Now Generally Available: Microsoft's Open Source Java Distribution, 'Microsoft Build of OpenJDK' (zdnet.com) 71
"Microsoft has announced general availability of the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK, the open-source version of the Java development kit," reports ZDNet:
The release follows the April preview of the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK, a long-term support distribution of OpenJDK... Microsoft announced general availability for the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK at its Build 2021 conference for developers.
Microsoft is a major user of Java in Azure, SQL Server, Yammer, Minecraft, and LinkedIn, but it's only been supporting Java in Visual Studio Code tooling for the past five years. "We've deployed our own version of OpenJDK on hundreds of thousands of virtual machines inside Microsoft and LinkedIn," Julia Liuson, corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer division, told ZDNet. "Across the board Microsoft has over 500,000 VMs running Java at Microsoft. We're also providing that to customers as well for Azure...."
"We believe Microsoft is uniquely positioned to be a partner in the language community. We can do a lot of direct contribution to the JDK community and we do world-class tooling, which is VS Code." Microsoft's contributions to OpenJDK — an open-source JDK for the most popular Linux distributions — includes work on the garbage collector and writing capabilities for the Java runtime.
The Microsoft Build of OpenJDK is available for free to deploy in qualifying Azure support plans. It includes binaries for Java 11 based on OpenJDK 11.0.11, on x64 server, and desktop environments on macOS, Linux and Windows, according to Microsoft...
Its download page at Microsoft.com touts it as "Free. Open Source. Freshly Brewed!"
And they describe it as "a new no-cost long-term supported distribution and Microsoft's new way to collaborate and contribute to the Java ecosystem."
Microsoft is a major user of Java in Azure, SQL Server, Yammer, Minecraft, and LinkedIn, but it's only been supporting Java in Visual Studio Code tooling for the past five years. "We've deployed our own version of OpenJDK on hundreds of thousands of virtual machines inside Microsoft and LinkedIn," Julia Liuson, corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer division, told ZDNet. "Across the board Microsoft has over 500,000 VMs running Java at Microsoft. We're also providing that to customers as well for Azure...."
"We believe Microsoft is uniquely positioned to be a partner in the language community. We can do a lot of direct contribution to the JDK community and we do world-class tooling, which is VS Code." Microsoft's contributions to OpenJDK — an open-source JDK for the most popular Linux distributions — includes work on the garbage collector and writing capabilities for the Java runtime.
The Microsoft Build of OpenJDK is available for free to deploy in qualifying Azure support plans. It includes binaries for Java 11 based on OpenJDK 11.0.11, on x64 server, and desktop environments on macOS, Linux and Windows, according to Microsoft...
Its download page at Microsoft.com touts it as "Free. Open Source. Freshly Brewed!"
And they describe it as "a new no-cost long-term supported distribution and Microsoft's new way to collaborate and contribute to the Java ecosystem."
"We've deployed our own version" (Score:1, Informative)
Re:"We've deployed our own version" (Score:5, Insightful)
they tried to do that with visualj++ but it exploded in their faces.
then they tried to do that with c# and barely managed to retain a small niche (in a huge market) for themselves and their os.
they know bloody well that they can't extinguish java.
as it happened, in the meantime java was sold to a bully company and has serious problems of its own, but i'm afraid not even they can extinguish java.
which still doesn't mean they can't screw you up any time. i don't think any jvm should be taken for granted, and it's a good thing that there are alternatives around. even if it is a microsoft implementation of a public standard.
Re:"We've deployed our own version" (Score:5, Insightful)
> then they tried to do that with c# and barely managed to retain a small niche (in a huge market) for themselves and their os.
Nonsense, C# is widely used and successful (it's used for countless web applications, almost all desktop development, for many mobile applications using Xamarin, across the cloud in AWS, Azure, and GCP, and for significant amounts of modern game development in Unity).
> they know bloody well that they can't extinguish java.
You're right, they've grown up as a company. That's the point.
> as it happened, in the meantime java was sold to a bully company and has serious problems of its own, but i'm afraid not even they can extinguish java.
