Solved

Does our IFS/Oracle licenses cover use of Java?

  • 8 September 2021
  • 5 replies
  • 401 views

Userlevel 5
Badge +10

We are on IFS v9, Oracle 12c (Enterprise Ed).

As IFS/Oracle customers, are we licensed to use Java for IFS Print agents/Middleware?

Does this depend on version? If there is a specific version we should be using, which is it?

Any thoughts would be welcome.

(Of course I understand licenses may differ across different customers/configurations, just getting a feel of opinions)

Thanks

Mike

icon

Best answer by Charith Epitawatta 9 September 2021, 00:25

View original

This topic has been closed for comments

5 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +31

Hi @MikeArbon,

Oracle announced the end of public updates for Oracle JDK after January 2019. IFS Middleware Server has Oracle JDK included in it and you are only licensed to use it for IFS Middleware Server. You are not allowed to use the Oracle JDK included in IFS Middleware Server for IFS Applications functionality running on Java outside of IFS Middleware Server, such as the Print Agent, IFS Report Designer etc.

Assuming you have an updated version of IFSAPP9 that was released after 2019 January, please download and use OpenJDK for other tools such as Print Agent. You should never update the Java version of IFS MWS manually as all updates will be provided by IFS.

Regarding the version, check the Java version of the JDK included in IFS Middleware Server and use an equivalent version for external applications as well so that there won’t be any compatibility issues. You can open a command line from \\<IFS_HOME>\mw_home\java folder and run  java -version  command to find the Java version of IFS Middleware Server.

I have also attached the bulletin published by IFS back in 2019 regarding the end of public updates for Oracle JDK. It has some more important information. 

Hope this helps!

 

Userlevel 5
Badge +10

We are on IFS v9, Oracle 12c (Enterprise Ed).

As IFS/Oracle customers, are we licensed to use Java for IFS Print agents/Middleware?

Does this depend on version? If there is a specific version we should be using, which is it?

Any thoughts would be welcome.

(Of course I understand licenses may differ across different customers/configurations, just getting a feel of opinions)

Thanks

Mike

 

Thanks for helping us on this Charith.

Best regards

Mike

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @MikeArbon,

Assuming you have an updated version of IFSAPP9 that was released after 2019 January, please download and use OpenJDK for other tools such as Print Agent.

 

Will IFS warrant OpenJDK against copyright and patent infringement should it ever be discovered that it’s tainted with proprietary code?

Userlevel 7
Badge +31

Hi @durette,

Will IFS warrant OpenJDK against copyright and patent infringement should it ever be discovered that it’s tainted with proprietary code?

OpenJDK is free and open source and also the reference implementation of JavaSE. Therefore it is highly unlikely it will encounter such a situation. It was Sun Microsystems which was later acquired by Oracle that made OpenJDK free and open source, so I assume it would be Oracle who would have to deal with such a violation primarily. I am not sure of legal implications of such a situation.

Userlevel 5
Badge +14

An Apps10 customer is asking the same thing related to IFS Report Designer specifically. I just downloaded the tool from https://developer.ifs.com/tools/repdesigner and what I see is that it includes JRE from Oracle rather than OpenJDK which is mentioned in this thread.

So the customer is asking whether or not they are licensed to use this version of Java for IFS report layout development in production.