zlacker

Java is owned by Oracle. And you sure don't want to do business with that company. There's a reason why postgresql is slowly eating their cake.

>>wiz21c+(OP)
This is FUD. Java has many open source implementations and nobody needs to deal with Oracle.

>>Orange+W2
Well except Google that got sued for US$8.8 Billion because they decided to use specific API signatures but provide their own implementation...?!

>>jve+b4
... and Oracle lost

>>jve+b4
Come on, that's a completely different story, Google made their own independent SDK using but incompatible with Java. Nobody's arguing you should do that.

Plus last time I checked Oracle lost that lawsuit.

>>Orange+W2
Even if we postulate that he fear is unwarranted and irrational, the fear is still real, based on Oracles history of lawsuits, and so the explanation still holds.

>>vidarh+N5
It explains nothing.

Java is possibly the safest bet on the future, it's open source both in spec and in the most common implementation (OpenJDK), and is so widely used that there are multiple FAANG companies critically dependent on Java working that alone could continue the development of the platform were anything happen.

Besides, Oracle has been a surprisingly good steward of the language.

>>gf000+pn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_.... is not what I would call “good stewardship”

>>Hedepi+p5
And the lesson is not to trust Oracle.

>>cwillu+xt
What relevance does it have at the topic at hand? Can you give an example of what could happen that would make sense to worry about?

>>gf000+JN
It's a lawsuit by Oracle against a FAANG company that relates in some (even tangential) way to the FAANG company's use of Java.

That's all that's needed to create a sense of caution for would-be adopters.

>>TimThe+xO
Running Java is not remotely the same as copying the API interface of the whole standard library and providing an alternative implementation, just to avoid paying Sun, who specifically intended on getting money from mobile usage.

Oracle lost the lawsuit and I do agree with the decision in that APIs should be freely replicated, but let's not pretend that Google was some saint good guy here fighting the good fight, they were just cheap and aggressively capitalistic.

>>gf000+MS
Doesn’t every open source implementation just “copying the API interface of the whole standard library and providing an alternative implementation”?

>>vidarh+N5
Immediately read this as "prostate" and proceeded to spit out my coffee. Carry on

>>vidarh+N5
We could also postulate based on left-pad that npm and javascript in general shouldn't be used.

It has similar bases on facts.

>>jve+b4
What Google did was similar what Microsoft did back in the days. Marketing something as Java, but wasn't Java.

>>krzyk+3d1
"npm and javascript in general shouldn't be used" — stipulated

>>srouss+G71
But Google did NOT copy the open source implementation. Google copied parts of the closed-source proprietary Java SE API specifications in order to have compatibility and without taking a license. Kindly remember that Android started using OpenJDK very late - around 2015–2016.

Legally the case was about copying declaring code from a proprietary product, not an open source one.

>>lenkit+sH1
And they lost, because it was fair use, which was obvious to most people in the field. The fact that the lawsuit happened in the first place is why I will never trust Oracle.

>>cwillu+Bp2
Yes - this.

The implications of a judgment in favor of Oracle were staggering. Any codebase that is extensively dependent on a proprietary API is legally locked in to using that company's proprietary implementation as long as that company asserts copyright on its API. Anyone who implements the same API to offer a drop-in alternative to the proprietary product is infringing -- even if a someone privately reimplements the API without distributing the reimplementation.

Which immediately implicates WINE (Windows), Mono (.NET), ReactOS (Windows), Darling (macOS/Darwin), GNUStep (Cocoa/OpenStep), Anbox (Android), Ruffle (flash), GNU Octave (MATLAB), Mesa 3D (Direct3D), ZLUDA (CUDA), and DXVK (Direct3D 9/10/11), to name a few of the most popular...

>>cwillu+Bp2
It was not all that obvious from a legal point of view. Google vs Oracle was the first US Supreme Court case directly testing whether copying API declarations can violate copyright. It was also decided later in the EU as well in that SAS vs WPL case where the EU Court of Justice finally ruled that software functionality, programming languages, and file formats are not copyrightable.

These famous cases set the legal tone for the entire world actually.

>>krzyk+Hd1
It incredible how far the "Do not evil" marketing won the hearts of computing nerds, Google only got positive karma for doing with Android exactly what Microsoft did with J++.

To this day Android Java is not fully compatible with Java proper, and Kotlin became Google's version of C#.

>>lenkit+sH1
But they didn't copy code. Because the code was proprietary and they didn't have access to it.

Reimplementing an interface != stealing code.