Microsoft has announced that they have signed the Java Specification Participation Agreement (JSPA) to officially join the Java Community Process (JCP), which governs the Java language evolution. This furthers Microsoft's embrace of Java, such as providing its own downstream distribution of OpenJDK and offering continuous improvement with Java support in Visual Studio Code. Microsoft is also a strategic member of both the Eclipse Foundation and the Eclipse Adoptium Working Group.
Discussing the importance of Microsoft's involvement in the Java community, Bruno Souza, principal consultant at Summa Technologies and president of the SouJava, an executive committee member of the JCP, stating:
The JCP is the place where we define and discuss the future of Java and where we need the collaboration of all the Java community. Microsoft has been an important part of this community, with their involvement in OpenJDK but also supporting Java User Groups and community events.
Microsoft highlighted that it has "more than 500,000 JVMs in production running hundreds of internal Microsoft systems" in its Azure cloud. This number does not include JVMs of Microsoft customers and has not increased since Microsoft first introduced Microsoft Build of OpenJDK in April 2021.
Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, commented on Microsoft's announcement:
It is great to see Microsoft joining the Java Community Process and becoming a full-fledged member of the Java community. There is a lot of old history there, including the ghost of the J++ lawsuit that was settled 15 years ago. I see this as part of Microsoft's overall strategy of making Azure the platform of choice for Java developers.
Azure was the biggest Microsoft business unit with 46% of overall revenue, up 36% year over year in its most recent earnings report. Microsoft does not break out Java revenue in its financial statements, but running Java applications does contribute to Azure.
Amazon, Microsoft's most significant cloud rival, joined the JCP two years ago. Google is the other big cloud competitor who is also a member of the JCP.
Along with joining the JCP, Microsoft also announced that they endorse the two-year LTS release cadence proposed by Oracle just after the release of JDK 17. There had been no public update on this subject since September 21, 2021.
Microsoft also promoted the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK and highlighted its support for running Jakarta EE and Spring applications on Azure. It also acknowledged the recent 1.0 release of the Java Language Support in Visual Studio Code.
Earlier this year, the Adoptium Steering Committee formally approved the Adoptium Working Group Charter. Formerly known as AdoptOpenJDK, the group changed its name to Eclipse Adoptium after joining the Eclipse Foundation in June 2020. The Adoptium Working Group, stewards of the Adoptium project, will work in collaboration with the former AdoptOpenJDK Technical Steering Committee to provide the Java community with fully compatible, high-quality distributions of Java binaries based on OpenJDK source code.