Oracle Java police start knocking on Fortune 200's doors for first time

Oracle is a law firm with a large IT department.

They've been giving us shit because they "see downloads from our IP addresses". It's an absolute shake-down operation. They let anybody download their poisoned jvm for free and then tell your company that they now owe them a fortune.

It's time for corporate IT to block that download
- We'd love to but we do have some legitimate needs for it since Oracle software requires their jvm. It's a massive pain in the ass.
What's hilarious is that the AdoptOpenJDK project (now called Adoptium) managed to create a better UI than Oracle ever had for downloads.

It feels like actual innovation in all sectors has slowed to a crawl, and corporations – especially the ones run by MBA parasites – are concentrating more and more on just squeezing money out of people with various bullshit tactics, while at the same time thinning their workforce (naturally the MBAs are never under threat, though)

Oracle was never really innovative on a technical level , it's first and foremost a company focused on selling licenses, and they're really innovative in that regard but if you fall for that as a company, I have no pity, this is their whole schtick.

Big companies in general are often rather conservative in nature while innovation happens on smaller scale and later expands.

The big problem is rather that a lot of innovation has been absorbed by the big companies via buyouts, especially when money was cheap to borrow. Innovation bears risk, buying an established solution and milking existing users much less so.

I don't think the users are without blame. A lot of people ignore the red flags when a solution is just convenient enough (we need the commercial support / this exactly covers our use case so we don't have to hire someone to adapt it / ...) and the vendor then cashes out when moving away from his solution would be really expensive.

I think there's still a lot of innovation lately, but a lot people are just looking for the next big thing that does everything it feels like.
- I was a developer at Oracle. We got handed down sales goals. ??? It was a running joke in our org that oracle is a sales company and we just scramble to make what they're selling. When I left half our org had been laid off or left. Only got two raises in the 5 years I was there. Not worth.
- The big problem is rather that a lot of innovation has been absorbed by the big companies via buyouts
  
  Which ultimately does seem to lead to innovation slowing down. The big players buy out any potential smaller competitors, and very often just outright kill the products / services they inherited in the acquisition.
- oracle did not develop java. it was developed at sun, which oracle then bought
- Oracle was never really innovative on a technical level
  
  Even their RDBMS and SQL was copied from ideas that came from IBM. And I recall either E. F. Codd or one of the SQL guys making a remark about Oracle's less-than-saviour sales tactics, even back in the 90s.
We're at the end-times for western capitalism, where rent-seeking has become the primary driver of markets. It's happening all around us.
corporations – especially the ones run by MBA parasites

Is that not all of them right now?
- Probably the majority

Lol brb gonna share this with the CFO and watch them go into a panic. Going to bet they'll freak out and by the end of 2024, no more Java for us.

This is the golden ticket I've been waiting for.

You will just switch to one of the openjdk implementations
- Obviously OpenJDK is superior to dealing with Oracle's bull. But even more superior (IMO) is simply not using Java. My life has been noticeably more pleasant since I started refusing to touch Java.
- I've only seen this switch go really well. The odds are good .
Good luck

Oracle quoted us 30K because a small handful of our users needed to use a .jnlp application a couple times per year. It took me a couple of days but I got it working with Corretto and a program called OpenWebStart.

idrac console? I tried open web start, no joy

One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison

Not going to lie, that is the only way I remember how to spell the company name now.
Wired name for a lawn mower.
- Are lawn mower names normally wireless?
  
  Anti Commercial-AI license
Oracle Ruined America's Cup (Larry Ellison)

Oracle was one of the first companies on my personal shit-list. I feel validated.

Lol wtf is that bird?

This is how Oracle finally kills Java. I stopped working with Java many years ago and firmly believe that no developer should tie themselves to this fuckery. Find a new job before it's too late.

This is only very indirectly related to Java as a whole. the reference implementation of the jvm is open source and managed by a coalition of companies under a GPL license, the OpenJDK.

Oracle has its own set of enhancements to the reference jvm that handle things like just-in-time compilation and garbage collection differently and have some additional flags that allow for more fine-grained tweaking of certain features.

There are many other companies that do the same.

Oracle only started doing this in 2019 so many companies who were running Java before this used the Oracle JVM out of convenience, even if they weren't going to use the tweaked parts. So everyone switched to another implementation, OpenJDK, Amazon Coretto, Eclipse J9 or some other available JRE/JDK.

In 2023 Oracle cracked down harder trying to get people to pay for licenses and changed their terms such that any company with even 1 employee using an Oracle JVM had to pay for every employee in the company. ridiculous I know.

This is just more news about Oracle's licensing crackdown and not about Java as a whole at all. Think of it more like the Unity licensing change and you're telling people to stop coding in C#.
- even 1 employee using an Oracle JVM had to pay for every employee in the company
  
  Before that one, they were using a "if one core can run it, all cores must have a license" model.
  
