Oracle will charge for Java -- impact to OpenMRS?

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Dear friends,

What is the impact of this change in Oracle’s policy for OpenMRS development strategy?

Is there a separate thread discussing this?

https://www.itassetmanagement.net/2018/05/01/oracle-to-charge-for-java-from-jan-2019/

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HI Alvin,

I think it’s not that Oracle will charge for Java.

Java 8 is reaching its EOL for community updates: https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/eol-135779.html

For some reason, Oracle still releases security patches for paying customers for a while after the EOL, I assume trying to monetize on those who can pay and have trouble upgrading java.

It has happened for older versions of JDK.

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Also to add onto what @cintiadr has said:

  • We can and probably should switch over to openjdk
  • Another point – Oracle Java 11 has a cute new license that will allow them to commercialize it…but since OpenMRS is offered free of charge and to my knowledge isn’t commercialized, we would not be affected by this. OpenJDK to my knowledge remains unaffected by this.
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Check out the latest, no-cost JDK from Amazon: https://dzone.com/articles/amazon-corretto-another-jdk

Amazon has released Corretto, a no-cost distribution of the OpenJDK. Amazon’s James Gosling (a.k.a. the “father of Java”) celebrates the project as “[making] the work of [Amazon’s] internal mission-critical Java team…available to the rest of the world.” Amazon Corretto comes with long-term support and is already used for a number of production services at Amazon. Maheshwar Ligade offers an overview and details how to get started with the developer preview release on DZone.

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Amazon is a whole different level of evil in that regard. They are taking from the FOSS community and not giving back.

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