Following the changes Oracle made to the release cadence for Java, one needs to decide on their upgrade path: upgrade every six months or buy Subscription Licenses for a Long Term Support (LTS) version.
TIP #5 - August 2019:Oracle changes release cadence for Java - what will be your licensing upgrade plan?
As constantly upgrading looks to be a real challenge, the license implications of an LTS version need to be considered.
What are the actual license implications?
- All changes concern Java SE, including JDK & JRE. From Java 11 on, JRE for Commercial Users also can only be obtained through JDK.
- All changes apply to Commercial Users, as defined by Oracle.
- Interim fixes, bug fixes, feature- and security updates are only available behind a commercial (paid) Java SE Portal. As previously already was the case, these require a commercial license.
Let’s take a quick look at the new Oracle Java license model:
- The Commercial license for Java SE will be available in a subscription model, containing both the license and the support fee. For this commercial license, two types of metrics are available; Processor and Named User Plus (NUP).
- Important to emphasise is the fact that without a commercial license one needs to rely on one of the publicly available versions. These versions however, do not contain all the latest updates, security patches and bug fixes. Also, without a commercial license, you won’t have access to Oracle Support.