OpenJDK variants vs each other and vs Oracle JDK

Reference URL: https://medium.com/@javachampions/java-is-still-free-c02aef8c9e04

OpenJDK variants vs each other and vs Oracle JDK

Seems we have:

1. OracleJDK
2. OpenJDK
1. from Oracle
2. from other providers

Reference:

Q. Differences between OpenJDK vs Oracle’s OpenJDK builds vs Oracle JDK?

We’ll just talk about Java 11+ LTS releases here. Oracle JDK and Oracle OpenJDK builds are identical, but are licensed in different ways (commercial and GPLv2+CE respectively).

Oracle JDK / Oracle OpenJDK builds and OpenJDK builds from other providers will be built from the same source for the first six months of updates and should be interchangeable for that period. After six months Oracle JDK / Oracle OpenJDK builds will be built from Oracle’s own fork. Other OpenJDK providers will continue to create binaries from the OpenJDK updates project. Oracle JDK / Oracle OpenJDK and OpenJDK builds from the other providers may therefore differ in small ways. Binaries from various parties may, of course, vary over time.

Q. Differences between OpenJDK from (non-Oracle) provider A vs provider B?

We’ll just talk about LTS releases here. As has been the case with the Java SE 6 and Java SE 7 updates projects, various providers work together upstream in the OpenJDK community, which provides the common repositories, mailing lists, and other infra to share the work. This means the difference between OpenJDK-based binaries are mostly non-core features, like extended monitoring and diagnostic support. Although there may be small differences in the final binaries (perhaps a provider-specific tool etc) they will all at least have the same security and stability baseline as has been true for many years.