from Hacker News

UK unis to cough up to £10M on Java to keep Oracle off their backs

by miles on 6/14/25, 2:57 AM with 100 comments

• by neilv on 6/14/25, 5:22 AM

  I remember when my university had a relationship with Sun that let us see Java (Oak) early.

  And then -- given that Java was smart, OO, in the Web browser, going big, and free -- built an intro CS curriculum around it. Like many universities.

  That history of universities promoting the adoption of Java, and training a generation of Fortune 500 corporate coders in it, has not gone unpunished.

• by jmyeet on 6/14/25, 6:03 AM

  I heard a story (unconfirmed) that at the time Oracle was buying Sun, it was pretty obvious that owning Java then suing people, most notably Google, was the whole point.

  Google not buying Sun may go down as one of their poorest decisions. I mean rumor has it, Google offered $6 billion to buy GroupOn (which they turned down). If GroupOn is worth $6B (it isn't) then owning Java is worth $7.5B.

  I suspect Google believed they had an implicit license from Sun to use Java on Android, otherwise this was a massive licensing failure. While Sun still existed, even buying a token license would've been cheap.

  Now Google ultimately prevailed in their lawsuit setting an important precedent but at what cost? It was over a decade of uncertainty and cost who knows how much in legal fees. And while it was ongoing, Android was under a cloud and Google had to abandon a bunch of things it was otherwise doing with Java.

  Oracle is just the worst.

• by Iwan-Zotow on 6/14/25, 3:26 AM

  Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle

• by animex on 6/14/25, 4:20 AM

  Oracle threatened our organization with 10m in fines because of some rogue apps here and there, gave us 5 days to remediate it. I believe they went with a mix of OpenJDK & Corretto. (100k+ org)

• by throwaway48476 on 6/14/25, 4:37 AM

  Does anyone block oracle domains to prevent a rogue employee accidentally downloading java?

• by dyl000 on 6/14/25, 4:56 AM

  Using anything from Oracle as a business risk

• by PeterStuer on 6/14/25, 5:28 AM

  Why would universities need Oracle Java specifically?

• by Havoc on 6/14/25, 8:05 AM

  Pay the money. Make it day 1 case study in CS class on why selecting your tech stack carefully matters.

  Can probably use it for law classes too. And ethics.

• by jakozaur on 6/14/25, 5:37 AM

  It’s similar to the Oracle database. It's easy to mistakenly use an extra feature, and later, you are hit with non-compliance that can go away with a new purchase.

  I’m a founder of Quesma to make migrations easier, and regularly hear horror stories. It

• by croes on 6/14/25, 7:44 AM

  Let’s think about Cory Doctorow‘s idea about IP rights

  https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/

• by axus on 6/14/25, 3:11 AM

  Could they use Amazon Corretto instead?

• by pyman on 6/15/25, 1:07 AM

  Same thing happens in Latin America with Microsoft. They give schools free Windows licenses, so we're expected to teach students how to code using C# instead of Python

• by eklavya on 6/14/25, 5:39 AM

  The comments make it sound as if Oracle can just demand money from any Java user. That's not the case, if you were already paying for Oracle Java and support, there seems to have been a change of terms.

  If you don't need the support, just use openjdk, what's the problem? What's with the insistence on providing something for free or however much you want to pay for it? Get better terms or switch vendors! Java is an abundant ecosystem with multiple paid support providers.

• by hardwaresofton on 6/14/25, 7:57 AM

  Can anyone who still uses Java opine a bit on where it's better to use Oracle versus OpenJDK?

• by pjmlp on 6/14/25, 5:54 AM

  I would assume universities had clever enough people to use OpenJDK distributions instead of Oracle Java installers.

  It is like complaining they are paying for Visual Studio and Apple XCode developer licenses (Apple tax, anual membership, whatever you feel like calling it), instead of using plain GCC or clang.

  But hey, lets hate Oracle for the universities broken decision making process.

• by 4b11b4 on 6/14/25, 3:11 AM

  It's the end times for Oracle..?

• by charcircuit on 6/14/25, 3:45 AM

  Universities should be setting a moral standard.

  They should have never been ilegally using Java in the first place.