likely to lead to students that struggle to pick up different languages. I know I'm not alone in thinking meaningful whitespace is a dumb idea, despite the number of down votes this post might attract.
I'll probably get laughed at but why not JavaScript?
- the syntax is C-ish.
- it's already installed on every device your students have.
- the browsers have some pretty decent dev tools built in.
- it's not dominated by one company (nobody is going to start demanding subscriptions or licenses to use JavaScript)
I'll probably get laughed at but why not JavaScript?
Because it's practically the worst language that has ever graced the mind of man with many special interests putting their dick in for good measure? Problematic young people who want to "program" are sticking to it like flies because "it runs in the browser". FFS.
NEVER TEACH SOMEONE PROGRAMMING USING JAVASCRIPT. THERE SHOULD BE CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR THIS. 20 YEARS HARD LABOR IN SIBERIA WOULD BE APPROPRIATE.
There are so many Good Languages out there. No not C++. Jesus Christ.
Pythins great for teaching.
Newbies might need an ingormed choice for an editor.
Introduce yhdm yo c and interface with oython at a later date.
Python and C is a good way of getting studrnts to make engineering choices - execution speed v. ease if development.
Java is a poor teaching tool because of its unneeded verbosity and overly verbos way of doing simple tasks. I would say pick on language like C to show low level stuff (pointers, memory management, etc.) and another like Python or Ruby to show them basic concepts of computing. Concerns about syntax is more due to incompetent teaching; syntactical families are much like foreign languages. Groups share similar syntactical features like language groups share similar grammatical features and basic vocabulary. Expose students to 2 or 3 common languages that have different strengths and weaknesses early so they are used to the difference early. And explain the strengths and weaknesses of each language.
This has the potential to create a schism.
Many applications already run fine on OpenJDK, whether by luck or judgment. Developers could easily target OpenJDK as their intended platform. They can contract-out testing against Oracle Java to smaller firms with only one computer needing an Oracle licence (which may be wholly-owned subsidiaries sharing premises).
Oracle probably will respond by wowing developers who opt to stick with them with proprietary extensions, in order to buy some time before work-alikes can be implemented in Open Source land.
Thus will things fracture, into two not-quite-compatible camps with third- and even fourth-party compatibility layers struggling to plug the gaps. And in the meantime, shinier, newer languages with cooler features will emerge and chip away relentlessly at Java's user base .....
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but neither should it be panic stations. There are lots of ways to continue using Java for free. Obviously there is Open JDK, which has proven just fine for a large number of systems we've migrated over, with very little pain. Alternatively you can continue using Oracle version of Java for free, you just have to stay up to date. Upgrade to Java 8 now and Java 11 in September when it is released. I'm electing to skip Java 9 and 10 as the public availability for those is too short to make a transition worth our while.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html
You can never be safe with any language, especially when people like Larry Ellison exists - and he is the root cause of all the world's problem. Yesterday he bought Sun and now we have to pay for Java. Today, Php and Node.JS are the top in performance for web transaction - but I bet one day he will try to buy it up, and we will be paying license fee in another way.
I am active in opensource development, and we do it all for free, and then next people like Larry is soaking up all the profits on our behalf? Luckily technologies are always moving very fast: in no time someone will be creative enough to revolutionize the world with something new, and something low costs, like Rust and WebAssembly is taking the technological world by storm now. But I sincerely hope existing players like OpenJDK will remain strong and well-funded to survive.