Why should Oracle abandon the non-profitable Java?

Why should Oracle abandon the non-profitable Java?
GuideYou may have heard of similar news. Oracle quietly removed the funding and Developer support of a community technology, many consumers and business partners have invested a lot of time in this technology and compiled a lot of code. The reason is also simple: This technology does not make money!

This is not the first time that Oracle has done this. For open-source projects acquired by Oracle, such an outcome seems to be a fate, from OpenSolaris to OpenOffice.org. This is the case of Java. To be more accurate, it is Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE). Maybe many people have never heard of the names of OpenSolaris and OpenOffice.org, but Java EE is something everyone has ever touched. As a server-side technology, Java EE is driving millions of websites and enterprise applications around the world, java EE plays an indispensable role even in many applications that are not based on Java.

Oracle lawyers have filed a lawsuit with Google over the Java interface of the android Davlik programming language in court for several months. During this period, Oracle's Java Development Progress slowed down significantly, java EE is completely stuck. This completely stops the development progress, which upset the companies that rely on the Java platform and many users in the Java Community. You must know that many of these are the biggest customers of oracle.

Some employees who once participated in Java EE development at Oracle revealed in the Java Community that they have been assigned to other departments, some Java EE developers do not have to say that they want to build a Java platform on their own portal for a day or two. They want to implement the Java platform on their own and get rid of the dependency on the 20-year-old software platform of Oracle. Even so, while Members in the company responsible for managing Java standards explicitly require Oracle to make a plan for the future of Java EE, Oracle remains speechless.

Geir Magnusson, an independently elected member of the Java Community Process Execution Committee, said: "oracle is playing with fire and it is ironic. Now there is a company that reminds us of Sun ." Sun was initially developed for Java EE and later acquired by Oracle in 2009 .) Magnusson thinks it is impossible to guess Oracle's motives, because the management's decision-making method is very opaque. However, if you have to guess from those who are close to the internal Java Development Team of Oracle,Maybe oracle is about to give up Java. After all, it is not the first time to do this. In addition, when the company is in court with Google, it has begun to reduce the funding and manpower support for Java EE development.

Oracle's surprising silence on the matter caused many Java community members to worry about OracleIs it not just about giving up Java EE, but about throwing away the entire Java platform. A self-proclaimed "Java EE Guardian" organization is tryingJoint petition forces Oracle to either restart Java EE development or free Java EE. However, the hope for Oracle to give up Java is slim. Especially now that Google has won the lawsuit in court, Oracle is ready to appeal again.

"Currently, the only message we heard from Oracle is from the Java EE specification development team, they said they could not continue their work. However, they did not say what they are doing or what they are developing ."

Rahman believes that Oracle will have a huge impact on the global IT industry, regardless of whether IT is long-term or short-term. He explained: "Java and Java EE are universal technologies, and many of the global IT industry's content is based on IT. The Java ecosystem has gradually formed over the past 20 years, and its open standards have been supported by many vendors. It can be said that many people rely on Java for their livelihood ." Without continuous financial support and development, every part of the entire Java ecosystem will gradually lag behind, and the global IT industry will also slow down until appropriate Java alternatives are found.

When people contact Oracle Java Development Team members and Oracle customers and want them to provide relevant information, they are all rejected. Most of them are afraid that Oracle will hold them legally responsible. Oracle's Media Department also spoke about Java-related topics without returning emails or phone numbers.

Oracle, as a merchant, has been compiled into many jokes, such as the nightmare of 12 Java developers. The fourth joke in the selection is "you love open-source sports and share, but you work at oracle."

Block

It was expected that Oracle could change the way Java licenses were issued, but all were rejected. The most recent attempt from the Java Community process organization (JCP) was also rejected by Oracle lawyers this year. The legal team of the company indicated that Oracle would not change the licensing method when Google's lawsuit is not over yet.

At the same time, JCP's efforts to monitor Java standard changes are gradually damaged by OpenJDK developers of oracle; openJDK developers directly add new functions to the Java platform without contacting JCP. Members of the OpenJDK community of JCP and non-Oracle employees are worried about this behavior. If JCP is not put on the head of Oracle in the future, it will not be fun. Milinkovich from JCP said that with the development of OpenJDK increasing, as part of an open-source project, JCP, as one of the leading organizations in the Java industry, is also under threat. But Milinkovich also said that he is not worried about this: "as one of the organizers of the open source community, I believe in the power of open source. We need to clarify the roles of the OpenJDK community and their contributions to the open-source community. Of course, the impact on Java standards should also be clear ."

In contrast, the discussion about the possible cancellation of Java EE is more intense. Since Oracle began to reduce the funding and technical support for the open-source Java EE GlassFish, people are not satisfied with it, even if there is no commercial support, open Glassfish will still be developed under the leadership of Oracle employees and will be released together with Java EE 7 in June 12, 2013. In the following year, Java EE has made progress. In 2014, most of the requests processed by JCP about Java standards were about Java EE. At the same year's JavaOne summit, Oracle and JCP jointly announced the development of Java EE 8. They set up a goal to complete standard setting in May.

Cloud services have become a new favorite

In 2015, Oracle accelerated its focus on cloud service sales, and the Java Development Department's budget was cut again, especially for the Java EE and GlassFish teams. At the same time, Oracle declared that Java EE 8 standards should be postponed until the first half of 2017.

