Proposed new schedule for Java SE 8

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

As I wrote earlier today on my blog [1], the Java 8 schedule is no
longer achievable due to a renewed focus on security on the part of
all of us here at Oracle.

There are many options for how to proceed from here, some of which I
discuss in the blog entry.  As I've written previously [2], the most
important work that's slipped is related to Project Lambda, the sole
driving feature of the release.  Our current estimate is that we can
finish the remaining work on Lambda by early May, about three months
later than planned.  The other remaining features are not release
drivers, so in theory we could just drop them from the release, but
if Lambda needs more time then there's no point in doing that.

With all that in mind, I think the least-bad option is to slip the
schedule just enough to finish Lambda.

Here, then, is a proposed new schedule for the Java SE 8 JSR:

  2013/6   Early Draft Review
  2013/10  Public Review
  2013/12  Proposed Final Draft
  2014/2   Final Release

A Final Release in February of 2014 is, of course, more than three
months later than the current goal of August.  At this point we're not
confident that we could be ready to release the Reference Implementation,
JDK 8, in November, and experience has shown that it's almost always a
bad idea to try to ship a major software release in December, so that
pushes the release date well into the first quarter [3].

The intent here is not to open the gates for a flood of new features,
nor to permit the scope of existing features to grow without bound.
We'd likely propose a select few additional features, especially in
areas related to security.  In general, however, we'd use the additional
time to stabilize, polish, and fine-tune the features that we already
have rather than add a bunch of new ones.

Is this the best possible course of action?  I think it's better than
the alternatives, but I'm open to suggestions.  I'd like to hear from
the rest of you by this time next week, please, so that we can settle
on a new schedule.

- Mark


[1] http://mreinhold.org/blog/secure-the-train
[2] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk8-dev/2013-February/002066.html
[3] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8/