Comment by gf000

Comment by gf000 a day ago

> Java ? Licensing sagas requiring the use of divergent forks. Plus Go is easier to work with, perhaps especially for server-side deployments

Yeah, these are sagas only, because there is basically one, single, completely free implementation anyone uses on the server-side and it's OpenJDK, which was made 100% open-source and the reference implementation by Oracle. Basically all of Corretto, AdoptOpenJDK, etc are just builds of the exact same repository.

People bringing this whole license topic up can't be taken seriously, it's like saying that Linux is proprietary because you can pay for support at Red Hat..

traceroute66 a day ago

> People bringing this whole license topic up can't be taken seriously

So you mean all those universities and other places that have been forced to spend $$$ on licenses under the new regime also can't be taken seriously ? Are you saying none of them took advice and had nobody on staff to tell them OpenJDK exists ?

Regarding your Linux comment, some of us are old enough to remember the SCO saga.

Sadly Oracle have deeper pockets to pay more lawyers than SCO ever did ....

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piva00 a day ago

> So you mean all those universities and other places that have been forced to spend $$$ on licenses under the new regime also can't be taken seriously ? Are you saying none of them took advice and had nobody on staff to tell them OpenJDK exists ?
This info is actually quite surprising to me, never heard of it since everywhere I know switched to OpenJDK-based alternatives from the get-go. There was no reason to keep on the Oracle one after the licencing shenanigans they tried to play.
Why do these places kept the Oracle JDK and ended up paying for it? OpenJDK was a drop-in replacement, nothing of value is lost by switching...

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- traceroute66 a day ago
  
  TL;DR: Its impossible to know if anyone on campus has downloaded Oracle Java....Oracle monitors downloads and sends in the auditors...
  See link/quote in my earlier reply above.
  
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  wing-_-nuts a day ago
  
  The licensing thing is such FUD man. Oracle being a terrible company is in no way a decent argument that Java should not be used.
  
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gf000 a day ago

I have made a bunch of claims, that are objectively true. From there, basic logical inference says that you can completely freely use Java. Anything else is irrelevant.
I don't know what/which university you talk about, but I'm sure they were also "forced to pay $$$" for their water bills and whatnot. If they decided to go with paid support, then.. you have to pay for it. In exchange you can a) point your finger at a third-party if something goes wrong (which governments love doing/often legally necessary) b) get actual live support on Christmas Eve if needed.

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- traceroute66 a day ago
  
  TL;DR: Its impossible to know if anyone on campus has downloaded Oracle Java....
  Quote from this article:[1]
  *He told The Register that Oracle is "putting specific Java sales teams in country, and then identifying those companies that appear to be downloading and... then going in and requesting to [do] audits. That recipe appears to be playing out truly globally at this point."*
  [1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/jisc_java_oracle/
  
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  gf000 a day ago
  
  That's also true of torrented PhotoShop, Microsoft Office, etc..
  Also, as another topic, Oracle is doing audits specifically because their software doesn't phone home to check licenses and stuff like that - which is a crucial requirement for their intended target demographics, big government organizations, safety critical systems, etc. A whole country's healthcare system, or a nuclear power base can't just stop because someone forgot to pay the bill.
  So instead Oracle just visits companies that have a license with them, and checks what is being used to determine if it's in accord with the existing contract. And yeah, from this respect I also heard of a couple of stories where a company was not using the software as the letter of the contract, e.g. accidentally enabling this or that, and at the audit the Oracle salesman said that they will ignore the mistake if they subscribe to this larger package, which most manager will gladly accept as they can avoid the blame, which is questionable business practice, but still doesn't have anything to do with OpenJDK..
  
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  josefx a day ago
  
  > Quote from this article:[1]
  The article tries very hard to draw a connection between the licensing costs for the universities and Oracle auditing random java downloads, but nobody actually says that this is what happened.
  The waiver of historic fees goes back to the last licensing change where Oracle changed how licensing fees would be calculated. So it seems reasonable that Oracle went after them because they were paying customers that failed to pay the inflated fees.
  
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pjmlp a day ago

There are other JVMs that do not descend from OpenJDK, but in general your point stands.

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gf000 a day ago

Yeah I know, but people have trouble understanding the absolutely trivial licensing around OpenJDK, let's not bring up alternative implementations (which actually makes the whole platform an even better target from a longevity perspective! There isn't many languages that have a standard with multiple, completely independent impls).

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