s presently supports Java 6, 7, and 8 which imposes extra
development costs and prevents uptake of new language and library
features including try-with-resources, NIO.2, and HTTP client
improvements. Oracle ceased public updates to Java 6 in early 2013[1]
and jclouds could use this to guide its support strategy. The jclouds
developers would like to understand how many users continue to use Java
6 and what prevents upgrading to newer versions.
A slightly tangential bit of input: we (day job) have just made Java 7
a requirement for the latest version of our products ;-), and from the
resulting discussions with users it's clear that there are plenty of
companies out that that have no plans to move to Java 7 as standard
any time soon (motivated, in at least a couple of the cases, by Red
Hat's continued support for Java 6[1]).
This is slightly tangential because these companies are not directly
developing on top of jclouds as far as I know, but they may well be
using it as part of other stuff they have installed.
ap
[1]
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2013/3/red-hat-reinforces-java-commitment
