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Oracle and the Java Ecosystem

Posted by samzenpus on from the a-different-approach dept.

First time accepted submitter twofishy writes "After an undeniably rocky start, which saw high profile resignations from the JCP, including Doug Lea (who remains active in the OpenJDK), and the Apache Software Foundation, Oracle is making significant efforts to re-engage with the wider Java ecosystem, a theme which it talked up at the most recent JavaOne conference. The company is working hard to engage with the Java User Group leaders and Java Champions, membership of the OpenJDK project is growing, and the company is making efforts to reform the Java Community Process to improve transparency. The firm has also published a clear, well-defined Java roadmap toward Java 8 and Java 9."

13 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. *Yawn* by WildTangent · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Talk is cheap.

    1. Re:*Yawn* by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Funny

      Larry Ellison IS the devil. Haven't you seen a photo of him?

  2. jigsaw by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    seeing what's happening on the modularization front i'm afraid it'll be just like the fiasco with log4j and jdk logging which came afterwards. modularization is what java applications (well, backend servers powering too complex enterprisey-apps) need, and that should be achieved through the means of easy to use osgi tools instead of yet another (sun|oracle) screwup mimicking an "oss standard".

    1. Re:jigsaw by randomlogin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Modularization is what java applications (well, backend servers powering too complex enterprisey-apps) need, and that should be achieved through the means of easy to use osgi tools instead of yet another (sun|oracle) screwup mimicking an "oss standard".

      I think you're missing one of the main points of Jigsaw - which is modularizing the platform, not the application. This is especially important if Java is to get back into the embedded space, where JavaME and CDC are so antiquated it's just not funny any more. Having a range of well defined platform profiles which span everything from headless embedded devices up to a full enterprise stack (while using the same underlying codebase) would be a major step forward. Personally, I don't care what the implementation details are - the changes aren't going to stop anyone from using OSGi to modularize their applications if they want to.

  3. Oracle matters less thank you'd think by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Compared to other development platforms (eg. MS C++, C#.NET etc) the influence of Oracle is less important than many people may think. Basically the OpenJDK is more important than Oracle's commerical offering (the successor of the Sun JDK - which is very similar to OpenJDK as they have almost all source code in common). But even if this were not the case the Java 'world' has a lot of alterantives: the IBM JDK, GNU GCJ, Apache Harmony. This means that Oracle can try throw its weight around but it is not as devastating as Microsoft would be in the .NET world. This is one beauty (for end-users/developers) with the Java ecosystem.

    1. Re:Oracle matters less thank you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I disagree, OpenJDK (specially for Java 6) has many incompatibilities. Try running Intellij IDEA on it (they don't recommend it), or even some app servers.

    2. Re:Oracle matters less thank you'd think by Necroman · · Score: 4, Informative

      I would recommend against using OpenJDK 6 for anything really. OpenJDK 7 is a bit different though, as it is the official Java SE 7 reference implementation.

      I see OpenJDK 6 as their initial "hey, look at what we're working on", as they tried to completely open source the JDK (they had to re-write at least 4% of the Sun JDK when turning it into OpenJDK). With that re-write, lots of things were probably broken, and testing was required to get them working again. Now that OpenJDK 7 is out, Oracle, IBM and other will be putting their efforts into improving it and making it as complete as possible.

      --
      Its not what it is, its something else.
    3. Re:Oracle matters less thank you'd think by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Funny thing, we experienced the exact opposite. We have issues with various Oracle JDK6 version on Linux that we don't have with OpenJDK 6 versions. Our application would simply segfault when it reaches the set memory limit (instead of garbage collecting).

    4. Re:Oracle matters less thank you'd think by goofy183 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Java has gotos:


      loops:
      for (int i = 0; i < MAX_I; i++) {
              for (int j = 0; j < MAX_J; j++) { // do stuff
                      break loops;
              }
      }

  4. I wish ... by Elgonn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That OpenJDK could just get the lion share of development and mindshare. If LibreOffice can functionally replace OpenOffice there's hope for OpenJDK. Unfortunately LibreOffice had years of a head start on that front (functionally go-oo, etc).

    1. Re:I wish ... by AnAirMagic · · Score: 5, Informative

      It already is the reference implementation

  5. It's write once run everywhere with small niggles by coder111 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, unless you are doing something weird, reasonably OK written java app would run under any platform. There might be some small issues, but cross-platform apps with Java are much much much easier to write than cross-platform apps with anything else.

    --Coder

  6. Re:Java: Was write once run everywhere ever the ca by goofy183 · · Score: 4, Informative

    All depends on what you're doing with it. I work on an enterprise level webapp written 100% in java and we have deployments on Windows, Linux, Solaris and OSX-Server using the EXACT same code base and this is an app with over 1000 classes and 250k+ lines of code.