Hello people,
I subscribe to the dzone newsletter and was surprised to see this article on planned obsolecscence for java. I was wondering what the comments of our community would be regarding this. Does this affect us? If so, how?
Best regards, Alf.
First of all: don’t panic.
To be honest, for my current plans the actual jvm is more than enough, even if no new release comes ever, as long as it can be executed I have no real reason to panic.
Those are my thoughts too … however, I wonder if there would be some company / entity that will pick up the development of the java platform to keep things rolling. I mean, there is a lot of investment out there in java. Surely the momentum will continue some how. I often wonder too how the open JDK works. I don’t think that is held by Oracle, is it?
the Licensing debates came here, Oracle sued Google for doing such things, before that Sun sued Microsoft when they mess with Java in their Visual J++
But Sun was cool they do so to protect Java from Microsoft, in compare to Oracle …
I read some articles but no one mention mention Big blue (IBM) yet, We have our own implementation of JVM, as well and there is a hell of packages that depends on Java.
Ok those licensing and policies give me a headache
I back you there… For starters, there is already an open source java implementation (the open jdk), the API and JVM are licensed as GPL… It looks to me that IBM breathes java: a lot of their offerings have the eclipse as the base interface, and java at their core… The IBM implementation of it, of course. Even to install ibm stuff it’s usually used the installation manager, once again eclipse + java . It can’t be anything else, because their solutions usually scale up from a small linux server up to a Z/OS mainframe…
my understanding there are separation between Java and JCP, Sun GPLed Java but not the JCP, and now Oracle still own the JCP, which honestly I do not understand, you can develope you Java version but you can not add any feature not mentioned as per JCP specs.
If my understanding is correct then we are going to stuck to upcoming java 9. or even 8
Ok, and how can a Java “Community” Process be closed-sourced or damaged in any way by Oracle? The Java Community Process(SM) Program - What's New - EC Elections
The Java Community Process(SM) Program - JCP Procedures - jcp2_9
I quote:
The international Java community develops and evolves Java™ technology specifications using the
Java Community Process (JCP.) The JCP produces high-quality specifications using an inclusive,
consensus-based approach that produces a Specification, a Reference Implementation (to prove the
Specification can be implemented,) and a Technology Compatibility Kit (a suite of tests, tools, and
documentation that is used to test implementations for compliance with the Specification.)
And how can oracle take ownership of a work made totally by commitee, and usually submitted by third parties?
Lol, that would be short-sighted, because a lot of people like me that love java and enjoyed the oracle database will start giving them **** on their whole line of products.
you point is clear but I think it is regarding previous work. at least till Java 9
What I do not understand yet, if Oracle has the right to halt JCP future work or not, next Java 10 for example, or adopting community innovations as JSR?
This is why we can’t have nice things. Like literally, this is why everything is built to not last.
Java is much bigger than Oracle. It is used by countless companies for business critical functions. Google relies on it immensely for their web and Android platforms. Even if Oracle does nothing, Java will continue to live on because it is open source, just like how when Oracle abandoned OpenOffice and it became LibreOffice, a much better alternative.
The only way Java could be killed is if Oracle wins their lawsuit against Google and APIs become copyrightable, if that were to actually happen though, losing Java would be tiny in comparison.
This makes me double think using java. This is not to persuade people in to jumping ship. I like the community here and I enjoy the engine even more. Side note I’m not much of a community member yet anyway so I’m no big loss. But as someone who is just getting in to game programming it makes me feel like i made the wrong choice out of the gate. Like why learn this when Oracle is going to win eventually through appeals and fuck everyone over.
To sum up for a new java developer( me ) its deflating.
Note: if you have to learn less than 5 programming languages in your first 10 years of programming then I will be very surprised.
Languages are temporary. Moreover, they all don’t do everything. Learning a language is not a waste of time as every language you learn makes the next one easier to learn.
Or the previous one harder to forget…
Heheh… I tried hard to think of real life examples of programmers who only learned basically one language.
To put the proper fear into folks, that would be COBOL programmers, DBA-level programmers whose bread and butter is stored procedures on Oracle, and the occasional FORTRAN programmer who wouldn’t list “programmer” as their occupation anyway.
So if you only plan to learn one language in your career… you are the COBOL programmer of the future.
“One language to rule them all” … or something like that 
Be prepared
Since they made javascript an language for server side programming I’m just wondering for what else they will use js. Maybe for querying the database? MicroJS for embedded solutions? JSSL for shaders?
What’s old is new again… just stick around long enough.
(Server side javascript 20 years ago or so)
Lately I’ve been forced to learn Ocaml since, one of our teacher asked us to make a delaunay triangulation algorithm in this language. And after learning it by ourself, I can say that If a language like that still exist there is no way that java will die.
Java will go away… eventually… so what? For now it’s there…
Also, IMO there is more to JME than just being a Java 3D engine…