What does LTS mean for OpenJDK? (original) (raw)

Stephen Colebourne scolebourne at joda.org
Sun Aug 19 19:03:57 UTC 2018

Thanks Mark, Andrew, Martijn,

Its good to see things coming together. Having $free pre-built Java 11 binaries for at least 3 years from at least one source is key to the success of the ecosystem going forward.

If I understand correctly there will be no public $free Oracle JDK for 11 at all. As such developers will be using the OpenJDK build at http://jdk.java.net . I think this is fine, although it will surprise some no doubt.

However, this is only during the first 6 months of Java 11. After that developers wanting the $free 11 binaries have to go to some other site. This inconsistency (changing where to find the download) does not seem great to me Would an OpenJDK equivalent of http://jdk.java.net clearly attached to and linked from OpenJDK itself be a suitable solution to the problem?

thanks Stephen

On Sat, 18 Aug 2018 at 10:15, Martijn Verburg <martijnverburg at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all, I'll add AdoptOpenJDK's Positioning on this inline. On Fri, 17 Aug 2018 at 18:33, Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> wrote:

On 08/17/2018 05:36 PM, Stephen Colebourne wrote: > The LTS (long term support) release Java 11 is nearly upon us. But > what does LTS mean in the context of OpenJDK? I'd like to try to get a > clear statement of fact in written form, particularly from Oracle. I have been discussing with some other organizations sharing the burden of supporting jdk11, and we'll make a public statement when we're ready. Before then, I'll say what I can. OpenJDK is a community project. It's up to the community to support it. In practice this means that a group of organizations and individuals will maintain each OpenJDK LTS release for some period (TBA for 11, but it's sure to be a lot longer than six months.) I am certain that there will be a jdk11u project, and it will be properly and professionally run. I think it's likely that I'll be leading the project, but someone else may be chosen. Given that we don't know when Oracle will end their support it's hard to say any more. Completely agree with this and in a way this is positive thing for OpenJDK. I see a lot more organisations and individuals now committing, or seriously thinking about committing extra engineering folks and into OpenJDK. I think it's fair to say that Oracle has shouldered the majority of the burden (thanks Oracle!) for a long time and it'll be good for everyone if that burden is shared more evenly than it has been. As part of the discussions Andrew mentioned, AdoptOpenJDK offered to build, test and make available OpenJDK LTS binaries for the major (and several minor) platforms. This isn't yet set in concrete but folks broadly thought that was a good idea. So the challenge of having a build and test farm for this joint effort is solved. ---- Some extra statements: AdoptOpenJDK will not offer commercial support. AdoptOpenJDK will take and triage bug reports but will send those bug reports to the appropriate upstream project (OpenJDK, Eclipse OpenJ9, SAPMachine etc) unless it was an AdoptOpenJDK build / test / infra issue. AdoptOpenJDK as an entity will not be backporting patches, i.e. There won't be an AdoptOpenJDK 'fork/version' that is materially different from upstream (except for some build script patches for things like Win32 support). However, I imagine many of the volunteers (a chunk of who are OpenJDK authors / committers / reviewers) will join in the jdk11u project / effort that Andrew mentioned, so you'll see crossover of people. We think Andrew is the eminently sensible choice to lead jdk11u and there were more than enough organisations and individuals that indicated they would commit real long term engineering support. I'm personally very comfortable that we'll have a successful, professionally run jdk11u project from Oracle and then subsequently by others (most likely lead by Andrew). For the rest AdoptOpenJDK is adding more robustness, security and testing support to the build farm so we'll be ready when jdk11u requires that service. We welcome more contributors with those slightly rarer skill sets of bash scripting, ansible and other devops style languages and tooling.

> Java 10 has had public $free support, with two security updates over 6 > months and pre-built binaries at http://jdk.java.net/10/ > > What will Java 11 get from Oracle? > - 6 months of public $free updates with binaries published at > http://jdk.java.net > - 3 years of public $free updates with binaries published at http://jdk.java.net > - something else? > > Note! The request is about $free pre-built binaries ready for > download. We all know people can pay money for support to multiple > vendors. > > > Is any other group (eg. AdoptOpenJDK, RedHat) planning on providing > security patched pre-built binaries for $free? If so, for how long? Red Hat is committed to support OpenJDK for its customers for some time. Our policy for current versions can be seen at https://access.redhat.com/articles/1299013#OpenJDKLifecycleDatesandRHELversions Given that Red Hat has an upstream first policy, we will make sure that all security patches are applied to upstream OpenJDK releases and our builds are TCK'd. With regard to providing binaries, I'm aware that any jdkll update project after Oracle ceases to support it will need to provide binaries for several platforms. (java.net is Oracle's proprietary site, so it doesn't make any sense to put them there.) The project will decide exactly where to put those binaries, but in my opinion as long as they are properly authenticated and easy to get it doesn't really matter. Finally, please let me assure you of one thing: whether by Oracle or Red Hat or someone else, JDK LTS releases will continue to be supported. We all have a lot invested in Java, and we won't let it fall. --- AdoptOpenJDK's current support policy is listed here: https://adoptopenjdk.net/support.html As an extra clarification, support means "We'll keep building the binaries". As mentioned previously AdoptOpenJDK won't as an organization be backporting patches to jdk11u, but several of our volunteers will be participating in that effort. I'll echo Andrew's comment that lots of folks including Oracle are heavily invested in Java. As an example, the AdoptOpenJDK build farm has >300 volunteers from established OpenJDK organisations as well as new folks who came together when they saw a need for collaborating around OpenJDK binary production. HTH - happy to answer any follow up questions. Cheers, Martijn

> Please provide links. Hmph. -- Andrew Haley Java Platform Lead Engineer Red Hat UK Ltd. <https://www.redhat.com> EAC8 43EB D3EF DB98 CC77 2FAD A5CD 6035 332F A671

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