FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Open Source Software Leader the Eclipse Foundation Launches the Adoptium Working Group for Multi-Vendor Delivery of Java Runtimes for Enterprises
Formerly known as AdoptOpenJDK, the Eclipse Adoptium Top-Level Project Produces High-Quality Runtimes and Associated Technology for use within the Java Ecosystem
BRUSSELS – MARCH 23, 2021 – The Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open source software foundations, today announced the formal establishment of the Adoptium Working Group in collaboration with the AdoptOpenJDK Technical Steering Committee. With this announcement, the Eclipse Foundation is bringing its proven vendor-neutral governance framework in support of the Eclipse Adoptium top-level project, which is based on the work previously done under the AdoptOpenJDK organization. Adoptium is founded by multiple participants, including many Java developers and vendors such as Alibaba Cloud, Huawei, IBM, iJUG, Karakun AG, Microsoft, New Relic, and Red Hat. The Adoptium Working Group will provide the Java ecosystem with fully compatible, high-quality distributions of Java runtimes based on OpenJDK source code.
Thousands of enterprises and millions of developers that run Java need a reliable source of high-quality Java runtimes under open source licenses that come with timely patches and updates for the mission-critical Java applications. With more than 240 million downloads to date, AdoptOpenJDK provides enterprises with a proven set of open source, high-quality Java runtimes. The Eclipse Adoptium project is the continuation of the original AdoptOpenJDK mission, which was established in 2017 to address the general lack of an open, community-based, and reproducible build and test system for OpenJDK across multiple platforms. Eclipse Adoptium will become the leading provider of high-quality OpenJDK-based binaries used by Java developers in embedded systems, desktops, traditional servers, modern cloud platforms, and mainframes.
The Adoptium Working Group (WG) complements the Eclipse Adoptium project, which provides a trusted location where developers and enterprises can download compatible binaries of OpenJDK builds. The goal of the Adoptium WG is to provide the infrastructure, marketing, community building, and developer advocacy work needed to continue to ensure timely releases to the community and further the adoption of Eclipse Adoptium.
This new open source working group was only possible through the successful negotiation of the OpenJDK Community TCK License Agreement (OCTLA) with Oracle, the steward of OpenJDK, the Java Community Process, and the Java compatibility brand. Under the terms of this agreement, Adoptium will run compatibility tests to ensure conformance to the Java specification.
If your organization is interested in participating in the Adoptium WG, you can view the Charter and Participation Agreement, or email us at membership@eclipse.org.
Quotes from Founding Organizations
Alibaba Cloud
“As a founding member of the Adoptium Working Group, we are committed to creating an open, vendor-neutral environment to enable the growth of Java Runtime on our global cloud platform,” said Sanhong Li, director of Compiler & Runtime, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “We value the contribution of developers, and we hope to provide the right technology and resources to build a conducive ecosystem for better and more community collaborations.”
Huawei
“Huawei is happy to join the Adoptium Working Group as a founding strategic member and promote the growth of the open source Java ecosystem,” said Junping Du, Huawei’s Cloud & AI Open Source Development Team Leader. “Java has long been an important runtime in the industry, as well as for our customers and partners across our heterogeneous cloud and infrastructure platforms. We look forward to collaborating with the community to create and provide the highest quality Java runtimes.”
IBM
“IBM is very pleased to announce that we will be joining the Eclipse Adoptium working group as a founding member. We were also one of the founding members of the AdoptOpenJDK community with a long history of contributions and support,” said Samir M. Kamerkar, program director, Runtime Technologies at IBM. “As the AdoptOpenJDK project moves into the Eclipse Foundation as Adoptium, we look forward to continuing to collaborate with that same vendor-neutral open source Java community to share knowledge and efforts around building JDKs and to help expand and advance the quality bar for all JDK releases that leverage the Adoptium infrastructure.”
iJUG
“As an association of German-speaking Java User Groups, iJUG is proud to join the newly established Eclipse Adoptium working group as a founding member,” said Jan Westerkamp, iJUG responsible for the cooperation with the Eclipse Foundation. “Initiated by LJC, AdoptOpenJDK has become a great success in the Java ecosystem and with the transition to the Eclipse Foundation, we as a community organisation look forward to continue its achievements as Eclipse Adoptium now, following the original mission statement: Providing the Java community with rock-solid runtimes and associated tools that can be used free of charge, without usage restrictions on a wide range of platforms.”
Karakun AG
“At Karakun, we strongly believe in Open Source and the power of the community. We are not only active contributors to various open-source projects but we also want Java to be and remain free,” said Java Champion and Karakun co-founder Hendrik Ebbers. “The community-driven project Adoptium offers some decisive advantages like the Long-Term Support, the large number of supported platforms and maximum transparency. So, it was more than obvious for us to be a founding partner of Adoptium.”
Microsoft
“Microsoft has a long history of supporting developer ecosystems and we are pleased to extend this support to the Java ecosystem by joining the Eclipse Adoptium Working Group as a strategic member,” said Julia Liuson, corporate vice president, Developer Division, Microsoft. “Alongside the other founding members, Microsoft looks forward to contributing to the open source Java effort. We believe Eclipse Adoptium will provide a vendor-neutral home where business-ready, Java-compliant OpenJDK binaries are produced and tested by the AQAVit quality suite.“
New Relic
“As an existing sponsor of AdoptOpenJDK, New Relic is thrilled to be a founding member of the next chapter as the project moves to the Eclipse Foundation,” said Ben Evans, principal engineer and Instrumentation Lead Architect at New Relic. “The market has overwhelmingly chosen a long-term support model, and Eclipse Adoptium’s community-based approach has become the de facto standard for open-source Java. Our own Java installations have migrated to it, and among New Relic customers, it has been the fastest growing Java runtime we have ever seen, now taking the lead as the vendor of choice among modern containerized Java applications. We believe that today’s enterprises value not just open source products, but open standards and the open communities that grow up around them. By donating our engineers’ time and experience to those standards and communities, we contribute to their success and in turn benefit our customers and the industry as a whole. ”
Red Hat
“Red Hat has been a long-term member of the AdoptOpenJDK project and we are proud to continue our involvement as it moves to the Eclipse Foundation,” said Tim Ellison, distinguished engineer, Red Hat. “The Adoptium Working Group complements our role in OpenJDK to make open source Java SE technology available to all. Under the Foundation’s governance we look forward to this new working group being successful in raising the bar for runtimes and a closer alignment with cloud-native Java technologies.”
About the Eclipse Foundation
The Eclipse Foundation provides our global community of individuals and organizations with a mature, scalable, and business-friendly environment for open source software collaboration and innovation. The Foundation is home to the Eclipse IDE, Jakarta EE, and over 375 open source projects, including runtimes, tools, and frameworks for cloud and edge applications, IoT, AI, automotive, systems engineering, distributed ledger technologies, open processor designs, and many others. The Eclipse Foundation is a rapidly growing international non-profit association supported by over 300 members, including more than 90 new members added in 2020 alone. These members represent a diverse collection of industry leaders that value open source technology as a key enabler for their business strategies. To learn more, follow us on Twitter @EclipseFdn, LinkedIn or visit eclipse.org.
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