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Oracle changes license strategy for JAVA products

Oracle changes license strategy for JAVA products

You might have already read about it in a press release: Oracle will be changing the licensing strategy for its Java products in February 2019. The Java runtime environment, which has been under open source license for more than 20 years, will be offered as a commercial product in the future. From February onwards, updates to Version 8, which has already been released, will only be available if a corresponding support contract has been concluded.

This is a somewhat unprecedented process in the history of IT and surprised us as well.

Several SEAL Systems products – from the Digital Process Factory® to PLOSSYS® 4 – use Java technology and are affected by this change. As a rule, we have also delivered the appropriate Java runtime environment with our products. Therefore, we consider it our duty to take a stand on this change to ensure that our software continues to operate correctly and securely for you as our customer.

SEAL Systems would like to share that regarding its products with this Java technology update:

  • SEAL products working with Java version 7 and earlier are not affected by this change.

  • SEAL products, which work with Java version 8, can also be operated with the existing license from February 2019; there is no obligation to purchase a support license.

  • SEAL Systems will test all products which are executable with Java 8 until the end of January 2019 with OpenJDK 8 and, if necessary, provide patches to convert these products to OpenJDK 8.

  • SEAL Systems will no longer deliver the Java runtime environment and patches from February 2019 on. If security holes occur, customers who have a support agreement with Oracle can download and implement these patches themselves. For customers who do not have a support agreement with Oracle, we recommend switching to OpenJDK and the official patches from this project.

  • We will test and offer future products and versions in parallel for OpenJDK and Java. The compatible versions can be found in the respective Release Notes.

  • SEAL Systems will no longer ship Java versions in the future. Instead, a suitable Java Runtime (JRE or OpenJDK) will become a prerequisite for all products that use Java.

 

You can find out the version of your Java installation by opening a SEAL Shell on the SEAL server and execute "java -version" (for some versions "java -showversion"). Version 1.7.x is Java Version 7, Version 1.8.x is Java Version 8.
Please mind that the version command has to be done in the SEAL shell as the version is independant of other Java versions installed on the server.

The Digital Process Factory 2.1.0 and PLOSSYS 4  version 4.6.1 can be switched from Oracle Java Runtime Environment to the OpenJDK variant:
Therefore the package 20190107_jre-64bit-openjdk_1.8.0_hotfix can be installed.
This package can be installed over an existing Digital Process Factory 2.1.0 and PLOSSYS 4  version 4.6.1.
Since Oracle JDK files are deleted, the uninstallation of such an installation can lead to problems if uninst_package.pl is used.
To return to the previous Oracle JDK installation, there is a package: 20190108_jre -64bit-oracle_1.8.0_hotfix.
More information about installing packages can be found here: Install/Uninstall a package via the Shell