  If you want to see how well that model did, remember
  
  Oracle moved off its success onto this one
  
  VMwareCom is now using it
  
  Microsoft is using it (want to run a single 2022? License every core in your cluster)
  
  It makes the SuSE AND SCO seat-license deal look tame.
- Azul here
- The open source implementation replicates the same bugs as the oracle JVM for compatibility. So you're still beholden to oracle for fixes and that's why none should ever use a proprietary language
- I'm aware of the jdk alternatives and I will never use any of them because Oracle might some day decide that they're an IP violation like they did with Google's Android. I'm sure you'll tell me something about the licensing being different but that still will not matter because there is always the possibility that Oracle will change their mind and start messing with me for sport. The Java ecosystem is rotten from the top down because Oracle cannot be trusted.
Nah, my company still uses Java but an open source version (Eclipse Temurin). We haven't used Oracle Java in like 4 years.
- That's great for as long as they allow that to exist. I do not have an army of lawyers, they do. I will not ever be using Java.
What an ignorant take, lmao
- What a well thought out retort /s
@paf0 @neme Nope. People will put up with anything.

Way to push Fortune 200 companies towards Azul, Adoptium, Correto and other alternative Java distributions, Oracle!

Is anyone else in this thread surprised people weren't using OpenJDK this whole time?

I'm actually not that shocked. Corporations make weird corporate decisions all the time because they feel as if they're getting the more professional version or something. They tend to view open source projects as either unprofessional or in some complicated way, actually illegal. Like it'll turn out that open source isn't allowed after all.

This is what happens when lawyers who don't actually know what they're talking about make recommendations. They don't know, so they always advise caution. Also they genuinely don't seem to know the difference between pirated software and open source.
- The reason corporation are like that is because the responsibility is with the employee the decided to use the open source tool, when there is another company backing a product, there is someone to hold accountable. Also, there is a support number if shit hits the fan, and guarantee of support long term if the supplier is financial healthy.
- I'm currently involved in a legal case in which I produced audio recordings. I was questioned intensely by the other sides lawyer about the modified date on windows.
  
  I kept asking him to clarify what he meant by modified until he said "I don't know".
  
  Like. Ffs.
OpenJDK misses some parts that are in the Oracle JVM
- OpenJDK is the reference implementation now. Biggest differences I've seen are in the default list of trusted CAs.

But industry experts have pointed out that businesses with limited Java use would have to license the software per employee under the latest model

Yikes.

Fairly sure that in that case it would actually be more cost effective to just rewrite the application.
- In most cases they could probably switch to OpenJDK without losing anything whatsoever.

STOP USING JAVA

It's so easy to use openjdk. I think the lesson is stop using oracle
- My employer has a pretty large presence in AWS. We finished migrating to Amazon’s Corretto (based on openjdk) months ago. It was pretty painless given we already use Amazon’s Linux distros.
- Ever since I looked up "java download" and had to go through the horrible process on the Oracle site, I decided that they didn't want me to download Java so I should avoid it, and that has always proved to be a good decision
So here's the thing. This year I fell in love wih clojure, it's an absolute pleasure to program in. It's also a hosted language that runs on java (primarily) or javascript (or a bunch of marginalized things). And honestly, I feel like I can make the java backend run more resource-effecient than the JS one.

Why would anyone recommend their company to use Oracle stuff these days? Oracle should give kickbacks to people that recommend to use Oracle Database, Java, or VirtualBox in their company so they'll keep at it /s

Oracle databases are not allowed to run in the Google cloud because of ceo drama

auditors gonna make absolute bank from bribes

Is there some general history that makes you think that or more specific or just a gut feel?

We got the notice 2 months ago, I played dumb asking for their proof and they sent a 5 hits detected from ips we owned. Which was a joke.

https://openjdk.org/ for pre built binaries or for installers and jre, use: https://adoptopenjdk.net/releases.html

As it says on AdoptOpenJDK page, the project has rebranded to Adoptium.

I use Adoptium on Windows (dunno, seems to run Minecraft, OK, that's good enough for me). On Linux I just use whatever OpenJDK is packaged in distro.

I like Java but Oracle are pricks. Thank god for OpenJDK

Oracle is a law firm disguised as a tech company

Corpos nagging corpos? I'll get the popcorn.

Kill it before it gestates

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Oracle has started to dispatch Java audit letters to Fortune 200 companies for the first time, according to one licensing expert.

But industry experts have pointed out that businesses with limited Java use would have to license the software per employee under the latest model, a dramatic shift from the one previously offered by Oracle.

But that has changed in recent months, according to Craig Guarente, founder and CEO of Palisade Compliance, an independent Oracle licensing advisory company.

Guarente was speaking on a webinar hosted by Azul, which helps organizations move away from Oracle Java to open source alternatives.

In February 2023, Gartner warned that Oracle "actively targets organizations" on Java compliance following the introduction of new contractual terms for the code.

In July last year, The Register revealed Oracle was sending unsolicited emails to businesses offering to discuss Java subscription deals, seemingly in an effort to extract information that could be to its benefit in future license negotiations.

The original article contains 555 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Private Domicile and I will not be harassed!

Can Oracle kill javascript as well, please? Please?

Java is to Javascript what car is to carpet or somesuch
- Why would a car have a pet?
- I'd say it's as boat is to airplane
JavaScript's real name is ECMAScript.

https://tc39.es/
- ECMA by Ecma?
  
  Ahh, needed Wiki:
  
  It acquired its current name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities. As a consequence, the name is no longer considered an acronym and no longer uses full capitalization.
You can bet your bottom dollar Oracle will find a way if it is profitable.