Starting April 16, Oracle Java SE releases with a new license agreement that restricts commercial use. Java SE can now be used for free only in the software development process or for personal use, testing, prototyping and demonstrating applications.
Prior to April 16, Java SE updates were released under the license (Binary Code License), and after only under a new license agreement (Oracle Technology Network). When used in commercial projects, a license purchase or upgrade to a free package is required , which continues to be developed under the same terms and conditions under the GPLv2 license with GNU ClassPath exceptions to allow dynamic linking with commercial products. If you continue to apply Java SE for further businesses are required to obtain a commercial license, which costs $2.50 per month per user or per computer.
The decision to change the licensing model was made after the development process was modernized, transferred to a single constantly updated master branch with OpenJDK, which includes ready-made changes and from which branches are branched every six months to stabilize new releases. If Oracle's Java SE set previously included additional commercial components, now their code is open and the OpenJDK and Oracle Java SE products can be considered interchangeable. Enterprise users of the Oracle Java SE binaries provided with java.com can continue to use Java for free by upgrading to OpenJDK builds.
In the case of using the Java SE 8 branch, it is possible to switch to the project developed by Amazon , Free long-term support distributions of Java 8 and 11 ready for enterprise use. Updates for Corretto 8 will be available until at least June 2023. Updates are provided free of charge and without any restrictions. Corretto is certified as conforming to the specifications and can be used as a replacement for Java SE.
Additionally, it can be noted that Red Hat leadership over the OpenJDK 8 and OpenJDK 11 branches, previously maintained by Oracle, and now focusing on OpenJDK 12 and the development of the master branch, from which the OpenJDK 13 release will be branched in September.
Red Hat has taken on the job of continuing to generate publicly available updates for past branches, maintaining their code base, and handling technical support issues. It should be noted that such a step is not something special, Red Hat has taken on the maintenance of branches before ΠΈ .
Source: opennet.ru