- cross-posted to:
- programming@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- programming@programming.dev
How it works when OpenJDK is distributed under GNU GPL?
Many corps still use Oracle Java 8 which is an expensive license. In some cases they think that Oracle Java is somehow better than OpenJDK. In other cases they still use old technologies like Applets or Java Webstart.
All in all, it’s in most cases technical debt.
I’m not sure how much money they’ll actually get from this.
The (50,000 employee) company I worked for had very slow IT processes at the time, but when the licensing changed they treated it like a critical security vulnerability because of the amount of money involved: they very quickly migrated their software packages to include non-Oracle OpenJDK builds & rolled out an update to uninstall Oracle java from all PCs. And all server owners were given a deadline to migrate or start paying recovery costs.
I imagined it’d be smaller organisations which would’ve sat on this issue.
And now it’s going to become quite literal debt
It’s anything above Oracle Java8u201 more specifically, and some versions like Java 17 are currently free to use commercially.
I was part of the cleanup team where I work (force-uninstall on all machines through MECM, GPOs, and through Intune for macOS systems), good fucking riddance to these legacy apps.
This. Exactly the same response where I worked.
In some cases they think that Oracle Java is somehow better than OpenJDK.
It usually comes down to what’s supported by the software vendor. OpenJDK certainly works, but it’s a corporate check box.
I think you can use openjdk just fine & basically oracle is trying to wring the last bits of cash out of a dying language. I’m so sad Java was ever used for anything, it’s a garbage fire