OpenJDK

The reference implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition.

OpenJDK provides a free, open-source Java compiler (javac), the HotSpot virtual machine, and a complete class library. It is the upstream source of Oracle's commercial Oracle JDK, plus third-party builds (Eclipse Temurin, Amazon Corretto, Azul Zulu, Microsoft Build of OpenJDK, Red Hat OpenJDK). All these distributions are functionally interchangeable for nearly all Java workloads.

Sun Microsystems released the Java source code as OpenJDK in 2007 under GPLv2 with the Classpath linking exception. Oracle's acquisition of Sun in 2010 brought OpenJDK under Oracle's stewardship; OpenJDK has continued to be the upstream codebase for all distributions ever since.

Java is one of the most widely used programming languages in enterprise software, Android development (which uses OpenJDK APIs but its own VM and bytecode), and large-scale backend systems. The JVM runs Kotlin, Scala, Clojure, Groovy, and many other languages. Long-Term Support OpenJDK builds (Java 8, 11, 17, 21) are the foundation of much of the enterprise software in production today.

License: GPL-2.0-only with Classpath Exception

Category: Language

Website: https://openjdk.org/

Install

Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install default-jdk
Fedora/RHEL:   sudo dnf install java-latest-openjdk-devel
Arch:          sudo pacman -S jdk-openjdk
macOS:         brew install openjdk

Authors

Sun Microsystems (original Java)
Oracle and the OpenJDK community

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