Which Java Versions Require a License

Which Java versions require an Oracle license?

An Oracle license is required when you run an Oracle JDK build whose licence terms call for one, which is decided by the terms on that specific download rather than by the version number you recognise. Oracle has shipped its JDK under more than one set of terms over the years, and the same major version can carry different obligations depending on the build and the date. The terms that matter are the Oracle Technology Network licence, which requires a paid subscription for production and other commercial use, and the No Fee Terms and Conditions licence, which permits production use free for a defined window. Reading the licence file inside the build is therefore the reliable test, and the version number is only a clue. The full mapping sits in the Oracle Java Licensing Guide.

What does the Oracle Technology Network licence require?

The Oracle Technology Network licence permits free use only for development, testing, prototyping, and demonstrating, and requires a paid subscription for production and commercial use. This is the licence that attached to Oracle JDK 8 updates after a certain date and to several later builds, and it is the one that produces most Java findings, because organisations downloaded an update for a security patch and kept running it in production without a subscription. The licence text is explicit that production use is not covered, so the exposure is not a grey area once you have identified the build. Where these builds run in production, a subscription is required for the period of that use.

Is any Oracle JDK free to run in production?

Oracle JDK builds released under the No Fee Terms and Conditions licence are free for production for a defined period, after which they move to terms that require a subscription. Oracle introduced the No Fee terms for JDK 17 and applied them to subsequent long term support releases, allowing free production use until a set number of years after the next long term support release ships. The catch is that the free window is time limited and tied to the release cadence, so a build that is free today can require a subscription later in its life without you changing anything. Tracking the end of each free window is part of staying compliant, which is why the licensing status is a moving target rather than a fixed label.

Does OpenJDK require a license?

OpenJDK builds are open source under the GPL and do not require an Oracle subscription, which makes them the standard route out of per employee exposure. Java SE is a specification, and OpenJDK is the open source reference implementation that several vendors package into supported, production ready distributions. Moving a workload from an Oracle JDK build to a comparable OpenJDK build removes the Oracle licence requirement for that workload entirely, rather than negotiating it down. The migration needs testing version by version, but it addresses the exposure at the root. The comparison of the supported distributions is in third party JDK options compared, and the relationship to the per employee metric is in legacy Java licenses versus the subscription.

What is the next step?

The next step is to inventory every Java installation by build and licence file, then sort each into requires a subscription, free for now, or free under the GPL. That inventory is the foundation for every later decision, because it tells you where you owe Oracle, where a free window is closing, and where a migration removes the exposure for good. Download the Java guide for the build by build licensing table and the inventory template that makes the sort repeatable.