On 3/3/20 10:26 AM, Andrew Haley wrote:
But one of the few things of which I am certain is that we must not allow the needs of backporting to determine the future of Java. That's the way of staying in the past.
Unpopular opinion: It's the enterprise customers that mainly pay for the development of software, not the users of rolling release distributions. I know that maintaining old stuff is boring but that's where the money is made. Too many developers unfortunately seem to forget that.
As Patrick Head put it, “Some people tell me that Formula 1 would be better if the drivers still used stick shifts, but that’s a bit like saying, 'isn’t it a pity we don’t still walk around in clogs!'”
Maintenance of stable software isn't done for nostalgic reasons, it's because enterprise customers need a reliable and stable platform to run their businesses on. A lot of businesses are still running on JDK-8 for this reason. Running bleeding edge software might be an option for a single desktop user, but not in an enterprise environment with thousands of users or in a critical environment like the booking system of an airline. Adrian -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913