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Comment by teilo | Hacker News Reader

"Open Source" but not free to use as you wish. The Oracle builds require a commercial license.

In this case it means GPL+Classpath Exception. The link goes to the Oracle provided OpenJDK builds.

Oracle also has their own build of the JDK which is not GPL. That is free to use in commercial software as well, under their "No-Fee Terms and Conditions"

I think you're correct right now, but Oracle has a tendency to change their minds frequently. Tomorrow you might be migrating or paying.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see that called out anywhere. I don't believe that's true anymore, but correct me if I'm wrong.

For reference I double checked here: https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/

There used to be really prominent banners telling you about it. I don't see them now, but I'm also not sure they switched back. Here's an article I found explaining the switch to requiring paid usage.

https://blog.netwrix.com/2021/12/02/oracle-java-license-chan...

I think that’s the switch (somewhat) _away_ from paid usage.

https://itassetalliance.com/blog-posts/what-do-oracles-2021-... says there was a change in 2019 that made critical security updates a paid feature.

The 2021 license change reverted this somewhat, by giving you one year of security fixes for free in the long term support versions (I’m sure I’m missing some detail, if not completely misinterpreting things, here)

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