Azul Systems is a Computer manufacturer of appliances for executing Java-based applications.
“Azul is an enterprise Java platform company that provides fully supported, high-performance builds of OpenJDK. Azul's products — including Azul Core and Azul Prime — help organizations achieve better Java performance, stronger security, and lower licensing and cloud costs compared to Oracle Java.”
“Azul Core is a fully supported, production-grade build of OpenJDK (including Azul Zulu) designed as a drop-in replacement for Oracle JDK at significantly lower cost. Azul Prime is a high-performance JVM (including Azul Zing) that delivers additional performance improvements, faster warmup, reduced latency, and cloud cost savings of 20% or more for demanding workloads.”
“Yes. Azul's products are fully compatible with Oracle Java applications. Because Azul builds are based on OpenJDK — the open-source foundation of Oracle Java — existing Java applications run without code changes.”
“Azul provides supported builds across all major Java versions, including LTS releases such as Java 8, 11, 17, and 21, as well as recent non-LTS releases. Azul's release cadence meets or exceeds Oracle's, ensuring timely security patches and Critical Patch Updates.”
“While Java’s core platform (OpenJDK) is fully open source under the GNU General Public License v2 with Classpath Exception (GPLv2+CE), Oracle Java is only partially open source.”
“Yes. OpenJDK is the official reference implementation of Java SE and is fully open source under GPLv2+CE. Anyone can download, use, and distribute it without paying licensing fees. Many OpenJDK vendors, including Azul, do just that. See how they compare.”
“Yes. Azul Zulu builds of OpenJDK such as Azul Core are built on 100% open source and pass the Java SE Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK), guaranteeing your applications will run without modification.”
“OpenJDK is free for commercial use under GPLv2+CE. Oracle JDK is not — Oracle’s 2019 license change made it a paid product for production environments, creating significant licensing liability for organizations that didn’t switch.”
“This is a common source of confusion since both OpenJDK and Oracle JDK are often referred to simply as “Java.””
“No. The Java SE Universal Subscription covers desktops, servers and cloud deployments.”
“Yes, the cost of the new Java SE Universal Subscription is based on the number of employees multiplied by the list price per employee, regardless of the number of processors or desktops that are running Oracle JDK.”
“Oracle has not made any official statement about audits. Consultancies like House of Brick say they are expecting heightened audit activity.”
“The pricing for Oracle Java Embedded is not changing. You can find their price list here.”
“Oracle Java is easily swapped out for commercially supported distributions of OpenJDK. These distributions have the same underlying open source software code but vary in accompanying features and support.”
“Migration speed is directly related to the complexity of your Java deployment. If you have many applications running on desktops that rely on deprecated technologies such as Applets or Web Start, you will want to take a phased approach over weeks or months.”
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