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Oracle Removes Java Signatures, Breaking Webstart
sproketboy writes "It seems Oracle has decided in their infinite wisdom to remove digital signatures from the Java projects that they put into the open source community. Of course this breaks any application out there depending on Java Webstart using these libs. Looks like Java3D and JAI are currently affected — probably other APIs are as well. Oh Oracle! What are we supposed to do with you?"
Oracle only said they'd keep it open source. They never said they'd let you use it.
Why do we even need corporations to be involved and in control of our programming languages. Is it not time to rid ourselves as programmers from the tyranny of these greedy organizations by simply choosing to not use proprietary programming languages?
from FTA:
It's been several years since Oracle (previously Sun) stopped providing support for the open source Java3D projects. It was decided that keeping binaries signed with old Sun signing certificates represented a potential security risk, and because of this, we have removed the old Sun signing certificates for the binaries on download.java.net.
Cause you know...that makes sense.
Oracle are spies who have signed a secret pact with propriety companies to destroy open Source. Thy bought SUN destroyed many of its products. thy are suing Android in all possible ways(Which makes no sense). now this. Thy are
Oracle is used to dealing with very large corporations. Now that they have their hands on Java, which directly affects many users, web hosts (large and small), etc, etc they just don't know how to handle things. Forcing major changes onto companies that Oracle has by the implementation & licensing balls is one thing, but trying to force major changes onto the real world will only lead to a backlash and the adoption of alternatives to Java.
It will take a little time to untrench Java, but the intertubes won't stand for this type of reckless and disrespectful behavior. A change is a commin'.
About freeloaders who don't spend money like gigantic enterprise borgs which is why they make money as opposed to Sun... which is why Sun died, but of course if you ask some idiot like bruce perens the reason sun died he will state is because they didn't open-source everything 10 years earlier... so you just cant win!
Die Java! Die! Go Oracle! Kill this shitastic language! Once it's dead, the horde of Java "programmers" can go back to being fry cooks like they were before Java was created.
fry cook! If only .... I was a C++ programmer
Sure, just like how all of the crap programmers left the industry when COBOL, and VB6 went out of fashion...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Fork it, then tell Oracle to fork off.
There are plenty of good Java programmers. Yes there are more crap java programmers. But I can't think of any language for which that ISN'T true.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Oracle shot themselves in the foot on this one.
Many of the Oracle enterprise applications are Web Start applications. What's going to happen when some big retailer upgrades their JRE across the business and all of a sudden, their HR app doesn't work? Or their cash apps start to fail. Oracle's in for a world of hurt in a Walter Sobchak kind of way.
I'm still waiting for them to re-open the comm library so I can do serial port control using default libraries. Seriously wtf Oracle, why did you drop support for javaxcomm?
You get what you pay for.
Serves JavaWebStart coders right for relying on third-party, online systems.
In that vein, one can consider what would happen if Google suddenly stopped hosting JQuery: about half of the javascript-using websites in the world would stop working. :)
Yes, what did the "Rich Asshole" call Larry Ellison?
Come one, don't leave us hanging!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
For the love of god. Put Oracle out of its misery. They're killing a good thing.
I don't like oracle either. But if you are writing a webstartable application, you probably have the infrastructure to sign your own jars. So you could sign the Java3D-jars yourself and distribute them together with your application. Depending on availability of something like http://download.java.net/media/java3d/webstart/release/j3d/1.5.2/windows-i586/j3dcore-d3d_dll.jar - signed or not - isn't really advisable anyway.
What is wrong with being a fry cook? That can be a very demanding and challenging job. Java programmers are more suited for rock-breaking work, tbh. Maybe a job at Starbucks if they are hipster.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Python seems to think it isn't true.
Java assumes everyone is a bad programmer.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Who was the rich asshole, and what did they talk about on the phone?
</cmtp>
It's a 5 minute job to package the jar yourself and sign it.
And a how many minute job to earn money to buy the certificate from a CA to sign your signature?
This isn't that big a deal. Any Java developer who is using WebStart for anything serious is already signing jars, and all you need to do is sign and deploy the jars that Oracle is no longer signing.
Oh Oracle! What are we supposed to do with you?
Nuke it from orbit...it's the only way to be sure.
To blame is the infinite wisdom of developers that decide to reference libraries from Oracle servers. They could instead sign all the libraries themselves and put them on their own download servers. That has the added benefit that Webstart doesn't need to rely on dozens of third-party download hosts to be up and running, but only your own host must be up.
Download the JARS, sign and package them yourself. You can't depend on external resources remaining unchanged forever.
INTERCAL.
Someone (Google?) should just make a language identical to Java and call it something else. Even existing Java compilers could compile it and existing Java VM's could run it! Then they should extend and alter it so we can call Vectors Vectors and use them like arrays, and do operator overloading, and other sugar that Javas "Everything is a Fucking Object, Now Shut Up" keeps us from.
