There have been a few questions about Oracle’s announcements on the future of Java, so this post hopes to cover what actually has changed and how this impacts InterMine as a software package.
In short, these changes do not impact InterMine negatively, but we should be aware of these issues.
Oracle JDK 11 is not free for use in production; Use OpenJDK instead
Oracle changed its licencing a bit. Starting with Java 11, Oracle now releases its two JDKs under different licences:
- OpenJDK (open source under GPL)
- Oracle JDK (commercial licence)
(Previously, Oracle had released these both under the BCL licence which allows a mix of free and commercial use, so you only had to pay “sometimes”).
To use the Oracle JDK 11 in a production environment, you now need to purchase a commercial licence. You are still allowed to use this JDK in development, for demos etc but the Oracle JDK 11 is NOT free to use in production.
We develop InterMine against (and recommend people use) OpenJDK instead of the commercial JDK Oracle provides. As of Java 11, these two JDKs are now virtually identical so this is safe.
Oracle JDK 8 — “End of Public Updates”; Use OpenJDK instead
Oracle will provide public updates of Oracle JDK 8 through at least December 2020 for personal desktop use and January 2019 for commercial use. You can continue to use Oracle’s JDK indefinitely without updates, but that’s a bad idea for security and functionality reasons. If you want updates to Java 8, switch to OpenJDK, there are free OpenJDK builds from other providers like AdoptOpenJDK, Azul, IBM, Red Hat, other Linux distros etc.
OpenJDK binaries from Oracle will only be provided until the next JDK release; Use OpenJDK from a non-Oracle provider
Oracle changed their release schedule to be twice a year, and they will not provide a LTS release for OpenJDK. Oracle will not provide updates to older Open JDK versions, e.g. versions older than six months. This includes security fixes!
This is troubling as the InterMine release schedule is such that it’s not feasible to update Java versions every six months. But we can’t ignore needed security fixes.
However, RedHat announced in September that they would take a leadership role in this area. Some, e.g. https://adoptopenjdk.net, plan to offer an OpenJDK LTS releases for free. So there will be OpenJDK LTSs available, just not from Oracle.
What does this all mean for InterMine? Not Much!
We’ll keep monitoring the situation but this seems like the usual way that companies manage open source projects — providing open software and additional paid support. So nothing to be alarmed about. OpenJDK is open source, so we are safe.
People are (rightly?) concerned about Oracle’s true commitment to Java and open source going forward. What if they change their mind and don’t release updates to OpenJDK? For InterMine this isn’t too scary because worst case scenario we could use an older stable version of Java. However in this nightmare scenario it’s likely that Java would be forked and we could carry on.
Future InterMine plans
We have no plans to migrate away from Java and will continue to develop using the OpenJDK as normal. We develop against the Java specification not the version so we aren’t tied to a specific Java version. For now, we’re recommending staying with OpenJDK 8 but plan to start testing with Java 11 soon.
Although some are suspicious of Oracle due to past experiences, we are optimistic about the future of Java, as the community really seems to be responding to the need for a secure and open Java.
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