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Not defending Oracle here, but I wanted to add some clarity. Oracle will now only support current LTS versions of the Oracle JDK (as opposed to the OpenJDK), f

Not defending Oracle here, but I wanted to add some clarity. Oracle will now only support current LTS versions of the Oracle JDK (as opposed to the OpenJDK), for something like 2 years. Basically requiring people to migrate to LTS releases relatively quickly. If you can’t (larger orgs and others with requirements that delay those moves), then you’ll need to pay Oracle for a license. Java (Oracle/Sun JDK) has never really been free, specifically, while I never worked with it, embedded JDK has always required a purchased license for distribution. The OpenJDK, on the other hand is a free OSS licensed distribution of Java.

oblio 8y ago
In practice it doesn't really work like that. The vast majority of devs and companies using Java were not using an embedded JDK. So for them, it's moving from a freely available JDK supported for many years, to a JDK that's changing every 6 months. And the dust is far from settling on which alternative OpenJDK build is stable, reliable and free, long term. I know that companies should pay for it, but things don't really work like that, see the OpenSSL fiasco.