Oh, and get rid of those damn fonts. The Sun Java fonts look like shit on any screen at any resolution. Oh and fix Java embedding in web pages, just fixing that we'd have a viable alternative to flash.
Well, I guess that depends if you define it intra-language or inter-language. When you wield a butcher knife there are good butchers and crap butchers, when you wield a scalpel there are good surgeons and crap surgeons but if they all entered a precision cutting competition we'd see differences. And some languages are like juggling chain saws for no discernible reason. I'd call java quite middle of the road though...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Is Cobol so bad, compared to Java in the hands of Oracle?
no, I don't have a sig
I wonder if this is the real reason why Java gets so much crap. More generally, I wonder if this is the reason why there are so few programming systems that would be easy to use and produce efficient code.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If colleges had waited another five years to start teaching Java as the default "learn programming" language, the middle aged programmers turned IT managers who fanatically clung to java in a bid to stay relevant would have moved out of the language decision making pipeline and we could be rid of it by now.
Unfortunately that was not the case, and now we are stuck with it forever.
Oracle just gave us an 'affeine break.
Is that why Python doesn't have advanced concepts like threading? Is that why Python is considered a good teaching language? Do you really think there aren't mediocre Python programmers out there?
Google gets a valuable return from hosting jquery - Google gets a tracking record on every web page fetch that uses the Google hosted jquery, even for web pages that tried not to contain web bugs and other tracking code.
Oh Oracle! What are we supposed to do with you?
Absolutely nothing. Run for the hills. Anyone who sticks around for this kind of continued abuse and incompetence has Stockholm Syndrome.
It started back in Team Fortress Classic
What landed on your head to make you switch to ....... java?*shutters*
Key words: "seems to think". I'd be more curious about how a language can seem to think at all... dancing bears, etc.
What landed on your head to make you switch to ....... java?*shutters*
If I'm honest it was money. But I don't miss pointers, references, destructors, the pre-processor and many other things in c++
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Python-Charmer.aspx
There are bad programmers everywhere, but yes, the concentration of bad coders in Java, ASP, VB, C# and anything .net related is 10 times that of any other language.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
uh, my point was, the python language and indeed the community around python, make rather pretentious assumptions about themselves.
eg, there is no private/public properties in python. Instead the mentality is that the developer using an API will be smart enough to tread where they don't belong.
Java assumes the exact opposite, that everyone is dumb so this is why so much verbosity is needed.
there are pros and cons to both approaches.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
The CPython implementation has a global interpreter lock that makes threading worthless in some situations, but the language certainly supports it (and other implementations can use it without restriction).
There certainly are mediocre Python programmers out there, but I hadn't seen "Java-bad" Python code until the most recent TDWTF: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Python-Charmer.aspx
F0 07 C7 C8
Yes. Modula 3, for example. has
Mandatory bounds checking, garbage collection and all that implies, and inability to break type safety combined with good execution speed
.
Python has threading. I've used it, a lot.
I believe the module you are looking for is cryptically named "threading".
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
umm, I can think of one example with worse programmers on average than any of those.
COBOL
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Eh. There are things to do in C/C++ that are trivial, that take some real creativity in Java or Python without invoking the C/C++. Likewise, there are things that are trivial in Java or Python that would take a lot of effort to program in C/C++.
I'm more inclined to think that each language tends to focus on a different mindset and skill set. Though I'd also argue that Java is a poorly thought out language, and I can't blame it's programmers for all the issues. Personally I find C to be less of a headache.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
If the Python community thought everybody was so smart then they'd just tell everybody to use C or C++, which allows you to do memory manipulation and isn't nearly as slow.
Yay for Google reinventing Java
I thought Java was supposed to be open, but apparently Oracle never got the memo.
Are there any honestly open languages that are viable alternatives to Java?
Java was better than Cobol to start with, and considering it hasn't changed in the last 6 years means it didn't get any worse.
Java is verbose because it's a statically typed language without type inference, duh! ( You know, like C or C++ or C# )
" There are things to do in C/C++ that are trivial, that take some real creativity in Java or Python without invoking the C/C++. "
And you've got wrapper generators for exactly those times. (Or use Lua + alien )
Both Java and Pyhton are glue languages. It's just Python is comfier in the command line while Java in the IDE.
Though I've been a professional Java programmer I never enjoyed it as much as the other languages. It died on the desktop, it died on the web, but got a good foothold in the enterprise web services side. Mostly thanks to Sun driving it very hard, and it riding on their reputation of Sun's rock solid hardware and Solaris OS.
Oracle has done a good job of killing it. It is clear the owners don't care about it, it's sinking in a legal mire, and now it breaks in ways that would never have happened under Sun's stewardship. Time to move on.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Sturgeon's law applies.
Is that why Python doesn't have advanced concepts like threading? Is that why Python is considered a good teaching language? Do you really think there aren't mediocre Python programmers out there?
Ahem.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I've heard so many complaints from Python programmers themselves about the Global Interpreter Lock that prevents real threading from occurring that I didn't know that they actually had a threading library.
