Oracle's Latest Java Moves Draw Industry Ire

snydeq writes "Two years later, Oracle's stewardship of Java continues to raise user and vendor ire, this time due to modularization, licensing, and security concerns. 'Plans for version 8 of Java Platform Standard Edition, which is due next year, call for inclusion of Project Jigsaw to add modular capabilities to Java. But some organizations are concerned with how Oracle's plans might conflict with the OSGi module system already geared to Java. In the licensing arena, Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu Linux, says Oracle is no longer letting Linux distributors redistribute Oracle's own commercial Java, causing difficulties for the company. Meanwhile, security vendor F-Secure views Java as security hindrance.'"

Comments

Oracle and Java

[ravenswood1000]

With Oracle responsible for Java, is it even worth it to learn the language any more? I mean they will be killing it off soon.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Foxhoundz]

Not a chance. Java has changed the face of mobile computing within the past decade. Why would oracle shoot themselves in the foot?

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

And if oracle keeps up, Android 5 or 6 will ship with a shiny python-esque runtime when google gets tired of paying for java lawsuits, leaving java on "feature" phones nobody writes apps for.

Re:Oracle and Java

[characterZer0]

"Write once, curse (and debug) everywhere."

That is still better than write everywhere, curse (and debug) everywhere.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Xtifr]

Why do companies shoot themselves in their feet? I don't know, but companies do it all the time. Oracle has always been remarkably short-sighted and unable to see the bigger picture.

On the other hand, the fact that there is a an officially GPL'd version of official Java out there may well mean that in the long term, Java will be fine. Oracle can kill off their own branch, but Java in some form is probably going to continue, because it's too entrenched. There are some big players on the sidelines (e.g. IBM) with a lot invested in Java who aren't going to sit idly by and let Oracle destroy it when Sun made it easy to go another route. OpenJDK may have a few shortcomings at the moment, but that could easily change if some bigger players got more serious about it.

It's still too early to tell how this is all going to play out, but the death of Java seems like one of the least likely outcomes.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Ossifer]

1. Most applications have base requirements for runtime (C libs, etc., for example)
2. HotSpot yields native code
3. Sure it does--better than any other generic language in its core, but it also provides JNI for anything else you feel you need outside of its core.
4. OSX WFM.
5. Red herring. See #2, also for truly intensive functions, use assembler.

Re:Oracle and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Oracle thinks that Java is not open, and they also have damning email correspondence showing that Google did not actually believe Java could be used without a license.

You mean the damning email that came out in August 2010 saying from engineer Tim Lindholm to Andy Rubin that said we need to license java?
(http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2011/11_-_November/Oracle_v__Google_and_the_most_relentlessly_litigated_email_ever/)
Remember that Oracle purchased Sun in 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems) where Android was first released in 2008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system))

Putting together a timeline:
1) Android released in 2008
2) Oracle purchased Sun in 2009
3) "Damning" email in 2010

So after Android is released, Oracle purchases Sun hoping to sue Google for $$$, then an engineer says yeah we better license java. That isn't damning, that's an opinion of one engineer (or more likely a team). Now if that timeline had #3 coming first, it would be damning, but to come last in the chain is hardly even worth mentioning. Oracle's case resting on that one email is laughable at best

Re:Oracle and Java

[kaffiene]

What a moronic load of crap. Java has not succeeded for this long because of marketing. At some point, a language needs to be able to just get stuff done - and it has. People like the Apache foundation haven't produced a metric shit-load of projects in Java because they liked Sun's marketing, they did it because Java was good at getting work done.

I'm a C hacker from way back. I used C++ from when it was a C preprocessor. C is one of my favourite programming languages, but so is Java. They are both excellent at Getting Shit Done (tm). Ignoring all that's good about Java because it had a marketing drive decades ago is pathetic. Ruby has been hyped recently. Microsoft's Visual C++ has had a tonne of marketing from MS - ditto C#. Should we dump all those languages or claim that their successes are all marketing? Give me a break. Grow the fuck up.

Re:Java, Ubuntu, and students

[DrgnDancer]

I don't want to be an ass, and I agree in principle that school sites should be at least as platform independent as possible; but honestly how many possible OS configurations should a school test against? If you work on Windows you probably have 90% of parents covered. If you work on Windows and Mac you probably have 99.9% of parents covered. Is working on Ubuntu really worth that extra .1% of parents who could honestly just put Windows in a VM? I understand the desire to use what you want to use, and not let stuff like this dictate how you run your computer, but is it really worth a whole lot of tax payer money to make sure that the school website works for such a small user base? If so at what point do they stop? Do they have to test against every Linux distro? The various BSDs? 32 and 64 bit version of all of this? Install the most minimal cost/complexity Windows VM you can get away with and show the kids how to boot it to do their work.

Re:Not an accurate summary of the case

[WaywardGeek]

I love posts on slashdot by people who have more than the average clue about what's going on. Thanks for the info. I've been using openjdk for the last year, and I think it is finally something close to a real free software alternative for most Java programs. I also use Android's Java. Pretty much, I think we should be using any viable alternative to Oracle. They simply can't be counted on.