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27183today at 5:58 PM5 repliesview on HN

What happens to OpenJDK when Oracle dies? That's looking increasingly likely on a 3-5yr horizon.


Replies

saghmtoday at 6:04 PM

Probably it would get picked up by someone else (e.g. the Linux Foundation)? It's GPLv2-licensed, so it's not like the code is going to be risky for someone to fork

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tomberttoday at 6:03 PM

I don't think Oracle will die, but even entertaining the hypothetical I suspect that some other organization (e.g. Apache) would pick up and maintain a fork.

sandeepkdtoday at 6:04 PM

Way too much rides on Java, pretty much every big business has their own customized version of JDK that they support and maintain

cesarbtoday at 7:20 PM

The same that happened when Sun died: it gets bought by someone else.

ImJamaltoday at 6:17 PM

IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, SAP, Amazon and others all work on the JDK. They would have to step it up to cover the loss of Oracle's contributions, but I am sure they could manage.

Regardless, your timeframe on Oracle's death seems way too soon.