Oracle Plans To Switch Businesses to Subscriptions for Java SE (infoworld.com)

A reminder for commenters: non-commercial use of Java remains free. An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld: Oracle has revamped its commercial support program for Java SE (Standard Edition), opting for a subscription model instead of one that has had businesses paying for a one-time perpetual license plus an annual support fee... It is required for Java SE 8, and includes support for Java SE 7. (As of January 2019, Oracle will require a subscription for businesses to continue getting updates to Java SE 8.)

The price is $25 per month per processor for servers and cloud instances, with volume discounts available. For PCs, the price starts at $2.50 per month per user, again with volume discounts. One-, two-, and three-year subscriptions are available... The previous pricing for the Java SE Advanced program cost $5,000 for a license for each server processor plus a $1,100 annual support fee per server processor, as well as $110 one-time license fee per named user and a $22 annual support fee per named user (each processor has a ten-user minimum)...

If users do not renew a subscription, they lose rights to any commercial software downloaded during the subscription. Access to Oracle Premier Support also ends. Oracle recommends that those choosing not to renew transition to OpenJDK binaries from the company, offered under the GPL, before their subscription ends. Doing so will let users keep running applications uninterrupted.
Oracle's senior director of product management stresses that the company is "working to make the Oracle JDK and OpenJDK builds from Oracle interchangeable -- targeting developers and organisations that do not want commercial support or enterprise management tools."

Comments

Those recommending OpenJDK may be missing the poin

[squiggleslash]

The fact a tech website like this is full of users convinced that this means that commercial users of Java will now have to start paying is VERY bad news for Java. It re-enforces the feeling most people have that Oracle's takeover means Java is ceasing to be an open, free, technology, that was already a gut feeling most had when they started suing Google.

Despite being such a promising platform, between the poor and over ideological stewardship of James Gosling and his successors, and Oracle's malignant behavior over licensing, it's a system fewer and fewer people will want anything to do with.

People may be "wrong" about what this announcement means, but it doesn't matter: Their misunderstandings re-enforce a negative narrative about the platform, and we're seeing another nail in its coffin.

Re:Python

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't look at Java the language, but the JVM it runs in, a battle tested way to not just run services with high reliability and pretty serious performance, but outrageous tooling to figure out what went wrong if anything happens. It is not perfect for all scenarios, but Python's best use cases and Java's are pretty different.

Re:Alt Headline:

[MightyMartian]

There's too much java code running in too many shops to kill. The big enterprise outfits will pay the licensing fee, and the smaller ones will switch to openjdk. I know it's popular around here to imagine that Java has some sort of meaningful competition, but if Microsoft with all its resolve to open up .NET can't really grab a piece of Java's significant penetration, then it's fantasy to imagine that languages like Python will.