No but they did cripple it; the Oracle take over of Java and the battle for it's future around a decade or so ago really resulted in development being held back, as a result Java has been playing catchup in recent years, ironically with C#. Almost everything that's been added to it is stuff C# had years prior; this is why Microsoft don't need to extinguish Java, because it's already following C# (ironically so is ECMAScript, in large part because of the pressure from Microsoft's TypeScript).
> which still doesn't mean they can't screw you up any time. i don't think any jvm should be taken for granted, and it's a good thing that there are alternatives around. even if it is a microsoft implementation of a public standard.
The thing to understand is that Microsoft isn't really interested in trying to maintain control of programming languages anymore; it's interest is in the cloud because that's now where it's making money from software development. In the cloud it HAS to support multiple languages even those originating from other vendors, or being open source; it's interest is simply to do that, not to fuck over those languages. That's why it's actively funded and supported development of not just it's own tech - C# and TypeScript, but also node.js, Python, and now Java.
I wouldn't worry; Microsoft is a far more trustworthy company than Oracle. Consider this; the .NET/C# compiler, framework, and tooling is completely open source, and C# is an ISO standard - that means the Oracle vs. Google thing relating to Java can't happen with C# because unlike Java it is truly open; there is no proprietary virtual machine now with the move to .NET Core, and the legal protections for the language are specifically that it is an open standard. Given Microsoft already holds it's own tools to a higher standard of openness than Oracle does Java then I wouldn't worry too much about Microsoft doing anything wrong with Java.
They really built their own from open source. (Score:2)
I would agree, I don't think MS is nearly as destructive as they were 20 years ago. They did open source C#, in fact we use it at work exclusively on Linux and Amazon cloud. VSCode is nice, it's a little too heavy for me I prefer Sublime Text and I use Intellij, Rider or Pycharm depending on what I'm working on. I'm still not a big fan of most of their products, however they are trying to play nice now!
Re: (Score:2)
They did open source C#
But I don't recall having heard anything from them about relinquishing their patents. All I remember is a "pledge", but pledges aren't legally binding.
Re: (Score:2)
The C# debugger isn't entirely open, its license requires using it with either VS or VScode.
Though C# is way better than Java. Honestly Java feels like an early beta of C#, made worse by the fact that you can't even download the stupid thing without creating an Oracle account and the fact that certain uses require a paid license, whereas C# has no such restrictions.
Re: (Score:2)
You can definitely download most OpenJDK versions without an Oracle account. I believe that this is Oracle's preferred way unless you need something that requires an Oracle license.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:"We've deployed our own version" (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right, they've grown up as a company. That's the point.
When alcoholics, abusers, criminals or career politicians proclaim that they've changed their ways, the correct thing is to watch carefully what they actually do.
From what I see, MS is still at the same old game of eliminating competition by either buying it up and integrating it or by coming out with an inferior own version forced forward by their market dominance.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the danger of wearing blinkers since 1999 I guess.
Take this youngster off my lawn. I've been watching MS carefully for longer than that.
There's zero evidence of Microsoft doing any of the things you claim nowadays, you just need to stop living 20 years in the past.
You're kidding me, right. MS Defender is a straight up out-of-our-80s-playbook attempt to dry out the AV market. Not by improving the quality of windows and making it less prone to malware, but by having your own, free, version. MS Teams is direct competition to Slack, again tightly integrated with other, dominant, Windows products such as Outlook, to gain an adventage.
They're still at the same old game. Maybe it's time th
Re: (Score:1)
> as it happened, in the meantime java was sold to a bully company and has serious problems of its own, but i'm afraid not even they can extinguish java.
Oracle is obsessed with profits, and they have abandoned open source projects on the periphery of Java.
However, they have done an excellent job with the core JDK, a million times better than Sun did.
Java cannot be destroyed (Score:2)
Except by Oracle.
Re: (Score:3)
C# is massive. If it wasn't for Google selecting Java for Android it would probably be the biggest high level language.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't everyone use Kotlin for developing on Android these days?
Re: (Score:2)
Kotlin may as well just be called "Java done the right way". It's fully interoperable with it, and unlike Java, using it doesn't piss you off.
