I thought Sun should have done this years ago (seem to recall saying as much somewhere on these forums). I had thought naturally that client and server VMs were the natural dividing line.
Now why won’t they do something similar with the ARM JVM they have kicking about?
Cas 
How would such a setup work? Who would the target customer be for a Premium JVM?
I’m not seeing how a 2nd class desktop JVM benefits anyone?
nothing new really. jrockit has always been proprietary, e.g required a license to enable special GC features. They just continue after a JVM merge.
Think of it this way: Someone could potentially be paying for bringing you new features (eventually).
Very few things are free, and if you can’t afford to pay for it, maybe you can live with getting the feature delayed ( like every JVM user on Mac! 
)
One could however be afraid that the delay will be too long / infinite. So lets not hope that
Could be ok, as long as Java SE remains totally free and isn’t nerfed in any way compared to the premium version.
Also hope they add Java Web Start and the Java Plugin to OpenJDK since those are probably the main roadblocks for it becoming widespread on desktop computers.
Hopefully if they start making some money on premium java, they’ll get rid of those annoying adware/malware apps they try to force on your during the j2se installer/updater.
Another nail in the Java coffin.
The a large weight of people working for and with Java comes from the J2EE crowd.
The threat of having to pay for what we have for free now WILL drive companies away from Java.
And when the comps start leaving Java, the money for the EE frameworks will dry up and that will doom Java.
This is kinda the same crap you have with MySQL and it’s dumb licensing model.
btw: the link also mentions Oracl€ has doubled the support costs for it.
Java has become so popular because it was free (more or less) and without costs or vendor lock-in.
Change any of that and you doom it.
Oracle should finally pull it’s head out of it’s rear and get a flipping clue or else Java will go down and go down hard.
I already am having to discuss the future of Java in our company because of these stupid changes.
As if defending Java in a typical HW-focused company was not hard enough.
If this crap continues any further, Java will be abandoned (and the trolls can flock back to M$ based products, a lose-lose situation).
What are you talking about Overkill? Most big java houses I know have wondered why Sun didn’t do this earlier. There will always be a free jvm (as stated in the first post ) and there is OpenJDK. There has always been commercial JVM’s too, some of which made a bit of money.
I really don’t see why all the fuss. Java was always under corporate control more or less. Less that C# that’s for sure but perhaps more that C++ (so much for that). They can’t take back previous free jvm releases, and java 7 is already years behind.
Sometimes i get the impression folks just like to rag on Oracle since they are trendy corporation to hate these days.
Oracle earns enough money, this step goes in the wrong direction. “It is time to set Java free”.
[quote=“delt0r,post:7,topic:35875”]
I criticize all private corporations and even public organizations behaving like them.
What make you think that? In my experience over the last 10 years, enterprises are more likely to ditch something they don’t have to pay for and thus don’t get reliable support for it. They simply don’t trust something they can’t get hold of a respected vendor, as soon as their own crowd can’t handle a problem. Since Oracle has an extremely good reputation in the IT business, it will be more likely “oh look, oracle will improve that java crap and give us support for only xxxxxx$, lets go and take this offer as soon as it is available!”. And they might even be right about it - I highly doubt Oracle will make their customers pay without giving them any kind of advantage in reverse.
In the end, I doubt this has any effect (positive or negative) on desktop java. Oracle will probably push all desktop stuff to opensource anyway, since they don’t have any business in the frontend space. I was rather surprised they didn’t axe java fx entirely…
Oh well, they spend an awful lot of money on Sun, so why on earth should they not do anything they can, to make a profit of this acquirement? It’s a business after all…
Its GPL, unlikely to get any more free then that in the future.
Nothing wrong with charging for extra’s on top of an already free and open product. I’d say this model is better then having spyware/adware in Java like the java installer has. Besides the additional premium features are probably gonna be the ones from JRockit VM, which has always been proprietary.
Someone’s got to be paid to make Java properly better after all, and if that means powering big server iron, that’s fine, so long as the free version keeps up the pace too with trickle-down features.
I’m still cross that there’s no iOS VM though. I even offered money and they still weren’t listening.
Cas
is that even allowed on iOS? thought all such VM’s were banned, including Flash.
No, the latest Ts & Cs I hear indicate that any VM is allowed, provided it does not download remote code and execute it.
Cas
They already charge for Enterprise Edition, don’t they? So all they’re doing is having 3 versions and presumably giving away less in the free version.
Edit: Oops, they don’t charge for Enterprise Edition. I just looked it up and saw that it’s free. For some reason, I thought you had to pay for it.
Someone should port Dalvik - that would be a nice joke
I predict the premium version will either be: future Java EE, future Java EE + middlewear + specialist tools.
Either way I don’t think it will really affect most of us.
If you are making SE-type games and apps, then no, it won’t hurt you.
For the other stuff, it will really hurt.
We do have to realize that JG is only a small part of the big Java community with the EE stuff being the biggest.
IMHO one of the reasons Java has become one of the top 3 languages out there is that it was freely available with no sign of hidden costs.
You could get basically everything you needed for zero cost. When a company has to invest money into a tech to get something, down payment (licenses, IDEs, libs) is a very important factor.
You also have companies out there that were wiling to pay for all those open source libraries (hey they were getting the stuff for free, so why not give back?) but now also have to pay for the JVM license?
There are other tech out there that does not have a license cost and the companies will switch.
Just like the great devs that left Oracle, they will look for tools and companies that support their visions.
(f.i. I also already have a task on my desk to scout out future alternatives for our products)
As in so many other things, if no one expects or gets any money out of something, everyone is willing to chip in.
But as soon as only ONE does, everything goes to hell. Then everyone will want a part of the action and then price for software will skyrocket!
And when the envisioned money gain does not come, how long do you think they will keep the other stuff?
Not like anything we say will change anything. But I have dibs on the ‘charging for a EE jvm will kill Java’ slot.
So yes, I do think it will hurt all of us.
‘The Register’ article above is just blowing the story out of proportion to make it more sensational.
if you see the Oracle annoucement you’ll see that its mostly just business as usual.
The Register, sensationalizing!? Never! :
Still, it’s an interesting - and worthy - development. Java needs some big money to come in at the top to develop performance features and those features will eventually trickle down into OpenJDK. As I see it though the premium JVMs are going to be living in specialist big-iron computing and operate on huge datasets - like for example Facebook, Ebay, Runescape or whatever. A server operator basically has to look at the amount of extra performance that can be gained by using a more powerful VM in terms of the cost of running the datacentre. If you can get 10% more performance out of a datacentre just by putting a faster VM in there, you can theoretically be saving $thousands a month on power and harware costs. So all’s good.
Just so long as the tiered compiler remains free
Cas
Oracle finally getting a clue? They’ve responded and clarified their plans for Java and its future
http://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/2010/11/oracles_jvm_strategy.html
As expected the premium bits aren’t anything that isn’t already being charged for, besides the free JVM will get tons of cool new optimisations and code from JRockit VM.