[jodastephen]

Not everybody reads warnings. Many will go to that page and just go straight to the download. In addition, the warning doesn't say "not for commercial use" - you have to click through and read a long legalese to find it. Oracle could still choose to make it clearer...

[mcguire]

Many people are very used to clicking through Oracle's tedious licensing maze to download previous JDKs.

[paulie_a]

It's just another license to ignore. I'll personally do whatever I want regardless of what is in the EULA.

[rst]

Oracle is notorious for auditing compliance with their database licenses, and shaking down their users for extra money in the event the auditors find something even slightly questionable. There are external consultants that make a pretty good living just preparing companies to withstand those audits.

They haven't been doing that with JDK licenses, so far -- as long as Java had licenses which didn't allow for this kind of gamesmanship. But now that the license has changed, it's a completely legitimate thing to get worried about.

[StreamBright]

Not sure where you live or what sort of company you work for but in my country & our company we cannot just have a fuck all attitude towards software licenses.

[ballenf]

The moral argument that code should not be restrained by artificial license, like we treat ideas, is a strong one but not made clearly here.

If code was treated more like ideas or recipes we'd all still have jobs.

If you believe that strongly enough, civil disobedience through ignoring licenses is one approach. No one should risk more than they're willing to lose on the position because you will lose if it's costing someone else enough.

[hodgesrm]

That won't work if your company goes through due diligence or ends up getting a licenses review from Oracle. You'll have to settle up then and it won't be cheap.

The Oracle license police live for situations like this.

p.s., If it's just personal use you are within the terms of the license.

[dnomad]

There's no "long legalese."

The new license (https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/terms/license...) is very clear. It states in plain English: "Further, You may not: use the Programs for any data processing or any commercial, production, or internal business purposes other than developing, testing, prototyping, and demonstrating your Application;".

How is that not clear?

This entire article is just pure FUD. Oracle has stated over and over and over how the new licensing model works. It's clear to anybody who spends a couple of minutes reading the documentation.

[jodastephen]

If you want to claim that 2000+ word terms are not legalese then so be it. Suffice it to say, I disagree. What is needed here is a summary in the warning box on the main page. Something like "Do not download this unless you want to pay us".

[LaGrange]

> How is that not clear?

You'd think it's clear, and yet I've joined projects where software with such terms was included in production builds because "it was downloaded with npm so it's open source."

[doodpants]

What's unclear to me is how I would be running afoul of the licensing terms if I used the non-free version of the JDK to develop Java software. Because "developing, testing, prototyping, and demonstrating [my] Application" is exactly what I'd be using the JDK for.