KB220242078: Java Oracle licensing and your Esko products

Context

Oracle has announced that starting from January 2019, it will charge for industrial use of the JAVA JRE and JDK's. This opens the question whether Esko customers with products based on Java technology (e.g. Automation Engine, WebCenter, ...) will be affected by this change in Oracle's licensing policy.

What has changed in January 2019?

From January 2019 onward, Oracle stopped releasing new free updates to Java 8. Later versions of Java (e.g. 10, 11) will also no longer be free of charge, and earlier versions will not be released anymore.

What does it mean for Esko Software until version 18?

This means that any Java versions released before January 2019 - including those shipped with Esko Software Platform 18 products - can still be used free of charge beyond January 2019. In practice, this means that version 18 (and earlier) of all Esko products remain usable by our customers for many years, without infringing Oracle's rights.

What does it mean for Esko Software starting with version 18.1?

Products releasing after January 2019 have been adapted to OpenJDK Java, the open-source version of Java (which is technically identical to the core of Oracle Java). 

We believe this delivers equal quality to the Esko customers without risking license infringements. We have tested this assumption by building the products with OpenJDK and pushing this through our full quality assurance cycle.

The March release of the Esko Software Platform is built with OpenJDK for all products except those which have no update in March 2019. The remaining products will be adapted in the July 2019 release. 

Conclusion

To Esko's best understanding, products shipped by Esko do not contain Java versions for which our customers are expected to pay license fees to Oracle.