Open JDK 8 Road Map

Thu Dec 19 18:12:22 UTC 2019

Hi Gil,

Ok, yes, I was just too lazy to write up such a long text and wanted to point to RedHat’s statements as the “least common denominator” for a support timeline of OpenJDK8. �� But of course, as you say, it’s all a community effort with various parties involved.  And nobody can, as of now, say how long OpenJDK8 and/or OpenJDK11 will eventually be supported.

So, thank you for bringing up the whole picture here and correcting a possible misconception that could be taken out of my initial mail.

Cheers
Christoph

From: Gil Tene <gil at azul.com>
Sent: Donnerstag, 19. Dezember 2019 18:36
To: Langer, Christoph <christoph.langer at sap.com>
Cc: Dheeraj Joshi <dheeraj.madhu at gmail.com>; jdk8u-dev <jdk8u-dev at openjdk.java.net>
Subject: Re: Open JDK 8 Road Map

Sent from my iPad

On Dec 19, 2019, at 6:07 AM, Langer, Christoph <christoph.langer at sap.com<mailto:christoph.langer at sap.com>> wrote:
Hi Joshi,

the right list for this question is rather jdk8u-dev at o.j.n<mailto:jdk8u-dev at o.j.n>, so I'm sending my response there and put jdk-updates-dev on bcc.

Since RedHat is the maintainer of  OpenJDK8 and OpenJDK11, I guess you can bear with their statements about support. You can find this article:  https://access.redhat.com/articles/1299013

So I assume, as long as RedHat supports OpenJDK 8, you can be quite sure that there will be periodic security updates.

This needs some correction IMO.

Saying that “RedHat is the maintainer of OpenJDK8 and OpenJDK11”
would be a mis-statement of the situation. OpenJDK 8 and 11
are maintained through a community effort. There is no official or
specific Red Hat position, stewardship, or control of these projects.

AFAIK Andrew Haley, a Red Hat employee and a significant OpenJDK
contributor with a long history of OSS leadership is the project lead for
OpenJDK 8u and and the lead maintainer for 11u. A multitude of engineers
from various companies (including significant work by teams at Red Hat,
Azul, Amazon, SAP, and several others) as well as individuals, regularly
contribute to and coordinate on update work on the upstream OpenJDK
8 and 11 source code projects, with multiple downstream binary distributions
being built and offered at various places. Binary distributions of OpenJDK
typically make curation choices on contents and packaging, perform
extensive platform testing and verification, and may include various
modifications not included in the upstream OpenJDK 8u and 11u source
code.

Red Hat’s distribution of a OpenJDK is one of those distributions. It differs
in some specific ways from the upstream source code in (described
in e.g. https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2489791 <https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2489791> ) and, like other binary distributions, the source code for it is separately available elsewhere (not as
part of the OpenJDK project). Per the link mentioned ( https://access.redhat.com/articles/1299013 )
the Red Hat distribution is commercially supported specifically on RHEL
and on Windows, with updates available for certain timelines under support
entitlements. The binaries for such updates may also be available for
download without a support contract, but that is probably detailed
elsewhere.

Other distributions are available under commercial support, as well as for
Free download, with varying statements about the length of time they are
expected to continue to do so. E.g. the timeline for Zulu Community support
can be found at https://www.azul.com/products/zulu-community/ , and
includes support for a wide range of JDK versions, Linux variants, CPU types,
and packaging mechanisms. Corretto, Liberia, Dragonwell, and Adopt are
other OpenJDK distributions that come to mind (and there are several others
as well).

It is likely fair to assume that as long as at least one binary distribution exists
that employs engineers to regularly maintain and update the distribution, the
sources for such updates will be freely available, and that most of the changes
will likely end up upstream in the OpenJDK 8u and 11u source code projects.
We all seem to happily work together to coordinate work on an agreed upon
upstream version when it comes to the bulk of bug fixes, backports, and
security fixes, with downstream differences being mostly a matter of curation
choices.

But there is no one company who owns or controls the maintenance of
OpenJDK 8u or 11u source code projects, and the limits on time that one
company or organization’s statements suggest about their plans to
continue providing downstream distributions and updates should not be
interpreted as statements about project’s plans or commitments, or about
what other downstream distributions may or may not end up doing.

Specifically, the link specific provided would suggest Red Hat’s commitment
to 8u lasts to June 2023, while the Zulu Community link shows March 2026
for 8u. And I’m sure there are several other dates one can dig up. This is
all “a good thing (TM)”. It’s a lively and active community.

HTH
Christoph

-----Original Message-----
From: jdk-updates-dev <jdk-updates-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net<mailto:jdk-updates-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net>> On
Behalf Of Dheeraj Joshi
Sent: Dienstag, 20. August 2019 07:14
To: jdk-updates-dev at openjdk.java.net<mailto:jdk-updates-dev at openjdk.java.net>
Subject: Open JDK 8 Road Map

How long Open JDK 8 is supported by  https://openjdk.java.net/
We are currently analyzing impact of upgrading from Java 8 to Java 11. We
need to know for how long JDK 8 will get periodic security upgrades and
general patches for JDK 8 from https://openjdk.java.net/?

Is there a Road map available for public viewing?

Kind Regards
Dheeraj Joshi