What you get is a distribution of OpenJDK, one of which is by Oracle. There’s also one by RedHat and by Eclipse and others.
You may be thinking of the Hotspot JVM and the answer is that Hotspot offers negligible difference and I’m not sure even exists for the later versions of Java.
If you use Oracle OpenJDK in production (past a specific patch point for some versions) to the best of my knowledge you are probably still on the hook for the licensing fees.
(They allow it in development in order to get you to use it in production at which point the lawyers pounce).
At my company we use RedHat OpenJDK on RedHat VMs and Eclipse Temurin OpenJDK in docker containers.
(Other JVMs include Graal (also owned by Oracle)).
OpenJDK includes HotSpot and the class libraries. OpenJDK licences do not cost money, even if you use the one from Oracle past a certain patch point. Builds of OpenJDK from other vendors like Red Hat and Microsoft are based on the OpenJDK source code from Oracle.
Oracle JDK is the non-free version that shares the same code base as OpenJDK. Oracle provides a restricted licence for this build, under which it is free to use in certain cases, up until specific patches. Later patches (usually a few years after the initial release date) require a licence fee. This does not apply to Oracle OpenJDK, which is released under the GPL.
If you want to avoid HotSpot altogether, the other options include Graal (used with OpenJDK class libraries), IBM OpenJ9 and IKVM.NET.
Thanks for the explanation -- back when I wrote Java, it was a choice between "Oracle Java" (i.e. Oracle JDK) and the OpenJDK -- where you downloaded was different and what you agreed to download was different.
> If you use Oracle OpenJDK in production to the best of my knowledge you are probably still on the hook for the licensing fees.
I'd be surprised by this but I guess that is par for the course.
> At my company we use RedHat OpenJDK on RedHat VMs and Eclipse Temurin OpenJDK in docker containers.
Thanks for clarifying -- do you find any differences that were important? Or is it more you've never needed the Oracle distribution so you never had reason to find out?
I'm just wondering why anyone would choose Oracle's distribution in this day and age. Who are their main customers that are happy to be customers?
I'd blame Dell for using crappy software. That particular software checks the version of Java and won't run if the version is lower (which is expected), but the check also fails on newer versions which is just stupid.
OpenJDK isn’t a thing you can get.
What you get is a distribution of OpenJDK, one of which is by Oracle. There’s also one by RedHat and by Eclipse and others.
You may be thinking of the Hotspot JVM and the answer is that Hotspot offers negligible difference and I’m not sure even exists for the later versions of Java.
If you use Oracle OpenJDK in production (past a specific patch point for some versions) to the best of my knowledge you are probably still on the hook for the licensing fees.
(They allow it in development in order to get you to use it in production at which point the lawyers pounce).
At my company we use RedHat OpenJDK on RedHat VMs and Eclipse Temurin OpenJDK in docker containers.
(Other JVMs include Graal (also owned by Oracle)).
OpenJDK includes HotSpot and the class libraries. OpenJDK licences do not cost money, even if you use the one from Oracle past a certain patch point. Builds of OpenJDK from other vendors like Red Hat and Microsoft are based on the OpenJDK source code from Oracle.
Oracle JDK is the non-free version that shares the same code base as OpenJDK. Oracle provides a restricted licence for this build, under which it is free to use in certain cases, up until specific patches. Later patches (usually a few years after the initial release date) require a licence fee. This does not apply to Oracle OpenJDK, which is released under the GPL.
If you want to avoid HotSpot altogether, the other options include Graal (used with OpenJDK class libraries), IBM OpenJ9 and IKVM.NET.
Thanks for the explanation -- back when I wrote Java, it was a choice between "Oracle Java" (i.e. Oracle JDK) and the OpenJDK -- where you downloaded was different and what you agreed to download was different.
> If you use Oracle OpenJDK in production to the best of my knowledge you are probably still on the hook for the licensing fees.
I'd be surprised by this but I guess that is par for the course.
> At my company we use RedHat OpenJDK on RedHat VMs and Eclipse Temurin OpenJDK in docker containers.
Thanks for clarifying -- do you find any differences that were important? Or is it more you've never needed the Oracle distribution so you never had reason to find out?
I'm just wondering why anyone would choose Oracle's distribution in this day and age. Who are their main customers that are happy to be customers?
If you've got an old Dell EqualLogic PS Series SAN, then you'll need Oracle Java for running the admin GUI: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000139168/dell-equa...
Thank you! This is a great example -- interesting that a SAN would be a cause for this kind of requirement, but I can understand that.
I'd blame Dell for using crappy software. That particular software checks the version of Java and won't run if the version is lower (which is expected), but the check also fails on newer versions which is just stupid.