Eclipse OpenJ9™ has graduated from incubation at the Eclipse Foundation, marking an important milestone for the open source Java Virtual Machine and the community behind it.
Since joining the Eclipse Foundation in 2017, OpenJ9 has grown into a mature, openly-governed JVM project focused on performance, memory efficiency, startup time, platform support, and production Java workloads.
From the Eclipse OpenJ9 project community
“The Eclipse OpenJ9 1.0 release signifies its graduation from incubation and recognizes the maturity of the project and community built around it. During incubation, the community demonstrated technical excellence by delivering advances in memory efficiency, startup time, broad platform support, and security responsiveness. It also established the open governance and sustainable development practices required for graduation. Graduation formally recognizes OpenJ9 as a community-focused JVM trusted in enterprise production environments and positioned to drive continued innovation in JVM performance, efficiency, and scalability.”
— Mark Stoodley, Project Lead, OpenJ9
From the Eclipse Technology PMC
“Eclipse OpenJ9's graduation into the mature phase marks a significant milestone that validates its commitment to sustainable open-source practices. Throughout its development, the project team has exemplified open governance by adhering to vendor-neutral rules of engagement, conducting all technical planning publicly, holding meritocratic committer elections, and cultivating a diverse contributor ecosystem. The Eclipse OpenJ9 team has fully integrated Eclipse Foundation governance, IP due diligence practices, and security standards, and has established a resilient, self-sustaining community.”
— Wayne Beaton, Eclipse Technology PMC
A mature open source JVM project
Graduation recognises the project’s technical progress as well as its ability to operate sustainably under the Eclipse Foundation Development Process, with open development, transparent governance, and an active contributor community.
The Eclipse Technology Project Management Committee (PMC) approved OpenJ9’s graduation as part of its 2026.09 progress review.
For developers, the work continues. OpenJ9 remains an open project where contributors can work on JVM performance, garbage collection, compilers, runtime efficiency, platform enablement, security, and other areas of Java runtime development.
Get involved
Explore the Eclipse OpenJ9 source, follow project discussions, report issues, and contribute code through the project’s open repositories.
Congratulations to the OpenJ9 committers, contributors, project leads, and wider community on reaching this milestone.
For teams developing open source software who want a vendor-neutral governance model, transparent practices, and guidance to cultivate a thriving ecosystem, explore how to host your effort at the Eclipse Foundation: https://www.eclipse.org/projects/bring-your-project/.
