Backporting features [was Re: RFR (11u, XXL): Upstream/backport Shenandoah to JDK11u]

[Claes Redestad]

On 2020-02-17 17:52, Andrew Dinn wrote:
> Also, I have to note that if the room for novel security challenges is
> such a concern then I do wonder how Oracle can square that concern with
> a blithe view of the divergence their decision to pursue their own jdk8u
> implies? likewise with their decision to release, over many years, a
> version of jdk8u that included JFR when other releases did not.

I'm not Oracle, and I'm not here to discuss why Oracle invested in and
sold proprietary, commercial features on top of the OpenJDK for many
years, nor why we/they finally deciced to converge and contribute all
those features to the OpenJDK. I have little sway in influencing any
such decisions.

I will say though that I am personally very happy with where we are in
the OpenJDK mainline *now*, and as much as I wish we could converge and
retrofit all these features from Oracle JDK to OpenJDK 8u, that's an
absolutely massive effort that I think would induce a lot of risks,
while detracting from the main mission of moving the OpenJDK forward.

> 
>> Perhaps a bitter pill to swallow, but I think the players involved need
>> to take the steps necessary to upgrade to 11+ and stop demanding
>> backports that risk destabilizing 8u
> I am more sympathetic to that exhortation wrt JFR. Less so wrt aarch64
> or Shenandoah. However, many others in the project and, most
> importantly, many of our users -- especially those who are going to be
> maintaining deployments running on jdk8u for a long time -- feel
> otherwise. By not providing those users with a standard jdk8u complete
> with JFR we are leaving the open project short of a capability that many
> users really need and so failing in our duty to make open source Java a
> real alternative to proprietary Java.

Why is this not framed as a need to get help upgrading? Why are we not 
investing all this time in the future, rather than in delaying the
inevitable?

Life is too short for backports.

/Claes