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Oracle Discontinues Free Java Time Zone Updates
New submitter Noel Trout writes "For a long time in the Java world, there has been a free tool called the 'tzupdater' or Time Zone Updater released as a free download first by Sun and then Oracle. This tool can be used to apply a patch to the Java runtime so that time zone information is correct. This is necessary since some time zones in the world are not static and change more frequently than one might think; in general time zone updates can be released maybe 4-6 times a year. The source information backing the Java timezone API comes from the open source Olson timezone database that is also used by many operating systems. For certain types of applications, you can understand that these updates are mission critical. For example, my company operates in the private aviation sector so we need to be able to display the correct local time at airports around the world. So, the interesting part is that Oracle has now decided to only release these updates if you have a Java SE support contract. Being Oracle, such licenses are far from cheap. In my opinion, this is a pretty serious change in stance for Oracle and amounts to killing free Java for certain types of applications, at least if you care about accuracy. We are talking about the core API class java.util.TimeZone. This begs the question, can you call an API free if you have to pay for it to return accurate information? What is the point of such an API? Should the community not expect that core Java classes are fully functional and accurate? I believe it is also a pretty bad move for Java adoption for these types of applications. If my company as a startup 10 years ago would have been presented with such a license fee, we almost certainly could not have chosen Java as our platform as we could not afford it."
The information needed to provide the updates is freely available, so cannot someone else provide the updates ? Just get tzupdater to download from a different place. I am not a Java programmer, so forgive me if I have got the wrong end of the stick.
Even better change the Java functions to get the information operating system, on Linux the tzdata, then Java is kept up to date as the OS is kept up to date.
The time to move away from Java was as soon as Oracle bought Sun.
I don't know if Python is the answer for everyone, and I know changing to a different language is about as big of a pain as there is, but the jig was up after Sun was bought.
If the whitespace still bothers you - it means you haven't even spent 15m using it.
I think we have a different definition of hidden.
Of course you can always find poorly formatted code that's confusing, but the bottom line here is that this is not an appropriate way of using white space. White space is for the purpose of separating elements and making it more readable.
The fact that most other languages use {} to denote blocks is a good reason to use that in other languages as well. It's something that works, is clear in intention and after all these years, nobody has come up with anything better.
It should be up to the developers as to how precisely they format their code for legibility, not the people writing the language.
I have a hard time believing that Java has no problem abstracting an operating system's graphics, sound, console I/O, network I/O, etc. into a portable API, but somehow can't manage the same for timezone info.