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Java SE 7 (JDK 7) (July 2011): First version after Oracle purchased Sun Microsystem - aslo called OracleJDK.Java SE 6 (JDK 6) (December 2006): Renamed J2SE to Java SE (Java Platform Standard Edition).Introduced generics, autoboxing/unboxing, annotation, enum, varargs, for-each loop, static import. J2SE 5.0 (JDK 5) (September 2004): Officially called 5.0 instead of 1.5 (by dropping the 1.).J2SE 1.4 (JDK 1.4) (February 2002): Introduced assert statement, non-blocking IO ( nio), logging API, image IO, Java webstart, regular expression (regex) support.
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Also introduced Collection Framework and JIT compiler. Included JFC (Java Foundation Classes - Swing, Accessibility API, Java 2D, Pluggable Look & Feel, and Drag & Drop). Also released J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition). J2SE 1.2 (JDK 1.2) (December 1998): Re-branded as "Java 2" and renamed JDK to J2SE (Java 2 Standard Edition).JDK 1.1 (February 1997): Introduced AWT event model, inner class, JavaBean, JDBC, and RMI.JDK 1.0 (January 1996): Originally called Oak (named after the oak tree outside James Gosling's office).JDK Alpha and Beta (1995): Sun Microsystem announced Java in September 23, 1995.Oracle JDK requires a commercial license from Oracle and businesses (since 2019) need to purchase a commercial license in order to receive software updates.
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OpenJDK is completely open source with a GNU General Public License. The main difference between OpenJdk and OracleJDK is licensing.
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The Java Development Kit (JDK), officially named "Java Platform Standard Edition" or "Java SE", is needed for writing and running Java programs.
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