I can't find a reference off hand, but from following along the JDK-Dev mailing list the philosophy is not to remove sun.misc.unsafe until all the features are

I can't find a reference off hand, but from following along the JDK-Dev mailing list the philosophy is not to remove sun.misc.unsafe until all the features are available in other public APIs. They're well aware of how important it is. Hopefully someone else can chip in with a better reference or I can find an appropriate cite to back this up. Edit: Ah, here's an example: https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/396 https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/396 > It is not a goal to remove, encapsulate, or modify any critical internal APIs of the JDK for which standard replacements do not yet exist. This means that sun.misc.Unsafe will remain available.