I've been using Derby for several years as the main database for one of my production projects, and I must say it has always proven to be reliable.
I fully understand the situation described by Rick. Without active developers and with bugs remaining open, it's difficult to maintain the project. I hope retirement can be avoided, but I'm realistic: without a community ready to contribute concretely, it doesn't make much sense to continue. I hope the downloads will remain available at least on Maven Central. I will continue to use Derby - what's there works perfectly for my needs. In any case, I would like to thank Rick, Bryan, and all the contributors for the excellent work done over these years. - fed On Mon, 22 Sept 2025 at 19:26, Rick Hillegas <[email protected]> wrote: > It has been almost two years since the Derby sub-project published a new > version. I myself have no interest in managing another Derby release. > Bryan is the only other active Derby committer. Bugs are reported > occasionally but they are never fixed. Mailing-list activity consists > almost entirely of spam rejects. No-one has volunteered to refresh the > Derby website with the new Apache logo. > > I think that the time has come to retire Derby. As I understand it, this > means putting Derby into a read-only state: > > o The Derby repository would become read-only. > > o Distributions would be removed from the Download tab. > > o The developer and user lists would be closed down. Mailing list > archives would still be browsable. > > o A prominent banner would be added to the Derby website landing page, > stating that Derby was now retired and read-only. > > o The Derby website, JIRA, and wiki would be placed in read-only mode. > > Before calling a retirement vote, I would like to give the developer and > user communities an opportunity to discuss this change. > > What are your thoughts? > > -Rick > > > >
