IIRC all the discussion that ended up in the JVM version rollback started in [JCLOUDS-747](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/JCLOUDS-747). The main concern about requiring Java 7 to *run* (which is different than the one required to *compile*) jclouds was closing the door to support Android. If that is our target (which I believe it is), then this change is fine and will prevent us from introducing runtime incompatible changes. On the other hand, if we want jclouds to be *built* with java 6 (I don't think that provides us much value), then this change shouldn't be merged.
Regarding the Animal Sniffer plugin, it is being used in [OkHttp itself](https://github.com/square/okhttp/blob/master/pom.xml#L191-L210) and it is what they use to make sure they are runtime even when [requiring java 7](https://github.com/square/okhttp/blob/master/pom.xml#L36) to build the project, so I can think we can trust it. --- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/jclouds/jclouds/pull/617#issuecomment-64808777
