Oracle:

Hey everyone remember when we invented Java and it was secure and then we kept adding badly thought out features until it became terribly insecure

well we're doing that again only 10x faster so all good bro

also we're fixing browser security by taking it completely out of the browser

hope you enjoy

https://jaxenter.com/java-10-interview-series-part-4-143144.html

<< Greg Luck: Yes, it is too much. The community only wants a new version of Java every 3-4 years.

Oracle is speeding up Java releases combined with reducing the support period for these new releases unless you are a customer of theirs. Java 9 and Java 10 are only supported for 6 months! So, Java 9 is now unsupported as of March 2018!!>>

<<Why would you use a version of Java you cannot get new updates for? Java 9 and Java 10 should be considered beta versions from a production standpoint.>>

<<And the jury is out on Java 11. If Oracle aggressively pursues monetization from Java, then Java 11 will have a short public (free) maintenance window, then it too will be considered non-production.

I think almost the entire Java user base is going to stay with Java 8 and await Oracle’s final position on all this after their monetization strategy plays out. We will likely be waiting a few years more on this.>>

Even the Java developers on Reddit are only slowly realising just how much trouble they're in.

https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/870xbv/java_11_jdk_roadmap_the_new_features_you_can/

<< We are just moving to JDK8. Anything later is just pie-in-the-sky for us right now.>>

<<My stack doesn't even run on Java 9 thanks to internal classes being hidden. Still waiting for some 3rd-party components to be updated...>>

That sound is the wheels, on fire, flying off and landing in a chicken coop

I feel like this whole thing is being driven entirely by the "cloud" end - ie, bespoke Java software done inhouse and on own servers, offering web services - with ZERO THOUGHT to people who run Java as *clients*.

And even then, zero thought given to support for even IDEs, let alone old existing code which 9,10,11+ is breaking spectacularly.

But our corporate data system and our backup system are web-based with Java applets.

I think the corp system is on Oracle Forms even?

All this will just.... stop working in 2019.

Has anyone given any thought to what happens?

Anyone?

At all?

Certainly not any of the Java hype websites. They don't seem to care about 'running Java', just 'programming in Java' with the latest and hottest vulnerabilities added to the language core.

@natecull Java is backwards-compatible, but not forwards-compatible.

What the new moves are meant to do is get ops teams across the globe out of the long-standing habit of saying things like "we're just fine with Java 7" when Oracle & the OpenJDK community releases Java 9.

Developers get frustrated because they can't use the new shinies, and there's no real incentive for libs/frameworks to update because most of the world can't run the new shinies yet anyway.

@bobstechsite

Java 9 is already *desupported*.

Java 10 is out, but will be desupported in September.

Java 11, if and when it ships, MAY be supported like an actual product - but may require paying lots of money to Oracle.

And even then, it won't run in the browser!

To access our Oracle server!

HOW IS ANY OF THIS GOING TO WORK???

@natecull as I don't join the Oracle until the 29th I'm probably not the best person to answer that question.

Read my toot again, my intention was to state an example! A Java 8 app should run fine on JRE 10 (in theory).

This practise you're decrying is something home users have experienced for years. The old version of Java gets deprecated and replaced with a new one, then their apps keep working like they did before.

@bobstechsite I'm talking about appLETS. In the browser.

Our corporate web systems use them.

The official word from Oracle is that applets are simply going AWAY.

@bobstechsite

https://www.java.com/en/download/faq/jdk9_plugin.xml

<< Oracle has deprecated the Java browser plugin in Java Standard Edition Development Kit 9 (JDK 9)... This browser plugin will be removed from the Oracle JDK and JRE in a future Java SE release>>

which is nice but, like, we have applets, we use them

@natecull got it. Your thread was quite long so I must have missed it.

If it helps, Oracle have foreseen exactly this problem: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/migratingfromapplets-2872444.pdf

Obviously there's some work involved. But they gave the world 2 years' warning!

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/24/oracle_reveals_java_applet_api_deprecation_plan/

@bobstechsite Right, "we are turning off all your software, in two years"

Imagine if Microsoft just said "all your windows programs? They'll all stop working in two years".

It's gonna an interesting September.

@bobstechsite Like there's this big scramble to save Flash apps?

Imagine that, but lots of corporate systems, and nobody's yet quite realised they're getting turned off.

@natecull it's worth remembering that "out of support" doesn't necessarily mean "stops working" for any given version of technology.

It may be that ops teams' short term solution is "let's not upgrade" & sandbox the system. If they still want support though then that still means spending money.

The most sensible solution is that people heed 2 year deprecation warnings (and multiple reminder emails if they're on subscription plans) & upgrade their systems or convert to "Web Start".