Does Oracle's change regarding Java apply only to "commercial" use, or to ANY production use?
Note: This blog post is from 2019. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.Does Oracle's change regarding Java and limiting who can use what for free apply only to "commercial" users (as in "corporate" or "business" use), or do the limitations apply to ANY production use (including non-"commercial" orgs like non-profits, agencies, schools, etc.)? I offer here my understanding based on research of Oracle's own resources.
Bottom line: these limitations DO apply to ANY PRODUCTION use, not just "commercial" use, definitely regarding Java 11, and seemingly clearly regarding Java 8.
For more clarification, read on.
So your comment comes off instead as trolling a bit, like you went looking for any post that might talk about Oracle Java and licensing issues, and if it didn't mention Azul, you wanted to drop that in to educate the blogger and readers.
I appreciate enthusiasm for a product (you'll see most of mine reflect that, for another product), but really you should read a post more carefully before doing that.
And if you may wonder which of the post (that l linked to above) is one where I'd mentioned Azul, it was:
https://www.carehart...
Granted, the focus of that post was to point out Corretto--because of the duration of support for Java 8 and 11. I did though mention Azul and others, and linked to them, so that interested readers who wanted to could explore those further.
Indeed, as you may know, Oracle no longer packages a separate "JRE" installer for Java 11 and above. It does for 8, which was the last LTS release before 8. (And both 8 and 11 are still supported LTS releases as of now in 2022, as is 17 which came out in late 2020.)
If one tried to get a JRE (or goes to java.com to "download java"), what they get is the 8 JRE. And yes, that 8 JRE is subject to the same licensing requirement for production use, as indicated in the large banner shown on the next page after you click that "download java", https://www.java.com...).
Now, FWIW, the licensing has changed YET AGAIN since back then in early 2019. Java 17 is back to being free for production (but 11 is not). For more, see this Sept 2021 blog post:
https://blogs.oracle...
I suppose I could and should have created a new blog post for that. Hard to keep up with the merry-go-round.
So given all I said, what is you concluding stance on things? Do you have the info you need?