Hi Vincent, Thanks for that very succinct description of what is going on!
Polyglot On Sun, May 5, 2019 at 10:40 PM Vincent Privat <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > Today's weeklyOSM speaks about this German thread: > https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=65470 > > I read a lot of incorrect statements there so I twitted some detailed > explanations here: > https://twitter.com/josmeditor/status/1125135390426505218 > > Can someone speaking German share the link there? Find below the copy/paste > of my tweets: > > ---- > Many incorrect statements about the new @Java license from @Oracle on the > German @openstreetmap forum ( > https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=65470) mentioned in > @weeklyOSM. Let's see in detail what all is this about. #Thread > #openstreetmap #java ⬇️ > First of all, a little bit of history/terminology. Java was created in 1995 > by Sun. We call "Java" both the programming language and the platform that > runs JOSM (JRE = Java Runtime Environment). Several platforms, from > multiple vendors, exist. > The JDK (Java Development Kit) contains the JRE but also developer tools > (mainly, the java compiler). In 2006, around the release of Java 6, Sun > announced its intention to open-source Java in a new project: @OpenJDK. > OpenJDK is badly named, like OpenStreetMap. We don't only map streets... > Well OpenJDK project does not only concern the JDK but the whole Java > platform (language, spec, tools, APIs, etc.). @speakjava explains it nicely > at https://www.azul.com/how-do-we-define-java/ > Sun open sourced many things from Java into the OpenJDK project, but not > all things. In particular, Windows/Mac installers and deployment > technologies like #WebStart were not open sourced (we don't know why). > It means OpenJDK is only a "source code" project. Building it is very > complex, and nobody took the pain to distribute free binaries for Windows & > Mac. Only @RedHat did it for Linux in the IcedTea project. If you have 100% > free Java on Linux, it's thank to them. > In 2009 Oracle bought Sun. They didn't change things radically until > recently. So even today most of Windows and Mac users are still using > proprietary JRE binaries from Oracle, that are built upon open source > project OpenJDK. > Oracle made a very good job in releasing Java 8 in 2014, then Java 9 in > 2017. We even collaborated with them in mutual good faith. Then, all hell > broke loose. > They changed the Java release cycle to to a fixed 6 months schedule (2 > versions per year). We are now at Java 12 (which is by the way the most > unimpressive version of Java: nothing new in it). > They changed the licence of the Oracle JDK: basically if you are an > enterprise and want to use Oracle binaries, you have to pay. > They introduced the notion of Long Term Support versions (LTS). Java 8 is > an LTS, Java 11 too. For more details about "release train" and licencing, > see the excellent blog post by @hendrikEbbers: > https://dev.karakun.com/java/2018/06/25/java-releases.html > And concerning the Java 8 binaries that almost everyone uses on Windows and > Mac, they changed the licence to a free "for personal desktop use, through > at least the end of 2020": > https://www.java.com/en/download/faq/distribution.xml > These changes came from nowhere and the Java community was not prepared for > it. So it required some time until we can get to a free replacement to the > Oracle binaries on Windows and Mac, and that's why we didn't advise anyone > to switch to something else yet. > But we're almost there thanks to @adoptopenjdk! This community-based > project offers free downloads of OpenJDK on all platforms! > https://adoptopenjdk.net/releases.html > We're just waiting for the availability of a few enhancements of the > AdoptOpenJDK installer before advising everyone to switch. > 1) The inclusion of JavaFX (another technology abandoned by Oracle and now > maintained by @GluonHQ), which is used by JOSM to play MP3 files, and by > some plugins like Microsoft StreetSide: > https://github.com/AdoptOpenJDK/openjdk-build/issues/577 > 2) The inclusion of IcedTea-Web (the free implementation of Java #WebStart > which has also been abandoned by Oracle): > https://github.com/AdoptOpenJDK/openjdk-build/issues/898 We can thank > @RedHat (again) for this project, plus also @karakun and @adoptopenjdk for > their work > 3) An auto-update feature to make sure everyone can automatically get > security updates: > https://github.com/AdoptOpenJDK/openjdk-installer/issues/4 > Once all these issues are resolved (hopefully long before end of 2020) > we'll ask everyone to switch to AdoptOpenJDK. Until now, even if we despise > Oracle for all of this, we still advise to keep the current Oracle JRE, at > least for the automatic security updates. > This is also why we still target Java 8 as a minimum. Once everyone is able > to run JOSM using AdopOpenJDK binaries, we'll likely switch to Java 11! > Which is by the way now maintained by @RedHat and not by Oracle :) > ---- > > Cheers, > Vincent >
