Alice: Hello, welcome to Liberica bar, small talks
about Java and OpenJDK in an informal way.
Today, we're going to discuss the checklist for switching from Oracle JDK to OpenJDK as
an example on Liberica JDK.
That is why today we met with Alexander Belokrylov, the CEO of BellSoft.
And Alexander, could you please tell us.
Is it true that it's very hard to migrate from Oracle JDK to OpenJDK?
It's connected to a lot of people and has a lot of problems with it.
Alexander: Hello, Alice.
Hello, everybody.
I wouldn't say that it's really hard to migrate from Oracle JDK to OpenJDK if we know exactly
what we do.
As in any other area.
Alice: Do you have some type of algorithm or main
points of switching from Oracle JDK to OpenJDK?
Let's tell our followers about it.
Alexander: Yeah, absolutely.
I would say that there are several areas that organizations need to understand, know and
check.
The first area is the version of Oracle JDK that they use.
They need to understand whether they use some outdated, old versions of Oracle JDK, JDK
6 or JDK 7.
For such organizations, I would strongly recommend to move to JDK 8 because moving to JDK 8 from
older versions will take less time.
JDK 8 will be supported until 2031 by BellSoft.
It is a pretty strong investment.
However, BellSoft supports JDK 6 and 7 together with modern versions of JDK.
The organizations which are on JDK 8, which are the dominant part of organizations around
the world now, are safe to migrate to OpenJDK as is from version to version.
We haven't seen any issues with that.
The organizations which use the feature releases, which are already migrating to the most modern
versions of OpenJDK, are absolutely safe.
The next area which needs to be checked is whether the organization uses any desktops
or servers.
If server Java exists within organizations, that's one question.
If the Java works on desktops, this requires some additional for migration.
The companies need to understand whether they do have some applications which require Web
Start support or applets or they need JavaFX.
In that cases, for Web Start, we are in collaboration with Karakun and offer OpenWebStart together
with Liberica JDK.
Alice: What about their architectures?
Alexander: Architectures?
Of course, the easiest way for migration will be for microservices architectures, which
use dockerization, Docker containers.
We just need to replace a Docker container with Oracle JDK to the Docker container with
OpenJDK.
For example, Liberica JDK is available on Docker Hub.
For companies which use monolith applications with open source servers such as Tomcat, this
shouldn't be a problem, also.
I see that companies which use proprietary application servers, such as WebLogic or WebSphere
or JBoss.
In that case, it's not reasonable to migrate to OpenJDK because support of the vendor JDK,
Oracle Java, and J9 is already included in the offering of application server support.
And moving out the vendor's runtime, Oracle Java, for example, out of WebLogic, would
harm your support contract.
So, Oracle will not provide support for WebLogic without Oracle Java.
Alice: Should they always need to pay money for Oracle?
Alexander: Such organizations already pay for application
servers, which already includes support for Java.
Alice: Is there any other situation where the client
can't migrate from Oracle to OpenJDK?
Alexander: Possibly, there are some situations we don't
know, but generally we haven't met any other situations when Oracle customers could not
migrate to OpenJDK.
Alice: How could they choose a distribution?
Is there any factor that we should know about?
Alexander: How to decide on OpenJDK distribution?
This is a very good question.
There are several distribution providers on the market, and BellSoft is one of the support
providers for OpenJDK.
We provide an OpenJDK binary called Liberica JDK.
And here organizations need to understand what architectures they want to be supported.
Whether they want to use OpenJDK in some cloud environments, for example.
BellSoft provides some additional advantages for cloud use of OpenJDK.
We do provide the smallest Docker container in the world, with Alpine Linux.
And we created a JDK Enhancement Proposal to make support of Alpine Linux upstream of
OpenJDK, which will be integrated, which should be integrated in JDK 16, the next version
of OpenJDK.
This would bring value to the customers by using this small, very tiny container with
JDK, but still standard compliant, standard verified Docker container.
Alice: Yeah, I got it about the benefit of Liberica,
but once again, could you tell maybe two main points of choosing a distribution of OpenJDK?
A distributor of OpenJDK.
Alexander: Yeah, I would say that, first of all, the
organization needs to understand what versions of JDK are supported by a support provider,
whether they need older versions, like JDK 6 and JDK 7.
And check if the support provider provides it.
Next, they need to understand what architectures they need to have supported by an OpenJDK
runtime.
Some organizations need to support Solaris, for example, or PowerPC, or ARM servers, which
are getting more and more popular, as we see.
They need to check whether a support provider provides ports for these architectures.
Next, they need to see if a support provider provides JavaFX, if they need it, or the Web
Start is supported by the support provider.
There are a number of criteria how organizations are making a decision about that.
And our checklist is actually helping organizations to go through the path many other organizations
already went and make a decision pretty quickly: Which part of their infrastructure could be
easily migrated to OpenJDK and which part is better to keep on Oracle JDK or vendor’s
JDK.
Alice: Well, thank you, Alexander, it's a nice algorithm.
I think it could help a lot of your clients.
Let's send this checklist to our viewers.
You can just take a photo of this QR code.
And we will send you the checklist about migration from Oracle JDK to OpenJDK.
Well, thank you for this interview, Alexander.
Let's discuss in the next episode, some more details about High-Powered support of BellSoft
and some other themes.
I think these will be interesting topics for our followers.
Alexander: Thanks a lot, Alice, for the invitation.
Thanks a lot, everybody.
Bye bye.
Alice: Bye.