The third thing I wish for from Oracle in 2010 is a free ADF runtime license. I believe that the current licensing is limiting ADF to existing Oracle enterprise customers, and that’s too bad.
I am not looking for Oracle to make ADF Open Source - but just to get the option to legally run ADF applications on Glassfish (and possibly JBoss and others). Support should be forum-based (like for Oracle XE).
This has several benefits:
- Universities could teach ADF (it’s full of brilliant code and design patterns) in the knowledge that students could use it outside the closed Oracle world.
- The thousands of capable developers in China, India, Phillipines and elsewhere, who are currently using Open Source solely for cost reasons, could pick up this brilliant tool.
It would not cannibalize existing revenue, as enterprise customers would still want to buy a support contract. But it would translate into both a wider ADF developer skills base and additional license revenue for Oracle as these customers eventually buy a support contract or upgrade to WebLogic.
Oracle is sitting on an unrecognized jewel while Java developers all over the world are wasting time with a plethora of much less capable frameworks. Help the world build better apps faster - set ADF Free!
Please vote for this idea on Oracle Mix.