They're not evergreen. The last major Java release was 9, two years ago. Since then, Java has had a perpetual stream of free support. The very notion of a "sup

They're not evergreen. The last major Java release was 9, two years ago. Since then, Java has had a perpetual stream of free support. The very notion of a "support period" becomes less relevant because what is the version that is being supported? It used to be a major release but that is now gone. The old six-monthly feature releases were also "supported" by patches for only six months. There were no more patches for 8u20 once 8u40 came out, and people were fine with that and not desperate at all. So now that we name a version 12 instead of 9u60 it's not fine? If you like, you can think about it as if we're on Java 9 forever, with an eternal support period. It's just that how the versions are named has changed. People still don't understand the meaning of the new versions and the change to the version naming scheme. With time, they will. In the meantime, some of them still apply old terminology to new concepts and reach wrong conclusions.