Microsoft has announced a preview build of its OpenJDK Java distribution.
It’s been a bad week for Oracle. First, the company lost its decade-long battle with Google over Android and its use of Java code. Now the company has a major new competitor to contend with, as Microsoft is making progress on its plans for its own OpenJDK Java distribution.
Microsoft’s distribution has already passed several significant milestones in its development, which the company touted in a blog post.
The Microsoft Build of OpenJDK binaries for Java 11 are based on OpenJDK source code, following the same build scripts used by the Eclipse Adoptium project and tested against the Eclipse Adoptium Quality Assurance suite (including OpenJDK project tests). Our binaries for Java 11 have passed the Java Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK) for Java 11, which is used to verify compatibility with the Java 11 specification. The Microsoft Build of OpenJDK is a simple drop-in replacement for any other OpenJDK distribution available in the Java ecosystem.
The Microsoft Build of OpenJDK 11 will be supported until at least 2024, and the company plans on releasing OpenJDK 17 binaries by the end of the year, once Java 17 is finalized.