Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Releases A No-Cost Distribution of OpenJDK (sdtimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes SD Times:
Amazon wants to make sure Java is available for free to its users in the long term with the introduction of Amazon Corretto. The solution is a no-cost, multi-platform, production-ready distribution of the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK). "Java is one of the most popular languages in use by AWS customers, and we are committed to supporting Java and keeping it free," Arun Gupta, principal open-source technologist at Amazon, wrote in a blog post. "Many of our customers have become concerned that they would have to pay for a long-term supported version of Java to run their workloads. As a first step, we recently re-affirmed long-term support for Java in Amazon Linux. However, our customers and the broader Java community run Java on a variety of platforms, both on and off of AWS."
Amazon Corretto will be available with long-term support and Amazon will continue to make performance enhancements and security fixes to it, the company explained. Amazon plans on making quarterly updates with bug fixes and patches, as well as any urgent fixes necessary outside of its schedule... Corretto 8 is available as a preview with features corresponding to those in OpenJDK 8. General availability for the solution is planned for Q1 2019... "Corretto is designed as a drop-in replacement for all Java SE distributions unless you're using features not available in OpenJDK (e.g., Java Flight Recorder)," Gupta wrote....
According to Gupta, Corretto 8 will be available at no cost until at least June of 2023. The company is working on Corretto 11, which will be available until at least August of 2024. "Amazon has already made several contributions to OpenJDK 8 and we look forward to working closely with the OpenJDK community on future enhancements to OpenJDK 8 and 11," Gupta wrote. "We downstream fixes made in OpenJDK, add enhancements based on our own experience and needs, and then produce Corretto builds. In case any upstreaming efforts for such patches is not successful, delayed, or not appropriate for OpenJDK project, we will provide them to our customers for as long as they add value. If an issue is solved a different way in OpenJDK, we will move to that solution as soon as it is safe to do so."
Amazon Corretto will be available with long-term support and Amazon will continue to make performance enhancements and security fixes to it, the company explained. Amazon plans on making quarterly updates with bug fixes and patches, as well as any urgent fixes necessary outside of its schedule... Corretto 8 is available as a preview with features corresponding to those in OpenJDK 8. General availability for the solution is planned for Q1 2019... "Corretto is designed as a drop-in replacement for all Java SE distributions unless you're using features not available in OpenJDK (e.g., Java Flight Recorder)," Gupta wrote....
According to Gupta, Corretto 8 will be available at no cost until at least June of 2023. The company is working on Corretto 11, which will be available until at least August of 2024. "Amazon has already made several contributions to OpenJDK 8 and we look forward to working closely with the OpenJDK community on future enhancements to OpenJDK 8 and 11," Gupta wrote. "We downstream fixes made in OpenJDK, add enhancements based on our own experience and needs, and then produce Corretto builds. In case any upstreaming efforts for such patches is not successful, delayed, or not appropriate for OpenJDK project, we will provide them to our customers for as long as they add value. If an issue is solved a different way in OpenJDK, we will move to that solution as soon as it is safe to do so."
According to Gupta, Corretto 8 will be available at no cost until at least June of 2023.
I was reading through the initial summary and it sounded pretty good, but this part has me like WHA?
What might a potential cost be? 2023 is practically tomorrow if you have any kind of serious server development.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe because they a using AdoptOpenJDK ???
https://adoptopenjdk.net/support.html#roadmap
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_version_history
Announced on Devoxx Belgium on wednesday by James Gosling, 'already' on Slashdot by sunday... Get on the ball guys.
The good news is that Oracle has just lost a lot of the control over the Java ecosystem that they had. Because of their insistence on making a buck and hurting the customer they've made themselves their biggest competition and the open source will win.
The superb name. Hats off to whoever was the genius!
Exactly what is still bothersome about the JVM today?
I remember the early annoyances, but both the language and the VM have undergone significant improvements over the years.
If you don't like Java the language, there are any number of modern languages to use on the JVM.
What would you wish that people used other than the JVM?
Because unlike the free OpenJDK, the Amazon one is a No-Cost distribution.
Only a few OpenJDK distributions are Java Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK) certified, Sun didn't like handing that capability out as you might remember, refused to give it to Apache. Azul's Zulu is the only other one I know for sure.
Oracle have announced that, “after January 2019”, Java SE 8 public updates will not be available for “business, commercial or production use” without a commercial license.
This practically begs for a Bond film with two evil masterminds, one owning an island and the other one getting a skim from every monetary transaction ever made. They could fight each other and also Bond, and it could lead to a three-way standoff like in that Clint Eastwood film.
There is still a need for 32-bit Java, especially on Windows as well as OS-X, if you want Java to work through JNI with 32-bit native code apps and modules. I "get" why Linux is all 64-bit because "you have the source to everything" and can recompile it, but there is a lot of stuff in the commercial OSs that looks to be 32-bit for a very long time.
Java 8 looks to be the last one supporting 32-bit in those places, and that has a January 2019 drop dead or pay up date if you want to keep using Eight.
So if you need 32-bit, you are talking Open JDK 8, which is free from Amazon until 2023? A mild reprieve.
I came across Azul Systems (I have nothing to do with them apart from wanting a free 32-bit JDK), a start-up sized company distributing free JDKs and paid-for higher-performance versions, if I understand their Web page.
This is correct.
Oracle will start charging for Oracle Java, which is derived from openjdk and comes with its nice [citation needed] installer and update client.
