It’s been a long time since I made any serious effort on the holy grail task of getting a cube on the screen. For that reason, everything I was trying to use to do it is now very out of date. This problem resulted in a bit of housekeeping. Since I’m in there updating tools and reading over code I’d written, I figured it was also a good time to grab the latest collection of libraries and assorted goodies and make sure that the new versions didn’t break anything. Specifically, I believe it is time to bump LWJGL up to the latest version, and to seriously consider a switch from the main line of Java to OpenJDK.
I’ve been coding on Java 8 for a very long time. I had everything I needed, and Oracle kept updating it with bug fixes and other useful patches, so I really didn’t have any need to change. Recently however, Oracle has gotten onto a pattern of releasing major versions of Java much much faster than before. In fact, since I last posted, the official JDK has advanced all the way to version 11. With this new pattern of fast releases, they also appear to have changed the license agreement in a way that I don’t care for.
If I’m reading or understanding their new license correctly, they are making it pointlessly expensive to use Java to create commercial software. I hope I’m just not understanding the intent of the new license, because if I’m right, it seems like Oracle is essentially trying to make Java itself go away by pricing themselves out of a market with dozens of other free options available. As a coder that prefers Java to all other languages, this makes me rather sad and was the driving force behind my idea to switch to OpenJDK for QubeKwest. With any luck, it’ll be pretty straightforward to do this, and unless I’m misunderstanding again, the use of OpenJDK dodges this entire license issue completely.