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#.

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.

Oracle might some day decide that they’re an IP violation like they did with Google’s Android

They lost that case. It went all the way to the US Supreme Court and set a binding precedent that an API re-implementation falls under the Fair Use doctrine. Maybe Oracle could try some excuse to say that OpenJDK is different enough from what Android did for that precedent to apply, but it would be a major uphill battle, and they know it.

It was expensive for Google and fighting them would destroy most companies. It’s cheaper to avoid the ecosystem entirely.

It was expensive for Google, but they’ve done the hard work of establishing the precedent. It’s much easier to fight when you have a strong binding precedent on your side.

I don’t have to fight if I just use something else. There is very little advantage to using Java when everything from .NET to Node to Ruby to Python are all super mature and have a similar amount of open source packages available. There might still be a question of performance and for that we have Go, Rust and elixir- not quite as mature but all still can do everything I need and then some.

As an added bonus, none of those frameworks have Larry Ellison lurking around the corner waiting to sue me if he decides to change the terms of license. Java is dead to me.

.NET… You trust Microsoft over Oracle. Ridiculous.

When have they ever sued someone for using .NET?

They could though! Microsoft has a long history of “embrace, extend, extinguish”!

You may be willing to put your company at risk because you trust Microsoft but I’m not going to.

Feel free to do you, I have told you this already. Seeing you’re unable to drop the conversation, when did Microsoft ever sue someone for using C#? I trust Microsoft far more than Oracle (reasons detailed in another comment). However, I do not run Microsoft software at my company at this time, other things work better for what I need.