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Java Oracle

Oracle Sets End Date for Business Java 8 Updates (infoworld.com) 85

Posted by EditorDavid from the eights-and-aces dept.
An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld: Further clarifying its ongoing support plans for Java SE 8, Oracle will require businesses to have a commercial license to get updates after January 2019. In an undated bulletin about the revision, Oracle said public updates for Java SE 8 released after January 2019 will not be available for business, commercial, or production use without a commercial license. However, public updates for Java SE 8 will be available for individual, personal use through at least the end of 2020.

Oracle advises enterprises to review the Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap to assess support requirements to migrate to a later release or obtain a commercial license... Oracle advises developers to review roadmaps for Java SE 8 and beyond and take appropriate action based on their application and its distribution model.
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Oracle Sets End Date for Business Java 8 Updates More

Oracle Sets End Date for Business Java 8 Updates

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  • Why not migrate (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @06:44PM (#56521373) Journal
    Is there any reason not to migrate to the newest version of Java? Is any effort even required?

    • Re: Why not migrate (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A lot of effort sometimes. For example many libraries like spring require bytecode modification and that is bytecode version dependant. To update spring you might need to update other libraries too and some of them may have deprecated things you use and so on.

    • Re:Why not migrate (Score:5, Informative)

      by careysub ( 976506 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @06:56PM (#56521419)

      Well, the latest version of Confluent Platform community edition - a Kafka/ Zookeeper offering - only runs on Java 8. That would be the major reason, using code - either commercial or open source - that does not run on Java 9 or 10.

      Then there is the puzzling short maintenance periods being offered for all post Java 8 releases. See for example the comments here [jaxenter.com]. Moving to a new Java version that will be supported apparently for six months is very questionable for any enterprise. It appears that Oracle has some sort of scheme to make everyone (businesses, anyway) to pay for using Java going forward.

      • One of the tenets of Java is its backwards compatibility. I can write Java 6 code that runs just fine on Java 8 or 9. I have a hard time believing that they are set to a specific version (unless they have some stupid version check that sets hard boundaries).

    • Re:Why not migrate (Score:4, Interesting)

      by shanen ( 462549 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @07:06PM (#56521445) Homepage Journal

      Is there any reason not to migrate to the newest version of Java? Is any effort even required?

      Sure. You don't need or even want any of the new functionality and you believe that the additional complexity has made the new version less secure rather than more. Even stronger reason if you think any of the new features are negative rather than positive. Effort is NOT the real question.

      Too bad we don't have any such option.

      I think we're going about this all wrong. Old versions should be supported as long as sufficient numbers of people are actually willing to pay for whatever support they require. If they want to deprecate an old version, the way to do it is NOT by arbitrary announcements of when the new version shall be shoved down your throat, but rather by rational explanations of the various new versions and encouraging the users of the older version to consider one of the new ones.

      Now if there are too few users of the old version who are willing to pay for the costs, then that's a different question. In that case the old version may need to be more strongly retired, and the users may be obliged to make choices, but they might prefer to gather around an even older version that still does what they want, or they might want to go forward. It should be the users driving the versions based on their real needs, not the corporate cancer (Oracle in this case) driving things as part of the never-ending quest for infinite profit.

      I actually think it should go down to a feature-by-feature basis. In particular, features and functions that have security considerations should be obliged to check for their own validity before executing, possibly becoming inoperable if the security threat is too high. In terms of providing more freedom, there should be options for similar functions that don't have the problems...

      DSAuPR, atAJG.

      • I think we're going about this all wrong.

        Oracle is not a "we."

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          I suggest you go back and read what I wrote. As it stands, your reply simply makes me wonder what you are mumbling about or if you thought you were replying to someone else. The totally decontextualized and selective quote is NOT clarifying, but more likely an indicator of deliberate deframing.

          If you had been the author of the post to which I was replying, then it is conceivable your comment had some meaning.

      • Old versions should be supported as long as sufficient numbers of people are actually willing to pay for whatever support they require.

        That's exactly what's happening. According to the article and the summary, customers paying for a commercial license will continue to get updates.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          NOT exactly, but I suppose it is close enough for you if you read with that sort of preconception or without thinking clearly. Or perhaps the fault is my own for believing that my assumptions should be obvious enough from my conclusions?

