Well, on the other hand OpenJDK is 99% Oracle's work repackaged.
If Oracle decided to stop putting out new FOSS-licenced versions, there would be no new OpenJDK releases (since all the core Java devs are Oracle employees).
So it's like a no-community project, where you get a dump of FOSS code every now and then from a vendor.
Oracle seems to pursue GraalVM EE as a way to monetize Java. It would be insane for them to change the license, piss off companies with deep pockets, risk a hard fork and see most employees working on the JDK leave.
>In recent Java versions, there's roughly 20% of external contributions:
Have to check your link to find out, but is it by number or by impact?
(Asking cause many projects have seemingly many "external contributors" but if one looks almost all real work happens by a core team, and the external contributors just do some change here and there, or even clerical work, like fixing comments and documentation and such).
The post measures by issue count, though not all issues are equal.
> Of the 2,136 JIRA issues marked as fixed in Java 15, 1,702 were completed by people working for Oracle, while 434 were contributed by individual developers and developers working for other organizations.
A correction - all the core Java developers are paid by Oracle to develop Java. I doubt that Oracle would win anything, by abandoning OpenJDK.
And now - they can't. Companies that are able to maintain Java are X times larger than Oracle and the core team would easily be rehired by IBM, Google, Aamazon, Facebook, Apple, etc...
None of the companies you listed would gain much over current model. They would rather move to different technologies in case Java is abandoned.
> Companies that are able to maintain Java are X times larger than Oracle
With exception of maybe IBM which anyway is crapping out, none of the other owe their business success to directly to Java based product or services. If Java were to be abandoned they can easily migrate / rewrite their internal tools / products to a different platform even if it takes 5-10 years. It is not like current prod systems will stop working just by announcement.
Also to think further Oracle abandons Java , Amazon and Google would have huge incentive to either charge lot more for Java on cloud or redirect their customers to alternatives.
> They would rather move to different technologies in case Java is abandoned.
They had the opportunity to do so for at least a decade now, but they didn't. Google, even after the massive row with Oracle, still uses Java extensively. Still has new projects written in Java(or running on JVM). Having a big legal battle between Google and Oracle would surely have dissuaded FAANGs from starting Java projects, right? Nope... You're flat out wrong.
> Java were to be abandoned they can easily migrate / rewrite
That's one delusional world you live in.
> It is not like current prod systems will stop working just by announcement.
And what makes you think that those big boys aren't going to be interested in maintaining JVM?
As opposed to which big open-source project? Do you really believe linux is a few individuals’ work? Just look at which companies pay the contributors.
If Oracle decided to stop putting out new FOSS-licenced versions, there would be no new OpenJDK releases (since all the core Java devs are Oracle employees).
So it's like a no-community project, where you get a dump of FOSS code every now and then from a vendor.