The meaning, or not, of “LTS”

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

I’ve heard a few contributors report that they’ve received advice along
the lines of, “since JDK 17 is an LTS we should focus on stability, and
avoid doing major enhancements.”

This suggests that the stability of non-LTS releases is not important,
but nothing is further from the truth.  We should focus on stability
in every JDK release, since every JDK release is meant to be ready for
production use.  That a release is designated an LTS release is no
reason to hold back on innovation.

If you have an enhancement that will preserve stability and is ready to
integrate then, by all means, please proceed with the usual high level
of care and consideration.  Whether the target release is an LTS or not
is, in almost all ways, completely irrelevant.

- Mark