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Oracle May Have Stopped Funding and Developing Java EE (arstechnica.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the quiet-cubicles dept.

While anticipating new features in Java 9, developers also have other concerns, according to an anonymous Slashdot reader: ArsTechnica is reporting that Oracle has quietly pulled funding and development efforts away from Java EE, the server-side Java technology that is part of hundreds of thousands of Internet and business applications. Java EE even plays an integral role for many apps that aren't otherwise based on Java, and customers and partners have invested time and code. It wouldn't be the first time this has happened, but the implications are huge for Java as a platform.
"It's a dangerous game they're playing..." says one member of the Java Community Process Executive Committee. "It's amazing -- there's a company here that's making us miss Sun." Oracle's former Java evangelist even left the company in March and became a spokesman for the "Java EE Guardians," who have now created an online petition asking Oracle to "clarify" its intent and resume development or "transfer ownership of Java EE 8".

4 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Um.. what are they suppose to do? by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sun couldn't make any money off Java. Sun wasn't incompetent, they were stuck in a business model that became irrelevant (selling high end hardware). It's all well and good to say you should pivot to SaaS but that means selling access to software. If Oracle tries that with Java the community will just fork the damn thing. Where is the business model with Java that makes Oracle enough money to cover the expense of buying Sun? It wasn't in enforcing copyrights on Google, they lost that fight. What they're left with is really nice tech that can't make anyone a dime...

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    1. Re:Um.. what are they suppose to do? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think companies like Redhat (JBoss) and IBM and SAP disagree, they make plenty of money with Java.

      Also I see plenty of JDeveloper commercial licenses in Enterprises.

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    2. Re:Um.. what are they suppose to do? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The do not make money because the "own" Java, they make money because they "use" Java...

      Big difference there. The owner of Java would probably love to get a portion of the money that these users of Java are making. This would be realized through a licensing stream... which may be the end game of scaring customers into thinking that the current public product is going to get shit-canned

  2. Java and Java EE: two different things by Guillermito · · Score: 4, Informative

    This affects less people and it is way less dramatic than what the summary implies. Java EE it's just a bunch of "enterprise" frameworks which run on top of the Java virtual machine. Many people using the Java platform don't even bother with Java EE and use other set of frameworks instead (like Spring or Hibernate), and even for those using some of the Java EE technologies, they are most likely using some third party (IBM Websphere) or open source (lJBoss, Tomcat) implementations, since the "official" Java EE implementation by Sun (and later Oracle) never gained much traction.