Accelerating the JDK release cadence

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

2017/9/13 9:55:34 -0700, aph at redhat.com:
> On 13/09/17 15:25, Brian Goetz wrote:
>> Platform JSR for 18.3 posted yesterday:
>> 
>>     https://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=383
>> 
>> Now in review, to be followed by ballot, in accordance with JCP process, 
>> as usual.
>> 
>> Component JSRs will come in as they always have; through the appropriate 
>> platform (umbrella) JSRs.
> 
> But why the blinking flip is it called 18.3?  I've looked in a few emails but I
> get so many, I may have missed the explanation.

>From my blog entry (https://mreinhold.org/blog/forward-faster):

  To make it clear that these are time-based releases, and to make it
  easy to figure out the release date of any particular release, the
  version strings of feature releases will be of the form `$YEAR.$MONTH`.
  Thus next year's March release will be 18.3, and the September
  long-term support release will be 18.9.

That's the proposal.  I'm sure there will be further discussion, but in
the meantime we had to pick some number to use on the JSR submission, so
it's "18.3".

- Mark