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My question is why oracle develops both kits i.e. openJDK and JDK

As mentioned at

The OpenJDK 9 project, which is the basis for JDK 9.

The OpenJDK 8 project, which is the basis for JDK 8, was released on 18 March 2014.

Per mine understanding on google, OpenJDK is the reference implementation(so may be its not complete implementation), I can think of two reasons to continue development on both openJDK and JDK

  1. OpenJDK is not complete implementaion. Its just kind of POC . Its the first stage
  2. Now any community/company can further extend reference implemetation(in this case OpenJDK), like Oracle JDK. So basically intentions may be to promote multiple JDK and let user decide which one suites them

Is that correct ?

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scott miles
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  • an obligation to keep a version of the jdk as GPL with a linkage exception. further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenJDK – Shloim Sep 25 '16 at 10:09
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    Also a reference implementation would be the "complete" implementation, with all the *required* features. Other implementations could improve on that, but must have all the same features as the reference one. – Kayaman Sep 25 '16 at 10:24
  • @Kayaman ok got it that Reference Implementation (RI) has to be complete not partial. But i believe other implementation does not have to same implementation as RI. Other implementation can be altogether different but specification has to be same. So RI i believe is just a way to guide other implementations how they can implement specifications . If i translate this concept to java coding, specifications are like interface and implementations can be different like RI,oracle jdk or some other ? – scott miles Sep 25 '16 at 10:31
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    These links should give you the details http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22358071/differences-between-oracle-jdk-and-open-jdk-and-garbage-collection http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17360011/technically-what-is-the-main-difference-between-oracle-jdk-and-open-jdk#comment27153592_17364418 – Sid Sep 25 '16 at 11:21
  • @Kayaman can you please provide your thoughts on mine last comment ? – scott miles Sep 27 '16 at 05:19
  • @scottmiles Which one? That specs are like an interface and RI is like its first implementation? Yeah, that's sort of how it goes. – Kayaman Sep 27 '16 at 05:33

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