BellSoft, OpenJDK distribution vendor and one of the top-5 OpenJDK contributors, today announced that SoftChalk, provider of content authoring software, has adopted Liberica JDK. With this product, the company will be able to create a fully secure foundation for its educational platform based on OpenJDK and reach macOS Catalina users.
SoftChalk is the leading provider of content authoring software for educators in K12 school districts, colleges and universities. For the past 15 years, educators in more than 1500 educational institutions have used SoftChalk to develop interactive and engaging online lessons for their students.
The company’s Mac Java client is based on Java 8. Its weaker libraries left them unable to pass Apple notarization and keep releasing their product for the growing portion of customers on macOS Catalina. Therefore, SoftChalk had to defer multiple releases in a row. They needed an OpenJDK distribution that would support Java 8 and hold Apple notarization. Otherwise, they would have to go through a painful update of the whole JDK to a compliant version. The process would further postpone the release schedule and put the business on hold.
SoftChalk adopted Liberica JDK distribution because it integrated with their legacy product line seamlessly and included long-term support with timely security fixes. One of the core decisive factors was that Liberica JDK was scanned for malicious components and code-signing issues and got notarized by Apple on time. This way, SoftChalk received a fully compliant Java 8 foundation for their product and were back on track with the release planning even sooner than they expected.