HI,
today I was looking at the State of GeoServer presentation and checking what’s going on with
the JDK 8 upgrades.
I already heard bits and pieces before, but today I believe managed to piece it toghether.
The short version is that Oracle JDK has become pretty much useless unless one is willing to pay for support:
- Java 9 has reached its EOL already and it’s now irrelevant
- Java 10 will each its EOL in September and is basically irrelevant already
- Oracle Java 11, released in Septemebr, will be a LTS (aaah!) but only for those that pay extended support (booh!), for anyone else it will be just another 6 months support release.
- Rinse and repeat past Java 11, 12, and 13 no support at all past six months, 14 LTS only if one pays.
See: https://medium.com/codefx-weekly/no-free-java-lts-version-b850192745fb
Well… let’s look at the bright side, if some organization is willing to be sucked up dry to get extended support, they should have
more than enough extra to also sponsor GeoServer upgrades, no? 
And then there is OpenJDK and https://adoptopenjdk.net/
AdoptOpenJDK does not provide any extended support for java 9 or 10. No news here. However,
if their effort pans out, there are some interesting news:
https://adoptopenjdk.net/support.html#roadmap
In other words, OpenJDK 8 will be supported up until September 2022!
And Java 11 will also be supported until September 2022.
Also note that AdopdOpenJDK provides Windows and Mac releases too, for example (mind, untested):
https://adoptopenjdk.net/releases.html?variant=openjdk8&jvmVariant=hotspot
Has anyone already tried these builds?
The funny thing is that even Oracle will provide a bit extra support for JDK 8, up until January 2019 for commercial users,
and Dec 2020 for “personal end users”:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/eol-135779.html
Now, the Java 9 scare has not panned out, nobody really adopted it (see https://jaxenter.com/java-8-still-strong-java-10-142642.html ),
Java 10 is equally irrelevant, but I guess it’s probably time to start looking into java 11… in a relaxed way though,
the world is hopefully not ending this autumn*.
Maybe a winter code sprint?
Cheers
Andrea
*: the AdoptOpenJDK project seems to be at least partially volunteer based, but among the Tier-1 sponsors
there are two interesting names, IBM and (gulp!) Microsoft Azure.
Bit surprised not to see Redhat, I guess they will take advantage of the situation to promote even more
their supported OS version with a bundled supported Java version.
···
GeoServer Professional Services from the experts! Visit http://goo.gl/it488V for more information. == Ing. Andrea Aime @geowolf Technical Lead GeoSolutions S.A.S. Via di Montramito 3/A 55054 Massarosa (LU) phone: +39 0584 962313 fax: +39 0584 1660272 mob: +39 339 8844549 http://www.geo-solutions.it http://twitter.com/geosolutions_it ------------------------------------------------------- Con riferimento alla normativa sul trattamento dei dati personali (Reg. UE 2016/679 - Regolamento generale sulla protezione dei dati “GDPR”), si precisa che ogni circostanza inerente alla presente email (il suo contenuto, gli eventuali allegati, etc.) è un dato la cui conoscenza è riservata al/i solo/i destinatario/i indicati dallo scrivente. Se il messaggio Le è giunto per errore, è tenuta/o a cancellarlo, ogni altra operazione è illecita. Le sarei comunque grato se potesse darmene notizia. This email is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure. We remind that - as provided by European Regulation 2016/679 “GDPR” - copying, dissemination or use of this e-mail or the information herein by anyone other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you have received this email by mistake, please notify us immediately by telephone or e-mail.
