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Nick has been a passionate Java developer for 10 years now. In his day job he is working as an enterprise Java web developer. In his spare time he likes to learn new programming languages and new Java related technologies, and he regularly posts articles on his blog. Nick is a DZone MVB and is not an employee of DZone and has posted 7 posts at DZone. View Full User Profile

Oracle 1-year Review

01.31.2011
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It's been about a year now since Oracle aquired Sun. Here is a short review of what happened since then:

  • Oracle pulled the plug on the servers of the PostgreSQL build farm with no warning, see here.
  • Oracle kills OpenSolaris? OpenSolaris Board Quits En Masse, see here and here.
  • Prominent Sun employees leave the company, including James Gosling, Tim Bray, Simon Phipps, Tor Norbye, Kohsuke Kawaguchi, see here.
  • Oracle sues Google over use of Java-related patents in Android's Dalvik VM and SDK, see here.
  • OpenOffice.org declares independence from Oracle, becomes LibreOffice, see here.
  • Doug Lea leaves the JCP, see here.
  • Oracle nominates Hologic for JCP, see here.
  • Java SE 7 and SE 8 specs move forward amid protest, see here.
  • Tim Peierls resigned from JCP EC, see here.
  • Apache resigns from JCP EC, see here.
  • Hudson wants to move from Oracle. This story is still going on, see here and here.
  • Ruby on Rails support discontinued in NetBeans IDE, see here.

 

From http://stronglytypedblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/oracle-1-year-review.html

Published at DZone with permission of Nick Wiedenbrueck, author and DZone MVB.

(Note: Opinions expressed in this article and its replies are the opinions of their respective authors and not those of DZone, Inc.)

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Comments

Armin Ehrenreich replied on Mon, 2011/01/31 - 4:56am

I do not think it is very constructive to always complain and heat the same old coffee again and again. Since more than 10 years I can read now how bad Java is. It is starting to get on my nerves.
Oracle seems on the other hand to invest in Java and I personally think (hope) this will turn out to be good.
Java technology needs a strong ruler and must avoid forks. It would have badly suffered with the completely lame duck Sun an their anti-strategies. To have a consistent, up to date technology you need someone to lead the pack. Also other languages and technologies have a kind of leading instance: Python, C#, Objective-C, Flash...
It is the most unfortunate attribute of the Java community to always whine. The language is not good, too less right to say, all others are better...
Have you ever seen someone on a PHP, Python or Objective-C forum to predict the immediate death of the language or to emphasize how bad the leader of the language are?
I think it would be nice to focus on our work and the many technical points of Java technology.

Cafebabe Ru(ssia) replied on Mon, 2011/01/31 - 5:35am

Agree this is mostly about complaining. Really big thing was happened (and without surprize I do not see it in the list): the IBM and Apple are working now on OpenJDK with Oracle.

Wai Ho replied on Mon, 2011/01/31 - 8:17am in response to: Cafebabe Ru(ssia)

Announcement of two releases of Netbeans per year, as well as alignment of Netbeans with JDK 7, and announcement of Netbeans 7.0 (instead of 6.9), are also missing...

Loren Kratzke replied on Mon, 2011/01/31 - 12:53pm

I don't see this as complaining at all. I find the list to be dead on accurate and factual. In fact, none of this would be news if Java were not a fantastic language and platform, and Oracle such a litigous and dictorial organization that aquired a community-centric and at times, altruistic company - Sun. I mean come on, we all knew there would be fireworks. At least sit back and enjoy watching Oracle blow the hell out of all the good will that Sun built up. Don't complain that somebody else is complaining. That totally misses the point.

Mark Stephens replied on Mon, 2011/01/31 - 12:54pm

And Javaone SF becoming part of Oracle World in San Francisco (which brings both benefits and drawbacks).

Sura Sos replied on Mon, 2011/01/31 - 1:31pm

Do we really need OpenJDK if it is controlled by oracle.

Slava Imeshev replied on Mon, 2011/01/31 - 2:53pm

Nick,

I am wondering why you care about this list at all.

 I am asking because personally I have never heard names of those persons (except Gosling who AFAIU has been mostly just a public face of Java for quite some time); I've never cared about ony of those Open*.org; and I've never given a damn to JCP which looks like a gathering of major vendors trying to push their agendas. Same goes to the rest. On the grand scale of thing those items seem to be of low to zero importance.

So, why are these seemingly unimportant things bothering you?

Regards,

Slava Imeshev

 

Chris Treber replied on Tue, 2011/02/01 - 8:08am

The people that are/ have been the creators and proponents of Java and who represent the philosophy and thinking behind the language, API, and many concepts surrounding it have been frustrated, alienated, and threatened (like Kohsuke) by Oracle. It is not irrelevant that the ecosystem that Sun was and that bred Java has been utterly destroyed.

Sure, Java will survive; people move to better shores, and hopefully will keep producing good stuff. Innovation will happen elsewhere. The way Oracle handles Java will make the plant (well, their instance of it) whither and die in their hands. They are ruining what they bought with their heavy-handed attempt to "monetize" their purchase.

Apart from that it must be terrible to have been living and breathing Sun and then experience THIS. I have first hand experience what it means when your dream job gets turned into something ugly for not good enough a reason (I quit then). My condolences...

Well, we'll all see.

Chris

 

John Hogan replied on Tue, 2011/02/01 - 4:41pm

Also note-worthy on the bright side of things is the Glassfish and mysql continuing despite a lot of overlap with Oracle's existing product line.  It seems to me that things could have been much worse. 

 I also seem to remember a prominent lawsuit by Sun against Microsoft.  If Google is infrining on Oracle's intellectual property they should stop doing it and pay damages.

Yochanan Berkowitz replied on Mon, 2011/08/29 - 2:20pm

I believe that dropping of Ruby support from NetBeans is an overall positive development for most Java developers in the sense that it implies Oracle's true commitment to the Java side of the IDE. -Yochanan Berkowitz

Thomas Kern replied on Thu, 2012/09/06 - 10:51am


The 1st point is completely overblown, and is actually a good decision on Oracle's past, since it is EnterpriseDB's responsibility and not Oracle's.

Also, half the points listed above are because of Sun's handling of the JCP for the past 3 years.

http://www.java-tips.org 

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