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For a while, there were some nitty, edge case, "UFO" types of differences between OpenJDK and the Oracle JDK. But that's mostly been resolved. Oracle owns "Jav

For a while, there were some nitty, edge case, "UFO" types of differences between OpenJDK and the Oracle JDK. But that's mostly been resolved. Oracle owns "Java", that is the name, the trademark, etc. In that sense, OpenJDK is "not" "Java". But operationally, this is moot. But it has impact in other areas. What was originally "Java Enterprise Edition" was transferred over to the Eclipse Foundation, but they couldn't take the "java" name with them. All of the JEE packages were "javax.enterprise.". Oracle wouldn't give up the "Java" part in order to not dilute its trademark, so now its the "Jakarta Enterprise Edition", and all of the packages are being renamed to "jakarta.enterprise.". I mention this just as an example of the hoops the community going through, even today, over what's happening with java. So, Oracle and the community have to dance a fine line over what is the language, compilers, tools, and libraries, and what is "java", what is trademarked, what is owned by Oracle. Oracle was kind enough to be an invested member in the Java community by not forking, closing, and going off its own way, and leaving the OpenJDK to fend for itself. This is essentially what happened to Solaris and OpenSolaris. The other JDKs (Zuul, AWS, etc.) were certainly a hedge against this. The industry has a lot invested in "java", and can't really afford to let it get out of hand. Having "official" builds, that were supported, and patched, and eyes on vs the latest release from OpenJDK gives companies a secure feeling. That's why other companies stepped up to support their own JDKs. To help assure clients that the technology is stable and still worth building on. So, the differences are not so much different languages, or even different implementations (though there is certainly some of that). Rather much of it is simply stability in the community. Also, the whole licensing issue with Oracle vs the others was a big deal also. We'll see what impact the new free license from Oracle has.

sebazzz 5y ago
> All of the JEE packages were "javax.enterprise.". Oracle wouldn't give up the "Java" part in order to not dilute its trademark, so now its the "Jakarta Enterprise Edition", and all of the packages are being renamed to "jakarta.enterprise.". I mention this just as an example of the hoops the community going through, even today, over what's happening with java. That is quite a change, and probably not very backwards compatible?
- whartung 5y ago
  No, it's not at all. But, since that code needs to run in a formal container (app server) environment, the app server makers do classloader and renaming shenanigans to be able to load code from the earlier toolkits. But, yea, it was a big clod to drop in the churn.

sebazzz 5y ago

> All of the JEE packages were "javax.enterprise.". Oracle wouldn't give up the "Java" part in order to not dilute its trademark, so now its the "Jakarta Enterprise Edition", and all of the packages are being renamed to "jakarta.enterprise.". I mention this just as an example of the hoops the community going through, even today, over what's happening with java. That is quite a change, and probably not very backwards compatible?

whartung 5y ago
No, it's not at all. But, since that code needs to run in a formal container (app server) environment, the app server makers do classloader and renaming shenanigans to be able to load code from the earlier toolkits. But, yea, it was a big clod to drop in the churn.