Pivotal Software Inc. today updated its Spring Runtime application development platform to address concerns some developers have about changes made by Oracle Corp. to the licensing terms of its popular Java Standard Edition programming language.

Oracle’s Java is the most popular programming language around, so developers unsurprisingly were dismayed to learn the company had introduced a new subscription-based pricing model in January that would prevent commercial users from receiving free updates.

Oracle’s changes mean that more developers are looking into using OpenJDK, which is a free and open-source implementation of Java SE, although it lacks some of Oracle’s proprietary add-ons.

Pivotal’s Spring framework is a comprehensive tool for supporting applications built using the Java programming language. The framework provides an array of resources for integrating applications, streamlining code and generally promoting more efficient development strategies.

Given Oracle’s licensing changes, Pivotal has now decided that it too will throw its weight behind the OpenJDK implementation of Java, ensuring that Spring users will continue to receive support and updates. The move comes after Pivotal signed up as a platinum sponsor of AdoptOpenJDK, which is an organization that’s trying to advance the use of OpenJDK.

“Java is the most popular programming language in the world and so its popularity forces framework and platform-as-a-service vendors to make it easier for developers to work with it, in connection with their offerings,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc. “It remains to be seen if concerns in the community around changes in the monetization of Java will materialize, but in the meantime Pivotal developers will see higher productivity when building their next-generation applications with Java.”

Alongside the Pivotal Distribution of OpenJDK, the latest Spring platform release also adds support for additional Spring software projects, including the open-source version of the Spring Framework, plus Spring Boot, Spring Cloud and Spring Cloud Dataflow.

The release also bundles Pivotal tc Server for the first time. Pivotal tc Server is the company’s distribution of Apache Tomcat, which is an application server used to render web pages that include Java Server Page code.

Pivotal Spring Runtime is available now for all Pivotal Application Service subscribers or separately as a standalone subscription service.

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