Java in VSCode (Score:1)
made possible by the Eclipse project
Re: Java in VSCode (Score:1)
Uh huh ... (Score:3, Insightful)
We believe Microsoft is uniquely positioned to be a partner in the language community. We can do a lot of direct contribution to the JDK community and we do world-class tooling, which is VS Code." Microsoft's contributions to OpenJDK ...
Then why do they need/want their own version/build? Color me suspicious.
Re:Uh huh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why do they need/want their own version/build? Color me suspicious.
A number of their big acquisitions rely on Java, so it's probably a failsafe in case other OpenJDKs go down a path Microsoft doesn't like.
Re: (Score:2)
Not as a failsafe: to proprietize it and hinder building it on anything but Windows servers.
Re: Uh huh ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft learned their lesson on that one. They know if they try that shit again, Oracle will cry foul and take it to court, and they know damn well that last time it didn''t go well for them, AND Oracles a lot more litigous than Sun ever was.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you point to _any_ evidence that Microsoft has learned their lesson? There are some newer attempts to integrate open source tools, such as OpenSSH and Windows for Linux. And Windows for Linux, so far, is free software because the Linux kernel is under GPLv2. Come to think of it, OpenJDK is also GPLv2, so it could be notably more difficult to proprietize. But GPLv2 does not provide patent safeguards: this is why a need for GPLv3 was perceived. So even GPLv2 is vulnerable to proprietization.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Uh huh ... (Score:4, Informative)
It's been available for a couple of years.
Re: (Score:2)
I think Azure has changed Microsoft's priorities significantly. From being a Windows+Office company, to an Azure+Office365 company. Windows is not as central to them as it was back in the late 90s.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft wants to position Windows as a development workstation. They want you to pay for Win10Pro and develop on that, then possibly deploy to Azure, or to Windows clients. It's in their interests to make development for any target as painless as possible on Windows.
Re: (Score:2)
> Probably because Oracle is currently doing all they can to kill it.
You're kidding, right? Look at the massive improvements since JDK 6.
> With Oracle Java you have two choices on Windows - an open source, no serious licensing issues you have to manually install by copying files from a zip file, editing your environment variables, etc,
Chocolatey (GUI) lets you install and maintain multiple JDK versions on Windows.
It's easy to switch among versions either in the environment variables GUI or by CTRL-R'
Re: Uh huh ... (Score:3)
Probably because Oracle is currently doing all they can to kill it. With Oracle Java you have two choices on Windows - an open source, no serious licensing issues you have to manually install by copying files from a zip file
OpenJDK IS Oracle... what do you mean they're trying to kill it?
All I've ever done on Solaris and Linux is unzip jdkversion.zip; ln -s jdkversion java
Try installing perl or python that way. It's always been portable to any path for as long as I can remember.
Each version is in its own directory, anywhere you want to put it. Holy crap, it's the easiest thing in the world to install multiple versions of. You can re-package it up with literally anything, I mean make an MSI if you really want.
My god, do you
Re: (Score:2)
At the very least, to keep it secure through Windows. If not for the sake of their OS customers, then at least for their own datacenters.
Re: (Score:3)
Ask Uncle Larry.
MS and others are only spinning up there own JDK distros because Oracle want to attach untenable commercial terms to support.
Which is an inevitable consequence when you consider that MariaDB and LibreOffice exist only because Oracle wouldn't play nice with the communities that Sun Microsystems fostered.
Re: (Score:2)
They and Amazon [amazon.com], among others [adoptopenjdk.net], are doing this because Oracle has decided to stifle Java with a draconian non-free-as-in-beer license structure around its own Java implementation.
Java endures ... I guess (Score:2)
I was under the impression that Microsoft pretty much walked away from all Java with their C# efforts.
Of course doing their own OpenJDK is hardly a big project for them and I don't see any downside, but it looks like Java's demise has been repeatedly overstated.
Re: (Score:2)
Java will not go away, crappy as it is.
But MS doing this signals very clearly that they will stay with it. A match made in hell, no doubt.
