Java business license vs. Free and Open source (FOSS) OpenJDK?

Question

Since Sun recently end-of-life'd J2SE 5 and require you to pay for a Java For Business license to "ensure uninterrupted and immediate access to critical fixes", if I am an Enterprise Architect/CIO/CTO, are my two options going forward to:

     1. Stay with the Oracle/Sun overloaded stack and incur the new licensing cost but run my business uninterrupted OR

     2. Retool my development team and rewrite a significant portion of my technology infrastructure to avoid the lock-in and the additional cost

What if I dont have the technical expertise in house to stay FOSS? Or if I need help/support? Will OSCG be putting together these tools and services to enable me?

Answer

My simple advice is to move your apps to JDK 6 and to develop, test (and YES even deploy) with OpenJDK 6. This should preserve your enterprise-class free-as-in-beer options for at least the next decade.

If you need help moving to OpenJDK then ask questions in the oscg-technical mail list and certainly OpenSCG Services would love to help on a fee basis.

OSCG aims to continue to produce one-click installers that make it easier to develop and deploy with OpenJDK and other best of breed Java technologies.