GitHub user chrisdutz added a comment to the discussion: Which is the minimal Java version plc4j should support
In the past we have supported Java 8 and while in general I would say: Yes, more users are better", the past has shown, that more users just means more work for us ;-) While in other regions of the IT world usually more users brings in more contributors, for some reason in the automation space more people just means more work. They open issues, and if you don't fix them with topmost priority, they close the issue, complaining about how shitty support is. We just decided to invest our available resources better. Because keeping things compatible with Java 8 cost's time ... There are many dependencies, that no longer support Java 8. There usually are CVEs and other vulnerabilities and incompatabilities when sticking with these ... if we stuck with these old versions, we'd have to invest time into finding workarounds, ensuring CVEs for these old libs don't effect the codebase. This is all time we then wouldn't have to work on other things. So we decided to give up on Java 8 and rather move forward. After all ... we asked several times: "Does anyone need Java 8" and I think we got only one person actually saying that. All others "just immagine that it would be better" without actually saying it. So as long as not a significant amount of people/companies publicly admit that they are using PLC4X and could use that ... as going back would require work ... work that's totally not fun ... also being wiling to finance the work on it, I see no chance, that we'll be going back. At least I will not do that. In other projects, I even recommended, that providing a Java 8 backward compatible fork might be something someone would be willing to maintain as a commercial alternative. This way the costs of maintaining the super-old Java support are covered by the people causing this need because they want to save the money of updating Java. GitHub link: https://github.com/apache/plc4x/discussions/1059#discussioncomment-9978827 ---- This is an automatically sent email for dev@plc4x.apache.org. To unsubscribe, please send an email to: dev-unsubscr...@plc4x.apache.org
