If I have a choice between running our stack 50 times slower (and thereby 50 times the cost) or running anything Oracle, I know which choice is cheaper and doesn't come with an existential threat to my company.
Only governments and big corp are rich and reckless enough to take on this kind of risk willingly.
There is like a bajillion people out there running Oracle Java, MySql, Virtualbox and so on. All of them Oracle products, and with permissive licenses. Where is this "existential treat" thing coming from?
>There is like a bajillion people out there running Oracle Java, MySql, Virtualbox and so on. All of them Oracle products, and with permissive licenses. Where is this "existential treat" thing coming from?
Oracle. (see, I can be sarcastic too)
Ignoring the fact that most of those users were likely acquired back when those products were still known as Sun Java, Sun MySql, and Sun Virtualbox, those "bajillion" people are not lucrative enough to warrant the effort. The moment one of those people becomes large enough, Oracle's lawyers will come knocking. If you're large enough, they will even go as far as to change how copyright law itself is interpreted to get their fill.
With a company like that, entering any form of contract or agreement is a major liability and an existential threat.
"The moment one of those people becomes large enough, Oracle's lawyers will come knocking."
Can we see an example of big Java user being called by Oracle's lawyers? Excluding Google, they created their own Java with no regards to license, so yeah they got sued. So... did anyone that just downloaded Java and used it, got sued? I do not see it. Nor do I see what they could possibly be sued for.
> Google, they created their own Java with no regards to license, so yeah they got sued.
You don't need a license to build a clone.. well, you didn't need one until recently thanks to Oracle.
While not exactly the same thing, I'm still glad that IBM didn't pursue IBM-compatibles using oracle's absurd logic (or ford and other car manufactures for that matter). I like competition.
> did anyone that just downloaded Java and used it, got sued?
Perhaps not sued, just threatened into paying. See sibling posts for your anecdotes.
My boss was careless and entered his contact details when he downloaded MySQL.
Fast forward a bit and Oracle sales people where calling him and trying to convince him that he needed a paid license - to run default MySql on AWS(!).
> There is like a bajillion people out there running Oracle Java, MySql, Virtualbox and so on. All of them Oracle products, and with permissive licenses.
All of those examples have dual commercial/copyleft licenses, none of them have permissive licenses. Moreover, the Free licenses are without explicit patent grants which may, therefore, be at risk of patent claims.
Where I work now, we went through 2 or 3 rounds of funding. Each round involved lawyers doing due dilligence, checking the licencing of all the software we use, and all the libraries we use, and so on.
No issues were raised regarding Java or MySql. Bottom line, I don't know the difference between this and that license, what I do know is that Oracle licensing for Java and MySql gave us zero grief. For the record, we just use Java and MySql as provided. I can see how Google making their own "Java" for Android can get messy. But that is kind of unusual, who makes their own Java? I know of several vendors, and they usually try and get certification/TCK and so on. Google did not, well, that is Google's problem.
If I have a choice between running our stack 50 times slower (and thereby 50 times the cost) or running anything Oracle, I know which choice is cheaper and doesn't come with an existential threat to my company.
Only governments and big corp are rich and reckless enough to take on this kind of risk willingly.