Amazon Releases A No-Cost Distribution of OpenJDK (sdtimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes SD Times: Amazon wants to make sure Java is available for free to its users in the long term with the introduction of Amazon Corretto. The solution is a no-cost, multi-platform, production-ready distribution of the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK). "Java is one of the most popular languages in use by AWS customers, and we are committed to supporting Java and keeping it free," Arun Gupta, principal open-source technologist at Amazon, wrote in a blog post. "Many of our customers have become concerned that they would have to pay for a long-term supported version of Java to run their workloads. As a first step, we recently re-affirmed long-term support for Java in Amazon Linux. However, our customers and the broader Java community run Java on a variety of platforms, both on and off of AWS."

Amazon Corretto will be available with long-term support and Amazon will continue to make performance enhancements and security fixes to it, the company explained. Amazon plans on making quarterly updates with bug fixes and patches, as well as any urgent fixes necessary outside of its schedule... Corretto 8 is available as a preview with features corresponding to those in OpenJDK 8. General availability for the solution is planned for Q1 2019... "Corretto is designed as a drop-in replacement for all Java SE distributions unless you're using features not available in OpenJDK (e.g., Java Flight Recorder)," Gupta wrote....

According to Gupta, Corretto 8 will be available at no cost until at least June of 2023. The company is working on Corretto 11, which will be available until at least August of 2024. "Amazon has already made several contributions to OpenJDK 8 and we look forward to working closely with the OpenJDK community on future enhancements to OpenJDK 8 and 11," Gupta wrote. "We downstream fixes made in OpenJDK, add enhancements based on our own experience and needs, and then produce Corretto builds. In case any upstreaming efforts for such patches is not successful, delayed, or not appropriate for OpenJDK project, we will provide them to our customers for as long as they add value. If an issue is solved a different way in OpenJDK, we will move to that solution as soon as it is safe to do so."

Comments

Re:Long-Term is 2023??

[Cardcaptor_RLH85]

I think what they're saying is that they'll support Coretto 8 for free until June 2023 but at that point, you need to move on to a newer version of Java/Coretto which should still be free or pay for version 8 support.

Re:Long-Term is 2023??

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle have changed the licensing with Java 11. To use the official Oracle JDK as part of a commercial service now REQURIES a commercial license from Oracle. That's the main reason for this sort of thing.

Though, I'd just go with plain OpenJDK rather than Amazon's version.

Re:So the good news is Java isn't going away

[Phylter]

The good news is that Oracle has just lost a lot of the control over the Java ecosystem that they had. Because of their insistence on making a buck and hurting the customer they've made themselves their biggest competition and the open source will win.

Re:So the good news is Java isn't going away

[jma05]

Exactly what is still bothersome about the JVM today?
I remember the early annoyances, but both the language and the VM have undergone significant improvements over the years.
If you don't like Java the language, there are any number of modern languages to use on the JVM.
What would you wish that people used other than the JVM?

Re:why not use openjdk?

[jfdavis668]

Because unlike the free OpenJDK, the Amazon one is a No-Cost distribution.

Re:why not use openjdk?

[Trogre]

This is correct.

Oracle will start charging for Oracle Java, which is derived from openjdk and comes with its nice [citation needed] installer and update client.

However openjdk will still be free (GPL). The problem is that to use it you have to either go through the laborious and poorly-documented process of installing it yourself or find another group that has built an installer for you. Zulu and Corretto are two examples of the latter.

Re:"yum install java" is complicated?

[Trogre]

dnf install java
apt-get install java

The problem only really exists for those locked into less sophisticated, usually proprietary, operating systems where such conveniences don't exist.

Re:So the good news is Java isn't going away

[angel'o'sphere]

Why would you argue otherwise?
Because your arguing is nonsense as well.

E.g. you did not mention it is a "log in script".

You said during log in, so I e.g. assume a dialog box on my PC asking for a username and password.

You are arguing about languages and claiming that people who use certain languages are by definition superiour to people using other languages.

I thought the same about VB developers ... but I changed that mindset long ago before I started mainly to develop in Java.

P.S.
Why did the log in script need a C++/Java program to do anything is beyond me anyway. So you want to argue you better had done the Java thing in C++ instead in "the right language" what ever your scripting language was?