An obscure research project could accelerate innovation in language design

Re:An obscure research project could accelerate innovation i... by vorg on Saturday January 07, 2017 @05:09PM (#13346932)

That's never going to be sorted out because Oracle intended it that way. Like in 2011, just after they bought Sun, they started bundling payment-required components (e.g. JavaSE Advanced) in their supposedly "free" (as in beer) JavaSE download. Only this year did they start hunting down people who have been using those extra components, with some businesses owing back-charges of $1 million or more to Oracle. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/16/oracle_targets_java_...

Based on past behavior, Oracle intends Graal and Truffle to do the same.

Edit: Actually, I suspect the name Graal is a play on JVM-based Grails, which, along with Apache Groovy, has the same culture of drawing users in with false promises then charging them for OCI consulting and G2One conferences to manage the resulting technical debt. Perhaps Graal means Oracle ain't buying theirs, they're building their own.

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Re:An obscure research project could accelerate innovation i... by mike_hearn on Saturday January 07, 2017 @05:35PM (#13347063)

No, Java SE had commercial features forever and you can't use them accidentally. You have to pass a command line switch called -XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures. They are free for development use and as such there's no DRM, it works on the honour system. Oracle have simply started stepping up their efforts against people who were, shall we say, not able to handle the honour system.

The commercial features aren't relevant to most developers, so it's all a bit of a storm in a teacup. There's certainly no bait and switch.

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