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Oracle's Java Policies Are Destroying the Community

Posted by Unknown on from the shares-in-haskell-inc-up-ten-points dept.

snydeq writes "Neil McAllister sees Oracle's buggy Java SE 7 release as only the latest misstep in a mounting litany of bad behavior. 'Who was the first to alert the Java community? The Apache Foundation. Oh, the irony. This is the same Apache Foundation that resigned from the Java Community Process executive committee in protest after Oracle repeatedly refused to give it access to the Java Technology Compatibility Kit,' McAllister writes. 'It seems as if Oracle would like nothing better than to stomp Apache and its open source Java efforts clean out of existence.'"

12 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Round 1. Fight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We have the last Java 7 preview (GPL).

    Fork the darn thing and see who lives.

    1. Re:Round 1. Fight. by TheEyes · · Score: 3, Informative

      They released version 3.4.2 three days ago. As I understand it they're mostly working on bug fixes for now--lord knows they need it--and removing as much Java dependence as possible.

  2. Also in the news by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Funny

    It seems as if Oracle would like nothing better than to stomp Apache and its open source Java efforts clean out of existence.

    Also in the news. It seems that water makes things wet.

    1. Re:Also in the news by shugah · · Score: 4, Informative

      MySQL already has several forks, but MariaDB, developed by Monty Widenius is the closest to a drop in replacement.

      --
      If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
  3. Java and .NET falling by the wayside? by Virtucon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It seem strange that Oracle would push people away from Java, especially since Sun spent a great deal of time getting people to adopt it. Now Microsoft seems to have gone soft on .NET which was that technology to compete with Java. Did Oracle somehow make a backroom deal with Microsoft? As I recall the Sun/Microsoft suit prohibited Microsoft from having their own Java implementation, is Microsoft now going to license Java from Oracle as the .NET replacement? This is all speculation but Oracle hasn't done anything good for the things they received in the Sun acquisition, Solaris, Java and SPARC. I realize that Oracle is a big company that likes lots of revenues but it seems to me that Sun market share was on the decline and now Oracle is just shutting the door on what remaining customers they had.

       

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    1. Re:Java and .NET falling by the wayside? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Its amazing how far a single article of FUD goes these days - Microsoft is not "going soft" on .Net, they just weren't willing to discuss it during a talk about something else entirely, while in Windows 8, .Net is still there and stronger than ever.

      As I recall the Sun/Microsoft suit prohibited Microsoft from having their own Java implementation, is Microsoft now going to license Java from Oracle as the .NET replacement

      Microsoft already have a licensing deal with Sun/Oracle in place for .Net - it was pursued years ago, at the very birth of .Net. And besides, what would Microsoft gain from going to Java? Functionality wise, .Net is better featured so what would Microsoft gain from switching ecosystems? Not a whole lot.

      Microsoft don't want Java, they already made their version of it and are quite happy with it.

  4. This isn't a news article. by Short+Circuit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really, who didn't see this coming?

    This isn't a news article. This is an article about two previous news articles. There's nothing to see coming. Submitted by the author of an article about the two previous stories. Slow news day, I hope; this is just a group-think trajectory thing.

    --
    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  5. Re:Watch me falling asleep over Javatalk by pavon · · Score: 4, Informative

    And LibreOffice is working on reimplementing many of those features without Java.

  6. Re:Java, truley an American icon by Applekid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    OP didn't claim it was dead. It sounded to me like he *wanted* it dead. Add me to that list please.

    Wait, this is America, and people spent money in College learning it. Perhaps the government should subsidy the language and offer incentives to companies that hire these people...

    - Dan.

    My sarcasm detector needs calibration, but, in the meantime, those who spent money in college learning a language and not the concepts behind the language got ripped off. Give fish vs teach fishing and all that jazz.

    --
    More Twoson than Cupertino
  7. Re:This is Oracle we are talking about.... by mzs · · Score: 3, Informative

    Apache did, in fact they reported the trouble five days before the deadline. This was a show stopper, Oracle did not treat it as such, Oracle has a habit of this. What they should have done (keeping in mind how they treat bugs) is released on schedule but with the option disabled. But no this would have been too much of a performance regression, again Oracle has made crazy decisions in the past where they value perceived performance in some benchmark above all other sane reasoning. But really they could have in this case, then around the second or third update have this fixed and it would have been another great release all about improved performance. That would look pretty dang good in comparison to the current situation. It is just that there is clearly some disease that has spread at Oracle, and they can't think things through clearly enough when there is a deadline or benchmark involved.

  8. Re:Maybe I'm just being an idiot... by Atzanteol · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's like "goldy" and "silvery" only it's made out of iron.

    --
    "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

    - Charles Darwin
  9. Re:Java, truley an American icon by GooberToo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As PyPy matures and begins to rival Java in performance, I strongly suspect Python will begin to offset Java in the enterprise. Most studies clearly indicate Java is not a desired language by most programmers. Rather, most programmers program in Java because the enterprise dictated it. With Java/Oracle beginning to lose face, IMOHO, it opens the door for languages programmers actually want to use. This means languages like Python, which have extremely rich libraries, easily integrate with other languages, and continues to grow in appeal.

    Ruby, of course, is not in the running as its positioned itself as the anti-culture (anti-enterprise) hipster language.