Because Oracle is continuing to put a lot of R&D resources into Java and is generally not doing a terrible job with nice work around modernizing the language, contributing non trivial innovation around e.g. the Graal project, etc. Like them or not, Oracle is doing a lot of heavy lifting and most of it is released through Openjdk as 100% OSS under the GPL.

So, neither IBM nor Red Hat have any big issues with the status quo. They get to do their own thing, support their customers, and they get to ship openjdk with no strings attached.

Recent effort on the JVM (modules, type system) is indeed significant. Is it all Oracle or a partnership between many groups ?

Mostly Oracle, but with some outside help. Some numbers here: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/building-jdk-11...

And the outside help is growing.

>>Oracle is doing a lot of heavy lifting and most of it is released through Openjdk as 100% OSS under the GPL.

At some point they are going to want see some profits in return given how many Android phones are being sold. And needless to mention how much of world's software runs on Java today.

Oracle has been selling Java support for a long time, they do have a profit. They just did some rebranding to distinguish between paid Oracle Java and free Oracle OpenJDK build. Probably it helps them to sell more support subscriptions, but it doesn't change anything really, if you want free Java, it's still there and it's still as good.

Oracle took over Java 8+ years ago.

Don't you think if they wanted to "see some profits" they might've done it already ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google....

Oracle has sought upward of US$8.8 billion in damages due to the commercial success of the Android system.

Nothing wrong with it, of course. If a company wants customers to pay for their products, then they are right.

People just need to know before hand, than being sold on it as free, and then asked to pay $XK per installation box a few years down the lane.

While I don't agree with their tactics, Google was - by their own word - not using Java. This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using OpenJDK/Oracle Java.

>>This lawsuit has really nothing to do with people using OpenJDK/Oracle Java.

That depends on how commercially successful your product is. I don't think it would even make logical sense for Oracle to go after every single start up that uses Java.

But lets say tomorrow news came out that a big reason for AWS's success is Java, then all of a sudden you are going to see Oracle want some of that money.

Please note I'm not saying expecting people to pay is necessarily wrong. I'm only saying people need to know what they are signing up for.

And all I'm saying is that Google was not using Java, they were using an alternative implementation of the same APIs (derived from Apache Harmony). The difference is that using Java™ gives you a license to the copyright and patents (and hence protection from Oracle), whereas using something else does not.

Apple could install a free Java version and Oracle could do nothing about it, the problem was that Google was not using Java.

BTW, Microsoft has already extracted billions from Android due to litigation or threats of litigation over patents.

Your comment is irrelevant. Besides the fact that other companies like Apple wielded their parents against Android, the big difference is Microsoft's patents weren't open source.

The reason Oracle's behavior is so bad, and raises the question of whether Java is really Free Software anymore, is they sued Google over re-implimenting an ostensibly Open Source language.

And if you want to talk Microsoft, the most relevant thing to the discussion is that .Net Core includes explicit language in it's lisence that allows for re-implimenting it, and in fact despite the whole "Microsoft is evil" meme, they never sued Mono, a re-implimentation of their non-Open Source .Net Framework.

Sun and Oracle never sued their partners.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines#...

Only those that tried to misuse Java by creating partial implementations of it (Microsoft and Google).

In fact, Sun only put a show to avoid losing their face, as what they really wanted was to sue Google, but their bank account wasn't any longer like in the Microsoft suit days.

Gosling interview on how it all came to be from internal point of view, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be...

Finally Google had the opportunity to buy Sun assets and thus avoid being sued, while having the freedom to steer Java however they would have liked to do.

Opportunity that they decided wasn't worthwhile to pursue.

> Finally Google had the opportunity to buy Sun assets and thus avoid being sued, while having the freedom to steer Java however they would have liked to do.

> Opportunity that they decided wasn't worthwhile to pursue.

Wow, this is incredible, I always wondered if Google even thought about this. I wonder how different things would be had they just bought out Java from under Sun, or at least the rights to use it as they see fit and allowed Sun to maintain it or some sort of deal? Basically the keys to the Java castle in such a way that lets Sun be Sun and not Oracle. There's a lot of elements to the case that shift everyones views. It's sad we're even seeing such a case so many years later, and likely why Google is going towards having Kotlin (and eventually Kotlin Native) as their main language.

Personally I think Google was hoping Sun would go under without a blip.

> The reason Oracle's behavior is so bad, and raises the question of whether Java is really Free Software anymore, is they sued Google over re-implimenting an ostensibly Open Source language.

While OpenJDK is, indeed, very much open source, Android did not use it -- although I think it does now -- as they didn't want to use its open source license. Google, on the other hand, uses OpenJDK extensively, and have even forked it internally, without any complaint from Oracle [1].

So no open-source software was the subject of the lawsuit (well, no Oracle open-source software).

> they never sued Mono, a re-implimentation of their non-Open Source .Net Framework.

That is not about benevolence but the simple fact that Mono did not harm their business in any way (few people used it; Microsoft did, however, sue or threaten to sue over the wildly successful Android). On the other hand, licensing Java for use on mobile devices was Sun's main income from Java.

Companies don't generally do things on principle, but for business reasons, nor do they refrain from business out of principle. Both Oracle and Microsoft sued (or threatened to) over Android for business reasons, and Google chose not to use the open-source Java for business reasons.

