Adobe has an agreement with Oracle, for granting distribution rights for Java with its products to its customers. This means that Adobe will continue to handle distribution and support for Oracle Java SE for its ColdFusion customers. Adobe ColdFusion customers can run their Adobe ColdFusion applications on Oracle Java SE 11 JDK (for CF2021) and 17 JDK (for CF2023) with the Java installers provided with the Adobe ColdFusion product without procuring a separate license from Oracle, provided that customers don’t use Java SE on a standalone basis.
Adobe will continue to support maintenance updates for Long-Term Support (LTS) releases used by ColdFusion product versions under active support i.e. ColdFusion 2021 with Oracle Java SE11 and ColdFusion 2023 with Oracle Java SE17. Also, customers need not directly engage with Oracle for support in order to run ColdFusion on Oracle Java SE and Adobe will provide the necessary support in this regards. This support will align with Oracle’s agreement terms for redistribution and support in relation to ColdFusion. In future, however, if there are any alterations to Adobe’s support terms with Oracle affecting customers, these will be promptly communicated.
For more details, please refer to –
https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/enterprise/faq.html#java-support
You may refer to our support matrix for ColdFusion 2021 and ColdFusion 2023, on the links below –
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I will also try and see how the verbiage on the blog can be made more clear regarding the licensing point.
Thanks, Charvi. That updated verbiage could be so very helpful.
FWIW, I’d proposed below in Dec that something like this would be great:
“Adobe CF customers are licensed to run Oracle Java for their ColdFusion applications.”
But I do realize that you’ll need to cover various bases in whatever verbiage you get authorization to release. 🙂
I’ve updated the blog post Charlie Arehart . Also hoping, it puts an end to all confusion surrounding this.
Charvi, thanks. While the verbiage in the post above may be improved, I’ll point out to folks interested in this matter that the faq pointed to above does go into more specific detail, with some statements that I’ll call out here (emphases mine):
“Adobe ColdFusion customers are within their licensing rights to use Oracle JDK bundled with Adobe ColdFusion to run their ColdFusion applications, and they are not required to purchase an Oracle JDK license separately for this.”
And:
“ColdFusion customers are supported on Oracle Java SE without having to contract directly with Oracle for support to run ColdFusion.”
I can’t tell if you’re saying that verbiage is new, but it’s definitely the more specific clarity that some would want to hear.
Finally, for those who may go there and use their browser “find” feature to locate this text for themselves, note that these are within answers to questions listed there, and you must click each question to expand it. Sadly there’s no button to “expand all”, which would be nice.
The only remaining question for some may be if we could hear why an openjdk can’t be used–or if one of those is being considered (like Azul Zulu was briefly, a few years ago.) But I suspect you’ll not be able to explain that here, or you would have done so already.
Anyway, thanks Charvi for the updates and clarifications.
sethbokelman These are internal documents and I am afraid cannot be shared but please feel free to reach out to the coldfusion support team with contact details of the Oracle representatives who are in touch with you regarding this matter. We can contact them to issue a clarification on this.
Adobe has the required re-distribution rights for providing Oracle Java with the ColdFusion product.
ColdFusion customers still facing issues from Oracle’s side about this can reach out to ColdFusion customer support teams for help regarding the same.
Yes, I think anyone reading this could still reasonably ask, “is this even really clarifying that Adobe has licensed Oracle Java for use with CF”? The closest this comes to is it saying, “ColdFusion customers can confidently run their applications on Oracle Java SE 11 JDK and 17 JDK, even after these JDK releases reach the end of public updates.”
That speaks to the matter of “what happens when Oracle no longer supports Java 11 or 17”–which I wouldn’t think was a serious question a CF shop would be asking, first because both have years left in their support lives, and second because we’d reasonably assume Adobe would add support for Java 21 at some point.
Further, it goes on to say that, “customers need not directly engage with Oracle for support in order to run ColdFusion on Oracle Java SE”, but again that is focused on “support” not “licensing”.
Neither statement nor any other in this post seems really to just state plainly that “Adobe CF customers are licensed to run Oracle Java for their ColdFusion applications“. Can we get (or be pointed to) something that says that? Even Rakshith’s blog post from early 2019 had essentially this same verbiage as above. I realize this is essentially an update of that, which is nice to see.
(BTW, Rakshith’s 2019 blog post clarified that the free OpenJDK implementation–even from Oracle–was not formally supported for use with CF, only the Oracle JDK.)
But like Seth notes, either Oracle folks or just concerned CF customers could reasonably want to see a more clear statement about the matter of Adobe licensing Java for our use of it with CF. This speaks to “support”, which is rather vague if it’s supposed to also connote “licensing”.
And FWIW, someone may want to point out that Oracle changed their licensing for Java 17 to now be free for production (what they call the “NFTC” license), and CF2023 currently runs on Java 17, only. But as for CF2021, it currently runs on Java 11, only–and Java 11 (as well as Java 8, with updates after Apr 2019) instead is NOT free for prod use (under what Oracle calls the “OTN” license). For more on this, see the Oracle JDK licensing FAQ.
So it’s primarily about use of CF2021 and earlier, with Java 11 (or 8 in earlier CF versions) that call for this clarification from Adobe about the state of licensing of Oracle Java for use with CF.
Anyway, I do appreciate that getting such formal statements from Adobe means they have to go through legal channels/hoops/hurdles, so it may be a while before we could GET this clarification, but if someone from Adobe sees this and agrees that it’s worth reconsidering, can you at least let us know that you’ve STARTED the process of getting better clarification?
Thank you for the updated statement, is there a license document that Adobe can share with customers that we can provide to Oracle? They apparently don’t believe that these statements from Adobe constitute valid proof of our license.
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