Red Hat build of OpenJDK

An estimated 15 billion devices run Java™ worldwide. Until January 2019, no one had to pay for access to a current Java virtual machine (JVM). Still, Oracle implemented a significant change to its release cadence and support model multiple times since then. Oracle JDK is not free for production workloads and patches, leaving organizations to either pay Oracle for continued production support and updates for Oracle JDK, or migrate to an alternative OpenJDK implementation.

Red Hat® build of OpenJDK is a open source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE). It is an alternative allowing your organization to stabilize and standardize your Java environments for years with little to no transition effort or traditional licensing hassles.

Red Hat’s build of OpenJDK is an alternative to OracleJDK with a number of features and benefits.

Table 1. Benefits

All Red Hat distributions of OpenJDK are supported for development and production for all Java workloads, giving you the confidence to develop, test, and deploy in Windows or Linux-based environments. Red Hat expects to deliver 4 updates per year, approximately 3 months apart, for the OpenJDK 11 and 17 distributions.

Table 2. Red Hat Enterprise Linux version support and life cycle dates

Red Hat also supports OpenJDK on SLES, Ubuntu, Windows 64- and 32-bit, and development support for MacOS.

OpenJDK and OracleJDK are implementations of the same Java SE specification. In 2017, Oracle committed to open sourcing the remaining Java SE tools with the goal of making OracleJDK and OpenJDK interchangeable.  While some minor differences still exist, OpenJDK 11 and OracleJDK 11 are now functionally interchangeable.

Red Hat build of OpenJDK is also based on the OpenJDK project. All of the additional work done by Red Hat is implemented in the OpenJDK community first, which means our customers can run their applications on a certified OpenJDK build.  Red Hat build of OpenJDK passed the Java Technology Certification Kit (TCK) from Oracle to ensure it is in compliance with the Java specification.

Red Hat offers comprehensive production support for Red Hat build of OpenJDK and commercial support for Eclipse Temurin. This support includes vulnerability exposures, security notification and fixes, and service level agreements.

Our productization process includes activities such as feature engineering, enhanced security testing, testing, creation of deployment artifacts, product integration, and documentation. Red Hat is committed to the open source community and is the second leading contributor to the OpenJDK project. Most of the productization work Red Hat does can be contributed to the OpenJDK upstream project.

Eclipse Temurin is a relatively new distribution of OpenJDK from the Eclipse Adoptium community. This community originated with the AdoptOpenJDK project, which has enjoyed tremendous popularity across the industry as a source of high-quality OpenJDK builds across many platforms, with close to half a billion downloads.² 

Red Hat is a founding strategic member of the Adoptium Working Group. Microsoft, Azul, IBM, Alibaba, Huawei are some of the other members also participating. Red Hat provides support for Eclipse Temurin together with Red Hat Build of OpenJDK.

Support for the Red Hat build of OpenJDK and Eclipse Temurin is included or available via the following subscriptions:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• All Red Hat Application Services subscriptions
• Red Hat build of OpenJDK for Windows (for non-Red Hat Application Services Java workloads)

Red Hat has had a long history with OpenJDK dating back to 2007 when Red Hat became the first major software vendor to contribute to the OpenJDK community.  Red Hat is also a member of the OpenJDK governing board³ as well as the largest contributor⁴ after Oracle, providing many certified solutions over the years. Red Hat has also served as the stewards of OpenJDK 8 and 11 projects.