What you're describing is real in some places (Java's ecosystem also includes much/most of Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Uber and many others like th

What you're describing is real in some places (Java's ecosystem also includes much/most of Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Uber and many others like them), but it is not a result of the new release model. The free support period of JDK 8 ended, like all versions before it, after five years. People who'd want to stay on 8 would have had to pay even if the release model stayed the same. As to the changes, they aren't "near breaking." There have been few breaking spec changes, and they were very small. What breaks is what had always broken code: reliance on internal undocumented classes that change. The reason this happens more now than in the past is not due to spec backward compatibility -- we're as compatible as ever for most intents and purposes -- but because Java was stagnant for a good while, starting with Sun's dying days, and Oracle has been steadily increasing investment in the platform, which means more work done, which means more implementation changes. I think few would say this is a bad thing, but it also means that more code that does what it's warned not to do -- breaks. We're trying to stop this by turning on encapsulation in JDK 16, which would gradually stop libraries from hacking into the JDK and becoming stuck at any specific version.