LTS for public releases

[Kim Jensen]

>On 8 November 2017 at 16:31, Andrew Hughes gnu.andrew at redhat.com wrote:
>> Well, that page is about Oracle's binaries, not OpenJDK in general.
>> It's important not to confuse the two.
>>
>> It may well be that Oracle don't provide public binaries of LTS releases,
>> but there's nothing stopping anyone else from doing so and I would
>> expect that to continue as it does now in various distributions.
>
> I don't think this game of "well someone else might support it" is at
> all helpful to the wider community.
>
> Architects/senior devs need to know that the code they are writing now
> can run on a supported platform for at least a few years after they
> finish coding it. This has been one of the critical factors in Java's
> success.
>
> What is actually being promised is ridiculously woolly by comparison.
> Oracle might provide 3 years of public updates on LTS for $free, or
> they might not. Red Hat might provide some LTS's or they might not.
> Red Hat LTS's might align with Oracle's LTS, or they might not. Some
> other random group of "OpenJDK community" might turn up and do
> something, or it might not.
>
> No certainty. No ability to plan. Its a mess.
>
> Stephen
>

Oracle's solution to the problem seems simple. Customers must pay! Only problem is, that Oracle's licensing and pricing policies is the most hated in the industry, because they lack transparency and is very pricy. Something, which larger companies may be able to afford, but many smaller ones can't.

If you ask developers to embed the JRE, then it also implies that they have to support not only their own software - but the entire stack. Something which most Java developers either can't or won't do. Can't because it may require more knowledge than they have and won't as it will make their software very costly - especially if they have to support it for many years.

If you keep writing a "thin" product, which relies on customers having a full stack available - then you suddenly need to know that the platform they have available is supporting Java. With the new policies, some platforms may simply decide to stop supporting Java, as it becomes too expensive. Many customers choose a platform, and stick to it. So, this means that if they no longer support Java, then it won't work.

If it is left to Vendors to provide Java under their platforms, please explain why Microsoft should support Java ? After all, it is a direct competitor to .Net. Even if your IDE comes with a JRE, they still require a JDK, often many different JDK's for different projects - are the developers suppose to build it themselves ?

I agree with Stephen, this is a mess.

/Kim