Just my 0.05 CHF as a bystander... Reasons not to change could be: - Developers want to use the latest toys but may sometimes forget about the users. - The reason for a higher JDK may be triggered only by some special feature while the majority of the code would work just fine by itself with a lower JDK. Maybe some core edition could use JDK X while an extension component with the additional feature could require JDK X+1. - Too early adoption of a new JDK (currently JDK 7) could be a serious acceptance killer (and therefore an incubation risk here). The lower the JDK, the larger your possible audience. - JDK EOL is a decision by the manufacturer of the JDK. It does not always mirror the realities in the wild.
Polling the community is always a good way and gives you interesting data. See [1] what we did in Apache XML Graphics Commons some way back as an example. We switched from JDK 1.3 to 1.4 as a consequence, but only switched to JDK 5 about a year ago. [1] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics/UserPollOct2007 On 19.09.2011 23:45:55 Svante Schubert wrote: > Am 19.09.2011 23:23, schrieb Nick Burch: > > .. > > > >> What is Tika's reason to stick with JDK5? > > > > I think the most recent discussion on it was: > > http://lucene.472066.n3.nabble.com/Hudson-build-is-unstable-Tika-trunk-394-td1818975.html > > > > > > > >> ODFDOM's reason to use JDK 6 is its need for the ODF package > >> encryption & signature feature and even JDK 7 comes along with > >> improved ZIP access of NIO2, therefore I will from my current point > >> of view I will vote to switch to JDK in July 2012 when JDK 6 is EOL. > > > > If you have a reason to change, then you can, I was just suggesting > > that you consider a major version bump along with it to make it clear > > to everyone > > > > POI switched to needing JDK 5 back in 2009, and we still sometimes get > > people asking about letting it run on JDK 1.4! > The pure existence of some people desiring some thing, is not already a > reason for an offering. There is always desire for everything and there > might be even fools out there. It is quite the opposite, there should be > a good reason to stick with the old JDK version. > > Neglecting new features, keeping multiple JDK versions on development > machines, multiple JDK test runs, time that could be spend on > enhancements, the risk of security breaches on all involved machines > with outdated JDKs.. all this for what benefit? > > The question should not be why should we change, it should be why should > we NOT change. > > But perhaps it is just a different way of thinking... > > Regards, > Svante > Jeremias Maerki
