[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/8/2018 11:33 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2018-02-07 22:24:29 +0000, Arne Vajhj said:
>> On 2/7/2018 4:51 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> As for Java?  Use what works for you.  If it's Java you pick for your 
>>> development efforts, you're probably more beholden to Oracle for 
>>> support than to the underlying platform, or so the marketing has 
>>> claimed.
>>
>> Not really.
>>
>> Oracle supports Oracle Java.
>> IBM supports IBM Java.
>> HP supports HP Java.

+E

:-)

>              Which is part of why I don't particularly track the Oracle
> patches.  That's also given that the primary local client platform has 
> direct Oracle support for Java, and not indirect support through a 
> third-party vendor.  Oracle pushes out those updates directly, as part 
> of their support of Java.

Support has too come from whoever delivered the Java not Oracle.

Let us say that you decide to create your own Java "Hoff Java".

There are a few different scenarios:

A) You decide to write everything from scratch. And get it
    certified to be able to call it Java.

In that case the bugs in Oracle Java does not apply to Hoff Java
and obviously Oracle bug fixes can not be applied.

You would need to fix all bugs yourself.

B) You license Oracle Java from Oracle and just add your own
    code.

Now bugs can fall in two categories:
* within the code you got from Oracle
* within the code you added

For the first you can get bug fixes from Oracle. For the
second you cannot.

But even for the first then category Oracle can not
deliver the actual patch. They don't know your
installation script, the platform used etc.. You would
need to rebuild a dist for your customers.

C) Taking OpenJDK under GPL.

Works same way as #B except that the bug fixes for the
first category will come from OpenJDK open source
project not Oracle (but same fix from the same
engineers).

Arne