What does LTS mean for OpenJDK?

Sat Aug 18 09:14:50 UTC 2018

Hi all,

I'll add AdoptOpenJDK's Positioning on this inline.

On Fri, 17 Aug 2018 at 18:33, Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 08/17/2018 05:36 PM, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> > The LTS (long term support) release Java 11 is nearly upon us. But
> > what does LTS mean in the context of OpenJDK? I'd like to try to get a
> > clear statement of fact in written form, particularly from Oracle.
>
> I have been discussing with some other organizations sharing the
> burden of supporting jdk11, and we'll make a public statement when
> we're ready.  Before then, I'll say what I can.
>
> OpenJDK is a community project. It's up to the community to support
> it. In practice this means that a group of organizations and
> individuals will maintain each OpenJDK LTS release for some period
> (TBA for 11, but it's sure to be a *lot* longer than six months.) I am
> certain that there will be a jdk11u project, and it will be properly
> and professionally run. I think it's likely that I'll be leading the
> project, but someone else may be chosen. Given that we don't know when
> Oracle will end their support it's hard to say any more.
>

Completely agree with this and in a way this is positive thing for
OpenJDK.  I see a lot more organisations and
individuals now committing, or seriously thinking about committing extra
engineering folks and $$ into OpenJDK.
I think it's fair to say that Oracle has shouldered the majority of the
burden (thanks Oracle!) for a long time and it'll be
good for everyone if that burden is shared more evenly than it has been.

As part of the discussions Andrew mentioned, AdoptOpenJDK offered to build,
test and make available OpenJDK
LTS binaries for the major (and several minor) platforms.  This isn't yet
set in concrete but folks broadly thought that
was a good idea.  So the challenge of having a build and test farm for this
joint effort is solved.

----
Some extra statements:

AdoptOpenJDK will not offer commercial support.  AdoptOpenJDK will take and
triage bug reports but will
send those bug reports to the appropriate upstream project (OpenJDK,
Eclipse OpenJ9, SAPMachine etc)
unless it was an AdoptOpenJDK build / test / infra issue.

AdoptOpenJDK *as an entity* will not be backporting patches, i.e. There
won't be an AdoptOpenJDK 'fork/version'
that is materially different from upstream (except for some build script
patches for things like Win32 support). However,
I imagine many of the volunteers (a chunk of who are OpenJDK authors /
committers / reviewers) will join in the jdk11u project
/ effort that Andrew mentioned, so you'll see crossover of people.

We think Andrew is the eminently sensible choice to lead jdk11u and there
were more than enough organisations and individuals
that indicated they would commit real long term engineering support. I'm
personally very comfortable that we'll have a
successful, professionally run jdk11u project from Oracle and then
subsequently by others (most likely lead by Andrew).

For the rest AdoptOpenJDK is adding more robustness, security and testing
support to the build farm so we'll be ready when jdk11u
requires that service. We welcome more contributors with those slightly
rarer skill sets of bash scripting, ansible and other devops
style languages and tooling.

> > Java 10 has had public $free support, with two security updates over 6
> > months and pre-built binaries at http://jdk.java.net/10/
> >
> > What will Java 11 get from Oracle?
> > - 6 months of public $free updates with binaries published at
> > http://jdk.java.net
> > - 3 years of public $free updates with binaries published at
> http://jdk.java.net
> > - something else?
> >
> > Note! The request is about $free pre-built binaries ready for
> > download. We all know people can pay money for support to multiple
> > vendors.
> >
> >
> > Is any other group (eg. AdoptOpenJDK, RedHat) planning on providing
> > security patched pre-built binaries for $free? If so, for how long?
>
> Red Hat is committed to support OpenJDK for its customers for some
> time. Our policy for current versions can be seen at
>
> https://access.redhat.com/articles/1299013#OpenJDK_Lifecycle_Dates_and_RHEL_versions
>
> Given that Red Hat has an upstream first policy, we will make sure
> that all security patches are applied to upstream OpenJDK releases and
> our builds are TCK'd.
>
> With regard to providing binaries, I'm aware that any jdkll update
> project after Oracle ceases to support it will need to provide
> binaries for several platforms. (java.net is Oracle's proprietary
> site, so it doesn't make any sense to put them there.) The project
> will decide exactly where to put those binaries, but in my opinion as
> long as they are properly authenticated and easy to get it doesn't
> really matter.
>
> Finally, please let me assure you of one thing: whether by Oracle or
> Red Hat or someone else, JDK LTS releases will continue to be
> supported. We all have a lot invested in Java, and we won't let it
> fall.
>

---

AdoptOpenJDK's current support policy is listed here:
https://adoptopenjdk.net/support.html

As an extra clarification, support means "We'll keep building the
binaries". As mentioned previously
AdoptOpenJDK won't as an organization be backporting patches to jdk11u, but
several of our volunteers
will be participating in that effort.

I'll echo Andrew's comment that lots of folks including Oracle are heavily
invested in Java. As an example,
the AdoptOpenJDK build farm has >300 volunteers from established OpenJDK
organisations as well as
new folks who came together when they saw a need for collaborating around
OpenJDK binary production.

HTH - happy to answer any follow up questions.

Cheers,
Martijn

>
> > Please provide links.
>
> Hmph.
>
> --
> Andrew Haley
> Java Platform Lead Engineer
> Red Hat UK Ltd. <https://www.redhat.com>
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>