Timeframe for JEP-411 completely removing SecurityManager APIs

[Sean Mullan]

Hello Scott,

On 4/25/22 2:25 PM, Scott Stark wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm Scott Stark of Red Hat, and a member of the Jakarta EE platform dev 
> group (EEPD). I'm currently coordinating the Jakarta EE 10 release that 
> is targeting June of this year (2022). The removal of the 
> SecurityManager as described in JEP-411 has been a topic for the EEPD on 
> may calls this year. Recent discussions make it clear that any 
> SecurityManager alternative would need to be taken up by the EEPD, and 
> such an effort is going to be a non-trivial undertaking, and may not be 
> addressed at all.
> 
> A general concern among vendors in the EEPD is the timeframe for the 
> code that bridges between the JVM running with and without a 
> SecurityManager instance needing to be updated. Such code is the subject 
> of this JEP-411 paragraph:
> 
> "In feature releases after Java 18, we will degrade other Security 
> Manager APIs so that they remain in place but with limited or no 
> functionality. For example, we may revise AccessController::doPrivileged 
> simply to run the given action, or revise System::getSecurityManager 
> always to return null. This will allow libraries that support the 
> Security Manager and were compiled against previous Java releases to 
> continue to work without change or even recompilation. We expect to 
> remove the APIs once the compatibility risk of doing so declines to an 
> acceptable level."
> 
> Of particular interest is the timeframe for "remove the APIs once the 
> compatibility risk of doing so declines to an acceptable level".
> 
> Vendors in EEPD would like to see Java SE 21 ship with a migration 
> feature along the lines of the proposed "AccessController::doPrivileged 
> simply to run the given action, or revise System::getSecurityManager 
> always to return null" behaviors.

Can you clarify what you mean by "a migration feature" and also provide 
some background as to why vendors in EEPD would like to see this? Do you 
mean something like a system property that enables the degraded behavior 
as described above?

> Is there some metric for tracking "when the compatibility risk of doing 
> so declines to an acceptable level."? I believe the EEPD vendors would 
> like readiness of their projects and upstream dependencies to somehow be 
> included in any such tracking.

So, first we do not yet have a proposed target date for when we would 
like to remove support for the Security Manager (SM) from the JDK. By 
removing support, I mean that the JDK would no longer include a SM 
implementation. However, I don't anticipate that any SM specific APIs 
would be degraded *prior* to removing SM support from the JDK.

Some APIs will likely be degraded as described above at the same time we 
remove support for the SM from the JDK.

As for when the APIs will actually be removed, this will most likely be 
a longer period, possibly several JDK releases. We recognize that many 
libraries and applications will need time to adapt to the changes and 
remove dependencies on the APIs. We have tools that check open source 
repositories for API dependencies and are able to provide us with data 
that helps assess the compatibility risk. However, I can't give you a 
timeframe for API removal yet.

HTH,
Sean