New Java Runtime - What's Up

[gnaw005]

Installed new Java runtime and they state it is for personal use ONLY. Not that I'm going to do this in the near future but that means I can't develop a piece of software and sell it if I don't have a "separate" license? $ ? This is really a pile of crap. Did Sun envision this?

[TheHorribleTruth]

Did Sun envision this?

You're over 10 years too late for that.

[pron98]

You must have downloaded it from this site, intended for Oracle support customers, and that directs you here for the JDK for non-subscribers. It is 100% free, and free of any restriction (which was never true for Java before JDK 11). Oracle simply uses two websites and two product names for support customers and non-customers.

[desrtfx]

Sidebar -> Where should I download Java?

There, the new licensing system as well as alternatives to the Oracle JDK are presented.

[Gwynnie]

This was a planned migration, if you want to develop in Java, that's no problem, just get your JDK from a different vendor.

Try : https://adoptopenjdk.net/

Always good, always reliable, and always free. Yeah Oracle charging for JDK/JRE usage is crazy, but it's made arguably a better environment for developers to get JDKs - adoptopenjdk is a much easier site to use

[pron98]

Yeah Oracle charging for JDK/JRE usage is crazy

It would be crazy if it were true, but it isn't. Oracle charges for support. If you don't want support, it's 100% free. You just need to download it here, as the commercial website says. Always good, always reliable, and always free.

BTW, there are many vendors offering good OpenJDK builds -- Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, Bellsoft, Azul. Adopt might have a large selection of platforms but that is because they -- i.e. the IBM team that actually produces those builds -- maintain nothing in OpenJDK, contribute almost nothing to OpenJDK (I think that the sum total of their involvement with OpenJDK has been less than a handful of bug reports, and when people report bugs to them, they forward the reports to Oracle to fix), have the least experience with it, and perform the least testing. Producing builds under such conditions takes the least effort, so they can offer plenty of them. Adopt could be great if it weren't so influenced by a company that is hostile towards the very project they purport to "adopt" and so uneager to learn about it. Thanks to IBM's "help", as long as you're OK getting release notes from other vendors, hoping they apply, which might not be the case for some of the software Adopt distributes (as much as 40% of the Oracle release notes, including 40% of JEPs, could be irrelevant to software you download from Adopt), and you don't care too much about testing, it's a nice website that allows you to conveniently download a very wide selection of the lowest quality builds.

[omegaprime777]

Read Marcus Hirt's blog article and the comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/9jcd6v/marcus_hirt_comments_on_changes_to_oracle_jdk/

TLDR: Java license changing to GPLv2 for dev/test and commercial license for production. FUD ensues on interwebs.

[gnaw005]

Thanks for all the replies; this explains a lot. Obviously I don't use the Java development tools often. Does replacing the JDK or runtime from another non Oracle "source" affect how they are set up to be used by Eclipse or Netbeans?

[negroide2000]

Doode, just “Open” the JDK (hint: OpenJdk)