Totally agree with everything said above On Thursday, April 25, 2019 at 12:31:36 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote: > > Hi all, > > 3½ years ago, we announced 2.8.0-beta1 and that it now required JDK 7, and > that started quite a long discussion: > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-web-toolkit-contributors/TzsINiDf5xg/discussion > A few days ago, there's been renewed interest into upgrading the Jetty > version GWT is using (for reasons I don't support, but that's orthogonal to > the point): https://github.com/gwtproject/gwt/issues/9606 > Upgrading Jetty however means requiring JDK 8; and *we have people > volunteering to do this work*. > > We're in April 2019, Oracle just gave the keys of OpenJDK 11 updates to > RedHat, them already being the stewards for OpenJDK 8 and 7. > JDK 6 is dead and buried (Oracle's extended support ended last December, > and it looks like even Azul Systems –the company that, to my knowledge, > sells the longest support– no longer provides paid support for OpenJDK 6 > either) > OpenJDK 7 will receive free updates for only one more year (June 2020), > though some vendors will provide paid support 'til 2022 (e.g. Azul, even > providing "passive" support –whatever it means– 'til 2024); for Oracle JDK > 7, Oracle's Premier Support will end in July this year (tick tock tick > tock), and extended support will last 'til 2022. > OpenJDK 8 will receive free updates until June 2023 (4 years from now, > almost the same time that has passed since 2.8.0-beta1, just sayin') > For people sharing code with Android, correct me if I'm wrong, but latest > tooling improvements (D8 > <https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/d8>) mean that you can > use libraries targeting JDK 8 even on older Android devices (basically, D8 > integrates retrolambda into the Android toolchain), so *even Android is > no longer an excuse.* > > *Maybe it's time to switch to JDK 8 as the new baseline for GWT*: by the > time we release a 2.9 (who knows when), OpenJDK 7 will only have months to > go (tick tock, 14 months from now). > > Fwiw, my reasoning for mostly/only caring about free updates to the JDK > are: > > - AFAICT, GWT receives no money. Some companies (possibly?) dedicate > time for maintaining GWT, but it mostly runs on the free time and free > will > of a few people (I wouldn't even count myself in any longer) > - Companies that run those older JDK versions likely pay for support. > If they have money for that, they can also build their own version of GWT > that still supports those older JDK versions (either adapting the most > recent GWT version to bring compatibility with older JDKs, or backport > fixes to older GWT versions). > - Companies that run older JDKs without paying for support, besides > being crazy (particularly if their servers are exposed on the Internet), > can IMO live with older GWT versions too (for JDK 7, in a year from now, > that'll still include GWT up to 2.8.2, the current latest release) > >
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