[1]: https://video.oracle.com/detail/videos/featured-videos/video...

Actually Android still doesn't use 100% of OpenJDK, that is just PR from Google supporters on the Android story, easily proven by looking into AOSP source tree,

What Android does is to use a subset of OpenJDK, and even that is pretty much dependent on which Android version one is talking about.

So it is still impossible to get a random jar from Maven Central and be certain that it will work of the box on Android, even on Android P.

>So no open-source software was the subject of the lawsuit.

But doesn't the lawsuit effectively outlaw Apache Harmony, and more generally the practice of reimplementing APIs?

No, it does not. The ruling was that APIs (at least actual APIs, not web "APIs") fall under copyright, but that does not mean you cannot use copyrighted material even without a license or outside its terms. It was ruled that Google (in particular) did not use the APIs in one of the "fair use" ways (e.g. it did not pursue interoperability). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...

Android was derived from Apache Harmony. Nothing in the terms of the Apache license would prohibit what Google did with Android.

You can only license what you own. As the court ruled that Oracle owns the copyright on the Java APIs, it is not enough to follow the terms of the Apache license, but also of the Oracle license. The APIs were released under two licenses (relevant to Android) -- GPL and a commercial one. Google chose neither. At that point, you are still free to use the APIs just under Harmony's license, provided that your use is fair use of the Oracle-copyrighted code. The court ruled that Google's use was not fair use, as it met none of the conditions required (e.g. it was not meant to be interoperable with the Java APIs). So this does not mean that Harmony is in violation, only that Android's particular use of Harmony is. In fact, Harmony very likely is fair use because, unlike Android, it is intended for interop.

Android does not use whole OpenJDK, only parts of its library, that are vetted and open.

The compiler is used by Android Studio and Gradle plugin, but the bytecode is rebuilt again with d8 or dex. Google has written their own compiler in the past but decided it was unnecessary.

The critical patented parts are not in Dalvik nor in J2SE library.

Why should they fork an open, actively maintained project like OpenJDK? It would only create incompatibilities between them.

Do you honestly write in Java/Scala/Clojure etc ?

Because I have never met a single JVM developer who either (a) wants another JVM fork, (b) wants OpenJDK to be undermined or (c) thinks Oracle has been anything other than a pretty great steward of the platform.

Point (c) is changing with this recent kerfuffle, no?

I think you did not understand what is happening, Oracle Java8 is EOL, you have to take a decission:

-continue using it without updates

-pay for updates (similar how some banks pay MS for getting updates for some older Windows)

-upgrade to a) paid Oracle version b) free OpenJDK c) some other Java re-implementation

-do not upgrade but switch to OpenJDK(say for RedHat if you want support and fixes)

This thing happened before, some product gets EOL and some big budget companies will pay to not upgrade and continue getting support. The only people that are affected is people that would like to get the extended support for free.

Oracle,RedHat and others make money from offering support and updates. IMO Java ecosystem is healthy and competitive, you have alternatives, you have a group of companies working on it, you have many choices where to buy support if you need, you have a lot of tools and libraries that you can use.

I am not using Java but in our project when e need to do some task we always try to use existing work, so we use CLI apps if possible and most of the time this apps are made in Java and are high quality and save us maybe months of work

Only by the Oracle haters that lack experience on the Java world.

Sun, Bea and many others used to charge for support as well, IBM still charges for it, but it is good to pay them because it wasn't Oracle it seems.

How does this square with the quote under following link from today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18217952?

I would take Gosling's opinion over Brian Cantrill's one, given who was actually involved with Java at Sun.

Plus I belong to Java developers community since the early days, and I quite remember how the Sun, Oracle and IBM triad used to push Java altogether.

Including those NC announcements made by Sun and Oracle.

I think the likeliest candidate is Amazon. Gosling got hired a couple years ago. Internally, it's the main language used. Amazon wants to have control of it's destiny as much as possible.

I suspect if Oracle started pushing their usual bullshit too hard, that's what would happen. And it's a situation where Oracle knows it, Amazon knows it, and everyone is playing game theory.

Why should they? Java development is more open now than it has ever been and non-oracle entities have already taken on larger roles than before. To me it looks like things are working.

Last time somebody copied the API there was a lawsuit.

There are some rules if you want to re implement Java, but it is possible since we have many alternatives to chose from. T^he main point is to pass all the needed tests to confirm your re-implementation is compatible and not do what MS tried to do (embrace,extend,extinguish)

You missed that you will be arbitrarily denied the ability to actually run those tests if you're trying to make a true open source implementation - see Apache Harmony.

The TCK has been open sourced, since then. However, I think only for GPL implementations, see details at http://openjdk.java.net/groups/conformance/JckAccess/

That doesn't sound like an open source license at all - you have to submit a form to Oracle and they'll decide whether you get a copy or not.

That is old news, do you have an uptodate link?

What's changed? There still isn't an independent implementation of Java, Harmony is still shut down because they were arbitrarily denied a TCK license.

Do they have the expertise and mass to maintain the whole of the JVM and add new functionality? They have tiny VM teams and labs compared to Oracle.

Do you know what happen last time someone forked Java? Ask Microsoft.

Java was not open source at the time. It is possible to fork now.