However openjdk will still be free (GPL). The problem is that to use it you have to either go through the laborious and poorly-documented process of installing it yourself or find another group that has built an installer for you. Zulu and Corretto are two examples of the latter.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Iâ(TM)d also take a look at the AdoptOpenJDK project.
How are they doing anything against Oracle's influence? It was Oracle's choice to no longer provide free OpenJDK updates for more than 6 months, so Oracle practically invited new OpenJDK build providers to step in. So now Amazon joined Red Hat, AdoptOpenJDK, Azul, etc. as an OpenJDK build provider. I don't really get what they add to the providers that were already there, but I guess if you really like Amazon you could prefer Coretto over other free OpenJDK builds.
dnf install java
apt-get install java
The problem only really exists for those locked into less sophisticated, usually proprietary, operating systems where such conveniences don't exist.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Easy. Outlaw Techno Psycobitch man the most hipster approval language ever!
http://saveie6.com/
Easy. Outlaw Techno PsychoBitch man the most hipster language ever!
http://saveie6.com/
Standardization. Basically from a support perspective if a business sells you an application which runs on the JVM, they don't want to waste time investigating a problem that turns out to be caused by a janky build someone cobbled together. Generally the OpenJDK will work fine, but eliminating variables will always make problems simpler.
So each user was firing up a 70MB JVM when they logged in, which at 1000 users was 70GB of RAM. Which was quite a lot in 2004. ...
Yes, and some other asshole did not realize you simply add the memory switches to the command line of the JVM to reduce it to 4MB or even 2MB, depending on what the complicated log in actually was doing.
And then again, you could defer that to a single server, handling multiple log in attempts simultaneously and run everything in a single 70MB VM
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That is actually not the problem.
E.g. my last company shipped Java based products to customers ... those customers run Java 8. It does not help if I can upgrade to Java 9, but they can't.
And then again, there are probably API incompatibilities ... e.g. running a Java 8 VM, but basically using deprecated Java 5 APIs, which are finally phased out in Java 9, hence you have to rework/fix the code base before you can do your magical "apt-get".
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So you think we should have persisted with trying to get the Java solution working? You are making my point for me about Java devs. Launching Java in the login script to perform simple tasks just seems like a bad idea period. Why would you argue otherwise?
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
Why would you argue otherwise?
Because your arguing is nonsense as well.
E.g. you did not mention it is a "log in script".
You said during log in, so I e.g. assume a dialog box on my PC asking for a username and password.
You are arguing about languages and claiming that people who use certain languages are by definition superiour to people using other languages.
I thought the same about VB developers ... but I changed that mindset long ago before I started mainly to develop in Java.
P.S.
Why did the log in script need a C++/Java program to do anything is beyond me anyway. So you want to argue you better had done the Java thing in C++ instead in "the right language" what ever your scripting language was?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
so why wouldn't you just use openjdk?
Because it is slow. Every time I've tested it with enterprise software the issue has been performance. It gets there, eventually.
why does anyone need an amazon version that they may start charging for?
I want OpenJDK to work. I haven't tried to nail down specifics however now I'm getting more interested in trying.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
dnf install java apt-get install java
The problem only really exists for those locked into less sophisticated, usually proprietary, operating systems where such conveniences don't exist.
Yeah, until you need to get something done. Don't get me wrong I'm a fan of OpenJDK, but its slow. You might be able to get away with it on a non critical application but there is no way it is enterprise ready.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'm looking at your change control process here. Did anyone request the change? Why was the dev allowed to put the code in to production? Did he/she have admin on the server?
These things were standard in 2004. A dog of a program it might have been, but the change control should have stopped that. Particularly, if it was "a multi-million dollar problem" - wasn't there a little investigation done first?
Q:I was listening to a CD in Grip and it sounded horrible! What's up? A:Perhaps you are listening to country music
So you threw a few million dollars at the problem and then decided to investigate deeper when that didn't pan out?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I'm not sure if this is linked but last month there was a business insider article about how Amazon had moved it's warehouse databases off of Oracle. And that this database change was the reason for a crash on Prime Day.
From the article "And on Monday at the Oracle OpenWorld keynote, Ellison compared Amazon's database to a semi-autonomous car, saying, 'You get in, you start driving, you die.' "
Amazon saw an opportunity to fire back a Oracle and took it.
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
Downtime is important, a few million isn't. The consultants from Sun Microsystems had hardware at arms reach so that's what was thrown at the problem first.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
I checked with the dacapo bench, Oracle has an about 10% performance advantage. Feel free to repeat the test.
java -jar dacapo-9.12-MR1-bach.jar -C lusearch
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.191-b12, mixed mode)
===== DaCapo 9.12-MR1 lusearch PASSED in 1218 msec =====
===== DaCapo 9.12-MR1 xalan PASSED in 1284 msec =====
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.191-b12, mixed mode)
===== DaCapo 9.12-MR1 lusearch PASSED in 1118 msec =====
===== DaCapo 9.12-MR1 xalan PASSED in 1112 msec =====
Yeah, I've always wondered what problam Java was trying to solve.
I know, it's supposed to be about write-once, run-anywhere.
That's already a non-problem, when you have a compiler for each architecture your program needs to run on.
Today, there's what, x86/x86-64, Qualcomm Snapdragons, and the Apple A, W, S-series?
With how hard the Apple processors are locked down, that leaves two to need a compiler for.
Btw, was that Java dev fired?
Privacy begins with
Not fired, but reassigned to running network cables
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica