News

Eclipse Foundation Claims New Licensing Has Contributed Momentum to Open Source

• By John K. Waters
• March 30, 2023

The Eclipse Foundation says the chief impact of its new licensing fee structures is a significant increase in momentum for the global open-source Java ecosystem. "Breathtaking licensing changes" that affected many Java users is "dramatically increasing interest in fully verified free-to-use Java binaries such as Eclipse Temurin," the Foundation said in a press release.
The Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open-source software foundations, made the announcement in collaboration with the Adoptium Working Group, which promotes and supports high-quality, TCK-certified runtimes and associated tech for Java.

In February 2023, the Foundation reports, it delivered more than 12.3M downloads of the Java SE TCK certified and AQAvit quality verified Eclipse Temurin binaries, more than double the number delivered in the same month last year.

Eclipse Temurin has also become the default Java option for GitHub Actions, it says, and multiple widely used cloud container images.

As the entire open-source Java ecosystem continues to experience what the Foundation is calling "a renaissance," millions of developers and large Enterprise users are turning to the Adoptium Marketplace for their open Java runtimes.

For its part, the Adoptium Working Group has been welcoming new strategic and enterprise members, including Bloomberg, Google, and Rivos.

"In a macroeconomic climate where we are all forced to do more with less, options like Eclipse Temurin mean that businesses have choices for free-to-use quality Java runtimes without having to expend additional resources," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, in a statement. "With new members joining every month, the quality and consistency of the Adoptium Working Group’s output will only continue to grow to address that pressure."

The working group was founded by multiple participants, including many Java developers and vendors, including Alibaba Cloud, Azul, Huawei, IBM, iJUG, Microsoft, and Red Hat. This kind of participation provides the Java ecosystem with compatible, high-quality distributions of Java based on OpenJDK source code, Milinkovich said.

"2023 is shaping up to be an incredibly productive year for the Adoptium Working Group and for the entire open-source Java ecosystem," said Tim Ellison, PMC Lead for Eclipse Adoptium, in a statement. "With our focus on secure development practices and high-quality deliveries there has never been a better time for organizations to choose a free-to-use Java runtime."

The Eclipse Adoptium project and the governing Adoptium Working Group represent the continuation of the original AdoptOpenJDK mission, which was established in 2017 to address the general lack of an open, vendor-neutral, reproducible build and test system for OpenJDK across multiple platforms. Adoptium is now the leading provider of high-quality OpenJDK-based binaries used by Java developers across embedded systems, desktops, traditional servers, modern cloud platforms, and mainframes. The Adoptium Marketplace provides organizations with a means of distributing their binaries.

"Third-party Java runtimes were already on the rise prior to Oracle’s recent pricing changes, and we expect that trend to accelerate rapidly moving forward," said Simon Ritter, Deputy CTO at Azul. "Java provides immense value across the DevSecOps lifecycle, but Oracle’s new employee-based pricing is divorced from that value. Customers are increasingly frustrated over what they see as arbitrary pricing changes, audit risks and a lack of overall predictability. Thankfully, drop-in replacements for Oracle abound, and offer a compelling value for Java-based enterprises."

Azul is one of the largest companies with a 100% focus on Java and the JVM.

Mark Little, VP of Engineering at Red Hat, one of the leading providers of open-source software solutions, and one of the biggest contributors to the evolution of Java standards, describes Adoptium as "a leading example of a community-powered approach to delivering secure, reliable and high-performing open-source software."

"Red Hat’s engagement in the Adoptium Working Group and confidence in the community is reflected in our expanded support offerings that include development and production use cases of Temurin, similar to the award-winning support that comes with the Red Hat build of OpenJDK. We wish Adoptium every continued success," Little added.