Open JDK 8 Road Map

Sent from my iPad On Dec 19, 2019, at 6:07 AM, Langer, Christoph <christoph.langer at sap.com> wrote: ﻿Hi Joshi, the right list for this question is rather 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> On Behalf Of Dheeraj Joshi Sent: Dienstag, 20. August 2019 07:14 To: 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