Point taken, though.
It will create a few ripples here and there but overall they did the right decision, especially when considering http://www.diginotar.nl/
I presume that it will only be a matter of time until these packages get new certificates on that we can "trust".
"Self"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This affected Mercedes-Benz USA. One of their most important apps is a JavaWebStart. This explains the company wide failure we had.
What landed on your head to make you switch to ....... java?*shutters*
If I'm honest it was money. But I don't miss pointers, references, destructors, the pre-processor and many other things in c++
Same here. Actually not but... anyways. For me it was from C/C++ (from the days of C++ without anything resembling the STL) to Java (for the money), and like you, I didn't miss the segfaults and the "ooops, I forgot to define my function args as references, causing accidental pass-by-values" or the stupidity of the throws clause (which fortunately it is being deprecated in C++0x). With the Java standard library, productivity went off the roof.
But 12 years later, now I'm back to C++ ... also for the money (good C++ + embedded software = moolah), but also because I got fed up of the crappy Java developers out there. There used to be a time that to be a Java developer you were among the leading edge sh*t dudes. Now, bleh. The JVM work landscape is only interesting and challenging if one is done Scala, Groovy, or Clojure.
But now that I'm in C++, there are also shitty programmers there. And oh man, do I miss the Java standard library (no, Boost doesn't match it), and more than that, oh, I do miss the JVM's clear exception semantics, the JVM enums (and their semantics and capabilities), the ability rewind a call on the call stack when debugging, remote debugging right off the box, arguments passed by values where all arguments (sans primitives) are references.
I have my grips with some of the design decisions in the Java language, but man, there is some really good advanced shit in there, superior than what is in C++. C++ is a convoluted, everything-and-the-kitchen sink programming language.
If I had my say, I would work with plain C instead. Don't anyone get me wrong, I enjoy working with C++, not because of the language, but because of the technical challenges of doing object-oriented systems development as opposed to object-oriented application development. But if you are really objective, C++ has a horrendous numbers of warts. Syntactically, sometimes it makes refactoring a bit harder than what one would naturally do in Java.
That's my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.
Java is verbose because it's a statically typed language without type inference, duh! ( You know, like C or C++ or C# )
Uh, from someone who does both Java and C++. These two are almost equally verbose. Also, the primary culprit behind Java verbosity (and which makes it more verbose than C++) has nothing to do with type inference. The blame falls squarely in :
1) checked exceptions,
2) checked exceptions in the throws declarations of almost all the APIs for IO/networking and threading,
3) a lack of function handlers at the JVM level which forces you to create these nastily verbose object functors (at least in C++ you can create a functor object with a "()" operator, or pass a pointer to a function.)
C# is less verbose, but still (it's more elegant than Java, though, it has lambdas and delegates.)
Scala would have been a better example of a compiled-time statically typed with succinct syntax due to very advanced and sophisticated type inference.
Or C programmers doing C++ without understanding OOP concepts (there are a shitload of those out there.)
Why do we even need corporations to be involved and in control of our programming languages. Is it not time to rid ourselves as programmers from the tyranny of these greedy organizations by simply choosing to not use proprietary programming languages?
This is a clueless post. This is not fine arts where you choose to paint oil on canvas or watercolor. Rarely do you, as a programmer, choose the implementation language, even for new development. Rarely, rarely, rarely, only if you are in a small shop, or you are entrepreneur or your own business dealing with small clients or small contracts.
Again, to reiterate, this was a clueless post, full of rhetoric at the expense of everything else.
Unlike Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Oracle; Oracle has never filed a frivolous IP lawsuit against it's competitors.
In fact, Google has not even filed lawsuits in retaliation to the obviously coordinated, and bogus, legal attacks against Android, and companies that use Android.
Oh god, who was the idiot who started a language war in Slashdot?
I'm a senior managing architect at a large SI: what that means is that not only do I make the 'big' decisions but I also manage a team of specialists who help me do that (e.g. Middleware experts, network architects, infrastructure, messaging etc).
Pretty much the only choice I have for implementation language is: Is it Java or C#?
This isn't because some "middle-aged programmers turned IT managers" have any say in the decision: they're all junior to me anyway. (And, in any case, my experience is they're all for trying new stuff- it's the new kids who are the most conservative because their sole value is in their knowledge of that one language.)
It's because the company exec (all senior to me) have made the decision to off-shore all the development work (something I regularly argue against) and, because I don't know any of the developers personally, there's no way I am going to risk having them use something new: so it's C# or Java.
And usually even that choice is dictated by the experience of the team or teams that are available. I'm not going to specify Java if all I've got is a team that's experienced in C# (and vice-versa).
This is just another way that offshoring is a bad idea (the others, to summarise, are: where do future architects and technical managers come from? the exec often ignore the hidden cost of offshoring -low quality code/testing, poor understanding of the domain, requirement for on-shore reviews to check they did it right, slow turn-around, inherently anti agile. Exports currency that won't now be spent in the markets we sell into).