Eclipse Foundation Announces New Release of Eclipse Temurin Java SE Runtime
The folks at the Eclipse Foundation, in collaboration with the Adoptium Working Group, recently unveiled the latest release of Eclipse Temurin, the working group's OpenJDK distribution. This is the largest release to date; it with support for 54 version/platform combinations and five major OpenJDK versions, highlighting a commitment to diverse and comprehensive builds across Linux, Mac, Windows, and various architectures, including x64, ARM, and RISC-V.
"The incredible growth of Eclipse Temurin reflects a strong demand among developers for secure, high-quality, and community-driven open-source Java runtimes," said Thabang Mashologu, vice president of Community and Outreach for the Eclipse Foundation, in a statement. "The Adoptium Working Group’s efforts have been instrumental in delivering enterprise-ready runtime binaries and expanding the potential use cases for open-source Java. Eclipse Temurin is one of the first open-source Java distributions to support RISC-V, introducing new opportunities for Java in Industrial IoT and beyond."
The Eclipse Foundation is one of the world’s largest open-source software foundations. The Adoptium Working Group, which is the successor to AdoptOpenJDK, promotes and supports high-quality, TCK certified runtimes and associated technology for use across the Java ecosystem. Since it was established back in 2021, Adoptium has become the leading provider of high-quality OpenJDK-based binaries.
The list of key updates and developments in this Temurin release includes:
Unprecedented Growth and Adoption: "Growth" was a key word in this announcement. Eclipse Temurin is currently the fastest-growing open-source Java SE runtime, with more than 23 million downloads per month and more than 380 million downloads to date. According to a recent report by New Relic (New Relic, State of the Java Ecosystem, April 2024), Temurin has experienced 50% year-over-year growth, now representing 18% of the Java market as the second most popular JDK vendor.
Security Enhancements: Eclipse Temurin is pioneering software supply chain security practices, with nominated platform builds independently verified and inclusive of a comprehensive software bill of materials. The Foundation published a case study that underscores this commitment.
RISC-V Support: The new release supports RISC-V microprocessors, expanding its applications to embedded technologies, IoT, machine learning, automotive software, and high-performance computing.
The stats cited in that New Relic study are well worth noting:
In 2020, Oracle was the most popular JDK vendor, comprising roughly 75% of the Java market. There was a noticeable movement away from Oracle binaries after the more restrictive licensing of its JDK 11 distribution (before the return to a more open stance with Java 17), and we’ve seen a steady decline year-over-year (YoY) ever since then. While Oracle retained the top spot in 2022 (34%), it slipped to 29% in 2023, and it’s now at 21%—which represents a 28% decrease in one year.
The use of Amazon increased to 31% of the market in 2023 (up from 2.2% in 2020 and 22% in 2022), but has dropped to 18% in 2024, which represents a 43% decrease YoY.
The rising star this year is Eclipse Adoptium, adoption of which rose 50% YoY from 12% to 18%. Because Eclipse Adoptium is community-managed, this JDK tends to be updated more frequently than the Oracle and Amazon JDKs.
Eclipse Temurin is currently available for a wide range of platforms and Java SE versions. Multiple commercial support options are available for Temurin, with enterprise-grade support provided by members of the Adoptium Working Group, including Azul Systems, IBM, Open Elements, and Red Hat.
Posted by John K. Waters on June 4, 2024