Well, you need to pay for updates, but even that is inaccurate. Before JDK 9, Java used to have major releases, now it doesn't, and the version name is incremented every six months even though the changes are small. So instead of a major release, that's supported for some years, there's now a steady stream of small, gradual change with free perpetual support. There's also an alternative new, non-gradual upgrade model, and if companies want to use it, they need to pay.