As early as March August 2015, when the Java EE team was dealing with a problem involving multiple development projects, it was suddenly suspended by the company. Oracle President found that the sales of database and other middleware Products fell in second quarter of 2016 and decided to close most of the Java EE development processes. This blow sounded the horn of the entire company turning to cloud service-centric under the leadership of the Oracle community. Cameron Purdy, former senior vice president of Oracle, was dismissed by the company's board of directors for advocating a new capital injection to the Java EE team.

Oracle's budget reduction has had a great impact on those who closely watched Java projects, especially Java EE. The number of problems solved by the Java team has dropped significantly, and the number of issues submitted to various projectsThe number of codes is also smaller than before. The new Java Server Faces standard, which was originally introduced in first quarter of 2016, has no message, and there is no confidence when it will be released.

In May April, The JCP Executive Committee finally officially discussed the problem of Java EE development stagnation. Martijn Verburg, representing the London Java Community, said the Java EE process showed signs of stagnation in November. He said: "Now it seems that the Java ee jsr development under ORACLE has basically stopped, or it has completely stopped. Some Oracle leaders have publicly admitted that they have been assigned to other projects by the company, and there is no time to develop JSR ."

Good opportunities for the open-source movement

Oracle has not explained this operation, which undoubtedly has a great negative impact on the Java Community and ecosystem. Verburg said: "Some advocates of independence have begun to discuss the resumption of Java EE development and the consideration of replacing Java EE leadership ." Without Oracle's statement, companies can only respond to new requirements of customers based on their existing frameworks, which will undoubtedly make the Java Community more dispersed.

Verburg states: "We need official Oracle news !" If Oracle does not care about the JCP request for Java EE, it means that they do not pay attention to JCP at all.

Up to now, Oracle has not released any public statements, and most community members are still disappointed. Even the JCP representatives of some financial service companies are concerned about this. The "Java EE Guardian" team built a protest website and organized a petition. At the recent JCP Executive Committee meeting, Verburg lamented: "oracle is obviously not interested in the Java ecosystem ." He also said that his company will no longer rely on Java EE, because in the future, Oracle may stop Java EE development at any time. How ironic, members of the JCP Committee make public that they no longer rely on Java EE.

Milinkovich admitted that Oracle was still the Oracle database. He commented: "One of the major features of Oracle is to make a decision and resolutely execute it. Some people say this is an advantage, while others say it is a disadvantage, because oracle is so large that these decisions take effect for a while. I think Oracle should develop a roadmap for Java EE while promoting Java One development. Otherwise, it would be too much to say ."

Salvage Bureau

We have many reasons to believe that Oracle will not completely let Java EE disappear. One of them is that many of their own products also rely on Java EE. Although Java EE is not as strategic as Java SE for Oracle, it still contributes directly or indirectly to Oracle's 70% software authorization and support revenue.

Rahman from the "Java EE Guardian" organization said he wanted Oracle to respond to public opinion pressure. He said that the activities of the Guardian organization were only carried out for a few weeks, it is too early to say that Oracle will never respond. However, if Oracle is still focusing on it, it cannot be recovered. Others do not think Oracle will respond positively. Magnusson says Oracle is not a company that is used to being pushed by others.

Of course, Oracle can cut down Java EE and won't let anyone else take over. This action has far more impact than enterprise users, but will shake Oracle's confidence in Java as a whole. You must know that Java is the best choice for the Internet of Things.

Rahman said that the best way for Oracle to get rid of Java is to donate the entire Java platform to an organization such as Eclipse Foundation, Apache, ECMA, or W3C. In this way, users and enterprises who want to continue using Java can continue to develop. But he even suspected that Oracle would donate Java EE so well after deciding to give up Java EE?

Java revelation

If Oracle decides to "Destroy everything", development of backward security patches will stop completely. Thousands of servers and cloud services that use Java EE are under threat, and they have to replace the embedded Java EE components, maybe companies that abandon Oracle JCP will invest in developing a new open-source project to replace Java. Many companies are already considering this situation. As the last straw, other vendors have begun to discuss and develop an independent Java API solution. If things go to this step, JCP will also join them.

For these reasons, Oracle is more likely to choose members of the Java Community Process committee to lead Java EE development, while Oracle retains the leadership of Java SE Because Java EE depends on the Java SE core, in this way, Oracle still has control over the Java platform. Even if IBM or Red Hat takes over Java EE standards, it cannot threaten Oracle's position.

At the same time, Rahman believes that continuing to develop Java EE will bring more profits to Oracle. He believes that successful management of Java is the key to determining whether oracle can gain the trust of developers, customers, and the industry in cloud services, as a successful Java promotion company, if you can bring Java into cloud services by yourself, it will be a strategic victory. But then again, it is difficult for Oracle to continue developing Java EE for Goodwill, in particular, the company is currently at war with Google in court. Isn't it true that the ownership of Java's intellectual property right is in the face of itself? The petition is estimated to have little effect, as the former Sun CompanyThe chief open-source Officer Said bluntly: "a petition that cannot threaten the profit of Oracle is ineffective ."

Considering that Oracle's profits continue to rise, the company's two joint CEOS are currently the two top executives with the highest salaries in the technology industry, and it is quite difficult to win their attention, before all these changes, the only thing we can determine is that Java EE will always be on the side of the cliff.

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