The Oracle Acquisition: What It Really Meant for Java Open Source

The Oracle Acquisition: What It Really Meant for Java Open Source

It's been a few months since Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, and as someone who's been working with Java since the early 2000s, I wanted to share my thoughts on what this really means for us developers and the open source community.

Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009, taking over the development and future of Java, and honestly, the community was divided. Some feared corporate control would stifle innovation, while others hoped Oracle's resources would accelerate development.

The Open Source Landscape

Back then, our toolkit was quite different from today. Here's what we were working with-

// Spring 3.0 had just been released - this was cutting edge!

@Configuration

@EnableWebMvc

public class WebConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {

    @Bean

    public ViewResolver viewResolver() {

        InternalResourceViewResolver resolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();

        resolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/views/");

        resolver.setSuffix(".jsp");

        return resolver;

    }

    @Override

    public void configureDefaultServletHandling(DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer configurer) {

        configurer.enable();

    }

}

Maven was still relatively new, and many of us were transitioning from Ant builds:

<!-- Our pom.xml files were much simpler back then -->

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0">

    <groupId>com.example</groupId>

    <artifactId>my-web-app</artifactId>

    <version>1.0.0</version>

    <packaging>war</packaging>

    <dependencies>

        <dependency>

            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>

            <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>

            <version>3.0.5.RELEASE</version>

        </dependency>

        <dependency>

            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>

            <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>

            <version>3.6.0.Final</version>

        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

</project>

The Birth of Modern IDE Culture

In 2009, JetBrains made a strategic decision to open the IntelliJ IDEA source code and release it under the free Apache 2.0 license. This was huge! Before this, many of us were using Eclipse, but IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition changed the game completely.

The competition between IDEs drove innovation in ways we hadn't seen before. Features like intelligent code completion, refactoring tools, and integrated debugging became standard expectations rather than premium features.