          From my perspective, Oracle is essentially taking the users hostage to maximize Oracle's profits, and will primarily be driven by profit considerations in deciding whether or not to offer any support options, and how long to offer them. Oracle is balancing the relative profi

    • Re:Why not migrate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by charronia ( 3780579 ) on Saturday April 28, 2018 @07:12PM (#56521465)

      If you want to migrate, all your dependencies need to migrate first. It's taking a lot of libraries some time to get on board with Java 9, especially since it uses a completely new class loading mechanism.

      • That just means a new recompile, right? Or is there something more?

        • Actually, no.
          While the parent is right, the class loading changed, because of the concept of "modules", you can still invoke the JVM on the command line and force it to use the old mechanism.
          However typical modern projects easily use hundreds, yes, several hundred, libraries. The project I'm working on right now is already in itself split up into about 100 sub projects and pulls in about 900 libraries. Mostly Apache or other open source stuff, a few dozen commercial products ...
          Of course we are only directl

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Java 9 does a crap load of random things that breaks things. They redid the JRE layout, they redid the standard APIs so that some parts are not loaded by default thanks to the new module system.

      There are a lot of good reasons to stick to Java 8, because a lot of code does not and never will run on newer versions thanks to random unnecessary incompatible changes.

    • Well,
      software vendors can not really migrate if the customers don't want to migrate.
      I'm in a project with a few hundred customers who all have dozens or hundreds of installations.
      If we migrate the software to Java 9 (or 10 soon) ... we are still on *7*!! They have to migrate as well.
      But as you probably know the mantra: never change a running/winning team, everyone is reluctant to perform a change.
      Technically I'm not aware of a reason. A software compiled on Java 7 and packaged in Jar files should simply run

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        E.g. Java 9 is not running on OS X 10.9.5.

        What specific error message blocks compiling and running OpenJDK 9 on OS X 10.9 "Mavericks"?

      • I don't think Java compiled under Java 7 will run straight under Java 9, wasn't there a bytecode change?

        • Added byte codes, but no changes in old ones, but that change was from Java 6 to Java 7 already. I'm not aware if there is a recent byte code change again.
          Old byte code usually always worked. Only meanwhile I would assume that Java 1.1 or 1.2 no longer runs because deprecated APIs finally got removed.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No 32-bit support after Java 8.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      One of the things that sucks balls for Java is its lack of portability and compatibility, not only did it fuck up on its promise to write once run anywhere between platforms, it can't even do it well between versions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )
      Or to OpenJDK, based on the same source code but without the Oracle licensing nonsense.

  • Dear Oracle (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 )

    Give up already. Java will soon be as ubiquitous as Flash...

    • The problem is, it won't be. There are so many Enterprise software that uses various versions of Java out there, it's going to be around for a long time.

      Flash was phased out thanks to an effort by many of the browser developers to force it out.

      Good luck trying that with Java. None of these big developers for this software have any intention of improving the situation either. I still see even NEW ERP software using and requiring 1.7. This sector of the industry doesn't care, nor do they care about security

  • What Oracle is about now? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Who knows what Oracle actually is doing nowdays? I spent quite a big chunk of my developers life using Oracle DB and trying to implement multiple DoA web projects utilizing their portal and application servers, but it was quite long time ago. What do they do now, except suing Google for Java ownership?
    They missed Cloud completely.
    They missed mobile, but it is Ok for them.
    They missed big data.

    What Oracle is about now?

    • What do they do now, except suing Google for Java ownership?
      They missed Cloud completely.
      They missed mobile, but it is Ok for them.
      They missed big data.

      What Oracle is about now?

      You're right, Oracle isn't exactly an exciting or innovative company. That doesn't mean they aren't still making massive amounts of money.

      Oracle has their own cloud offering, believe it or not. It's not dissimilar from AWS, but Oracle simply doesn't have much of a market. If you're up-and-coming, and don't have data in an Oracle DB already, you're not starting with one. You're also not starting with Oracle Cloud because "everbody uses Amazon", though you might be able to make a case for Azure or GCC if you'

  • Re: (Score:5, Funny)

    by kurkosdr ( 2378710 ) on Sunday April 29, 2018 @05:23AM (#56522721)
    Most companies have customers, Oracle has hostages.

  • Java 8 end-of-life is January, 2019. So, let's say I want to switch...
    Java 9 has already ended free support as of March, 2018. Can't go there.
    Java 10 free support expires September, 2018 (again, before Java 8). No need to go here, might as well wait for...
    Java 11 which won't even be available until Sept. 2018.

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