Re: (Score:2)
Since Oracle acquired Java, they made the Windows installer proprietary, and released it under a license that requires payment for commercial use. OpenJDK is available as an archive only, so deploying it requires a bit of effort. You can either pay to use Oracle's nicely packaged installer, or package OpenJDK yourself. Microsoft is just packaging OpenJDK in a nice installer, so people who want to use Java on Windows don't have to pay Oracle or take extra steps themselves.
The reason for doing this is pres
Re: (Score:2)
Oracle (Score:3)
No way I would touch Java as long as Oracle has its slimy snout in it.
"Whore-acle" (Score:3)
No way I would touch Java as long as Oracle has its slimy snout in it.
"Whore-acle" might be a better name for them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But you do know that Java is an Apache project, and Oracle only holds the brand name "Java"?
One wonders what they intentionally did break (Score:2)
You know, embrace, extend, extinguish. Also, MS has chronic low tech skills end frequently nesses up things they intended to do right.
Won't One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison bitch? (Score:3)
I would expect One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison to have an objection.
Re: (Score:2)
as if Microsoft hasn't always been a cesspool where rich assholes coalesce.
Nope. (Score:2)
Just contribute? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It is OpenJDK. It's just a convenient OpenJDK installer for Windows. Oracle tries to trick you into using their Java installer that isn't free for commercial use, so they can extract money from you for all the installations. OpenJDK is free, but they don't package it as an installer, they just give you a big archive. The Linux distros package OpenJDK to make it easy to deploy. MS is just doing the same for Windows.
Is that a problem? (Score:2)
That OpenJDK is simply an archive, without an installer that molests the Windows Registry, is that a problem?
One can unpack that archive into a subdirectory of the directory containing a software bundle using that particular version of Java. I do this on Windows to support Eclipse, for which I go for the archive, not the "package installer."
This generates a self-contained "portable" Eclipse installation.
Eclipse on MacOS is even bundled with its own JDK that way.
Re: (Score:2)
If you do it that way, you waste disk space with one copy of the JDK per application, and waste time upgrading all of them for security patches. A system-wide installation is far more practical.
"Write once, run anywhere" (Score:2, Insightful)
good or bad... (Score:2)
Keep the far far away (Score:1)
Visual J++ (Score:2)
It's probably fine, but I am a child of the Java era having been using it since 2000. At that time the IDEs were awful. Visual J++ was the best but MS had hijacked Java. We used Sun but was trying to use J++ with it.
What a mess. Borland JBuilder (super pricy), Visual Cafe slow and unstable. IBM Whatever. Eclipse saved the Java world for development a few years later. While it's long in the tooth, my brain has Eclipse functionality etched in my brain.
If I worked in Azureland, I could see this being a positiv
Teachers/professors will like this (Score:4, Insightful)
I am no big Microsoft fan (I run desktop Linux at home) but I gave this a try because I teach two courses using Java at the high school level. This offering has a few advantages:
1) It automatically adds itself to the system path in Windows, which means the students just need to install this and a lightweight IDE like Geany and they are ready to compile Hello, World*.
2) It does not require users to create an account to download the installer (unlike both the Oracle JDK and the Red Hat OpenJDK I had been using because Red Hat also has their installation put java/javac on the system path).
3) It allows me to use the same product on both macOS and Windows (and the same IDE also, since I use Geany typically). Red Hat's OpenJDK does not have a macOS installer.
4) It is licensed GPL2 so I don't have to worry about distributing something with bizarre license restrictions (like the Oracle JDK).
This will no doubt make the first day of future semesters a lot easier to manage. I would never use this myself for my own work because I just grab OpenJDK from my distribution's repos, but it will simplify things for instructors of elementary programming classes.
*Of course, we still have to edit the system path if the student has installed the Oracle JDK because they are on our FIRST Robotics team, which will conveniently add "java" but not "javac" to the system path. I wish Oracle would stop doing that. Either set up the paths correctly or not at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Red Hat's OpenJDK does not have a macOS installer.
Is this still a licensing problem? I hated using Java on macOS because it wouldn't allow me to install *anything* but the Oracle distribution of Java.
Oh come on ms, (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Trust MS at your own peril (Score:2)