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Comment by kaba0 | Hacker News Reader

Do you have to buy a license for a regular Linux kernel? No. The exact same is true for OpenJDK. Just download any, for example one that is packages by your distro, or there is sdkman for developers to let you quickly choose from multiple vendors and any version.

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Please help me understand.

> To run your Java 8 application, a user needs the Java SE 8 Runtime Environment, which is available from Oracle under the Oracle Technology Network License Agreement for Oracle Java SE, which is free for personal use, development, testing, prototyping and some other important use cases covered in this FAQ

https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/jre8-readme....

Straight from oracle.com.

How is this free? Of course I don't need to pay for Linux kernel. Of course some products feature paid support. But how can I justify the quoted text that Oracle JRE is free?

I was going to say to the guy that decided there must be no Oracle Runtime at our company (some software doesn't work without it, I have no status if workaround has been found) - Hey, maybe Java SE is just the support/patches stuff and maybe we can use runtime? Until I stumble on that text - free for personal use, etc...

If you want to use the Oracle runtime you need to pay Oracle. But the code itself is open source and you can instead use the Azul, Amazon, Red Hat, BellSoft, etc.. runtimes.

Finally got to the answer. So it IS paid from one particular vendor. I understand there are free options. But that makes it a mine in a field if you are not knowledgable enough. It went this deep into threading to really get an ack that there is a big red O' mine in there.

And there is one piece that wont run without big red O... :(

Virtually no one has trouble with this in practice. You use OpenJDK unless you have “special needs”.

Since OracleJDK is also just OpenJDK with a logo, I don’t believe that there is any software that runs on any recent OracleJDK but not on OpenJDK.

It may be windows specific thing like registry looking at specific runtime thing or whatever... This software doesn't run with OpenJDK: https://support.ismacontrolli.com/Software%20%26%20Tools/iSM...

It's the same mine in a field as RHEL (a commercial Linux distribution). However, that has never prevented anyone from using other free distributions.

> But that makes it a mine in a field if you are not knowledgable enough.

That seems like looking for a problem where one does not exist to be honest.

The peer comment regarding RedHat is spot on. Yes you can purchase a Linux distro from RedHat and pay lots of money.

That doesn't mean anyone will argue with a straight face that you can't run Linux for free!

It's the exact same scenario with Java. You could pay Oracle for a Oracle JDK if for some reason you reall want to, but approximately nobody does that.

You're confusing Oracles JDK and JRE with OpenJDK and that JRE. Oracle takes the OpenJDK and recompiles it, whitelabels it, and licenses it under their own license. The OpenJDK which is where all the development occurs is true open source.

> Straight from oracle.com.

> How is this free?

Yes, don't go to oracle.com.

This is what you want (it's the same thing, but free open source): https://openjdk.org/

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