I came across an article that seems to suggest that to develop commercial games using java jdk one will need to have a paid license which will probably be in the form of a subscription. I am not sure if I read/interpreted the article correctly but, as a java game programmer - should I be concerned?
Let me know what you think?
I believe you should not be concerned. This is more for the large enterprises which base their software eco-system around Java.
I will give you an example. Not sure if you know, but Oracle intends to release a major version every 6 month (java 11,12, etc). This means that versions have shorter lifetime (support, patching, bug fixes, etc). That is where Oracle business comes out. For free usage the lifetime is short, at some point you simply stop receiving any updates and support, however, if you pay, you continue receiving support, updates, etc until the deadline defined at this page https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/java-se-support-roadmap.html. At the organization I am working, we only update major Java version every N years, especially now, when there are potentially breaking changes with every major release. We are simply unable to keep up with all of the new features, test, find and fix a bugs introduced by new functionalities (for example among the projects I manage, there is one with ~400k LoC, upgrading it every year would consume all of my available time). Therefore large organizations are kind of forced to buy those licences, because otherwise the cost of maintenance is much higher in comparison to the licence costs…
Maybe I am wrong in something, but this is what we have concluded after reviewing all those recent changes introduced by Oracle.
Use OpenJDK