Amazon Corretto: Java is free

Thanks to Amazon — Java8 is free with long-term support :)

James Gosling (Father of Java) mentioned in one of his DEVOXX presentations that

• Amazon loves Java and Amazon runs 1000s of production services in Java.
• James Gosling likes to be a Java User compared to contributor :)

James Gosling slide

Amazon Corretto

Amazon Corretto is a No-cost, multiplatform, production-ready distribution of OpenJDK. Corretto preview is available today and GA in Q1 2019.

Features

• Downstream distribution of OpenJDK
• No-cost long-term support
• At least quarterly releases
• Drop-in replacement(simply replace your existing OpenJDK)
• Multiplatform — Linux, Windows, macOS, Docker

Amazon Corretto Release Timeline

Release timeline — James Gosling slide

Corretto?

• Amazon relies a lot on Java and listens to internal to external customers about Oracle Java distribution and OpenJDK support issues
• Amazon realized that they cannot rely on OpenJDK binary distribution ex: getting security patches, performance enhancements etc.
• Amazon started to think to build Java from source so that they have the ability to fix the source
• Amazon applied Corretto to existing production systems and it worked like a drop-in replacement, Now they started sharing it with external customers as open source.

Github location

Amazon Corretto landing page

Very excited and waiting for Q1 2019 for “GA”