Yup, as the subject line says, Oracle has flip flopped on how Oracle is licensing Java for commercial use.
- Introducing the Free Java License
- Oracle Java SE Licensing FAQ
- Oracle’s JDK 17 – Free Again for Commercial Use
This FAQ pertains to Oracle Java SE releases starting April 16, 2019 and has been updated to reflect the new Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions License available for Oracle Java 17 and later starting September 14, 2021.
Oracle JDK 17 and later is available under the Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions License which permits free use for all users.
Clearly, back in 2018, someone at Oracle thought they could make a boat load of cash off Java users. All it did was back fire on Oracle and make companies hate Oracle more than they already did.
Why would anyone care about Oracle and their JDK/JRE releases when many companies have stepped up and offered free licenses for JDK/JRE releases?
- Eclipse Adoptium (previously known as Adopt OpenJDK)
- IBM Semeru Runtimes
- Microsoft Build of OpenJDK <— Even Microsoft treats Java users better than Oracle!!!
So, it took 30 months for Oracle to realize that they had screwed up. It was probably when customers starting leaving Oracle and it hit them in the pocket book!!! Since, we all know that Oracle is a greedy money-grubbing company!
I’m particularly pissed off because when Oracle made the licensing switch back in April of 2019, they caused Excelsior to close and sell their business to Huawei. Excelsior was put in a no-win situation regarding the collection of licensing fees. Excelsior Jet is a great tool for compiling and linking Java code into native binary executables. The current/last release of Excelsior Jet can compile Java 8 code, so I will continue to use it and sometime in the future, I’ll switch to GraalVM.
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
