LTS for public releases

[Martijn Verburg]

Hi all,

I'm going to disagree here.  There are already a number of vendors that
provide commercial supported OpenJDK derivatives including RedHat, Azul and
of course Oracle. I suspect those support programmes will only be
strengthened by the recent changes in release cycle and opening up of
technology.  I would not be surprised if other vendors also start offering
support *because* things have been opened up even further!

The Adopt OpenJDK community <https://www.adoptopenjdk.net> will also
provide thoroughly tested (jtreg + donated tests + JCK) binaries (no $$
support though) for a wide array of platforms, with those platforms fully
open and auditable (you know what it was built from as well as what was
built).

I personally don't see a major issue here (speaking as an end user and a
vendor of sorts).


Cheers,
Martijn

On 8 November 2017 at 18:44, Kim Jensen <kim at javadog.io> wrote:

> >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
>