# dragonwell-project/dragonwell8

Alibaba Dragonwell8 JDK

Repository: https://github.com/dragonwell-project/dragonwell8
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/dragonwell8
Homepage: http://dragonwell-jdk.io
Language: Java
License: GPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: dragonwell8, java, openjdk, jdk, lts, java8
Last push: 2026-08-07T10:00:12+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 93/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 96, release rhythm 84, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2736, "days_push": 26, "days_rel": 110, "gap_med": 22, "n_releases_24m": 14}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4317, forks 496 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:41.860316+00:00)

## What it is
Alibaba Dragonwell8 is a downstream, production-hardened distribution of OpenJDK 8 (LTS) optimized for large-scale online e-commerce, financial, and logistics workloads. It is a GPL-2.0 'friendly fork' of OpenJDK maintained by Alibaba, currently supporting Linux/x86_64.

## Use cases
- run Java 8 applications on a free, long-term-supported OpenJDK build
- find a JDK distribution tuned for high-scale server workloads
- install a Java 8 runtime via YUM on Alibaba Cloud Linux or CentOS/RHEL 7
- get extended maintenance and security patches for Java 8 LTS
- migrate from Oracle JDK 8 to an open-source alternative
- use a JDK battle-tested on 100,000+ servers at Alibaba

## When to choose
- you need a free, actively maintained Java 8 LTS runtime on Linux x86_64
- you run large-scale distributed Java services and want Alibaba's production optimizations
- you want an OpenJDK-compatible drop-in replacement (just set JAVA_HOME)
- you deploy on Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 or compatible RHEL/CentOS 7 distros

## When to avoid
- you need Windows or macOS support, which this release does not provide
- you need Java 11, 17, or newer rather than Java 8
- you prefer to contribute to and track upstream OpenJDK directly
- you need a vendor with formal commercial support SLAs

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: interpreter, compiler, developer-tools
- domain: programming-languages, developer-tools, cloud-computing
- platform: jvm
- tags: openjdk, jdk, java8, lts, friendly-fork, alibaba, linux

## Member repositories
- dragonwell-project/dragonwell8 (main) score 93

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:41.860316+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:21:45.382060+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/dragonwell-project/dragonwell8 (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:41.860316+00:00, sha 5610296e2d69)
  - homepage: http://dragonwell-jdk.io (fetched 2026-08-29T09:10:48.780997+00:00, sha ee80a33880e4)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.