Oracle is going to split JavaFX out of the core distribution of JDK from version 11 onwards. JavaFX is Oracle’s rich client development technology for Java.

First released in 2007 by Sun Microsystems when it owned Java, JavaFX is a collection of graphics and media tools. It is designed to provide a lightweight, hardware-accelerated Java UI platform for developing business applications. JavaFX lets you reuse Java libraries in your applications, access native system capabilities, and connect to server-based middleware applications. It was made open source as OpenJFX in 2011, then became part of the JDK download. JavaFX was intended as a competitor to options such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight.

However, while Oracle says JavaFX attracts:

"a passionate following of its own as a cross-platform desktop application toolkit"

the technology is less important than it used to be as developers have moved to use technologies such as HTML5 as the basis of Web apps. JavaFX will still be available, but as a separate download, decoupled from the JDK. 

Oracle says that the changes:

"clear the way for new contributors to engage in the open source OpenJFX community. Meanwhile, Oracle customers can benefit from continued commercial support for JavaFX in the Oracle JDK 8 through at least 2022."

The decision to make the download separate was partially enabled because of the inclusion of the Java Platform Module System (aka Project Jigsaw) since Java SE 9. Oracle says having it separate will make it easier for developers using JavaFX to have more freedom and flexibility with the framework.  The separation will also make it easier for Oracle to increase the frequency with with OpenJDK will be released, leaving  JavaFX:

"to move forward at a pace driven by the contributions from Oracle and others in the OpenJFX community."

Oracle plans to implement this decoupling starting with Java 11, and says it will continue to support JavaFX new fixes for Java SE 8 until 2022. Looking forward, it would also like to work with:

"interested third parties to make it easier to build and maintain JavaFX as a separately distributable open-source module."

More Information

JavaFX Overview

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