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My understanding is: Oracle publishes updates for latest release until the next release. Then they drop maintenance of that branch, and RedHat picks it up (at

My understanding is: Oracle publishes updates for latest release until the next release. Then they drop maintenance of that branch, and RedHat picks it up (at least they did for 8, 11 and 17) and keep supporting/backporting fixes, with the help of other vendors and the community. So when you are using 8/11/17 from RedHat/Adoptium/Corretto/you name it, you are actually using what RedHat provides to its customers as LTS, unless they have some private build, which I seriously doubt. I wasn't able to find out what exactly Oracle does for their private LTS releases, do they use the public maintenance branch as a base of their private branch? Or do they continue their own private branch independently from what the community maintains? That would mean that the older the branch is (say jdk11u) the more differences there are between Oracle JDK and what you get from RedHat/Adoptium/... On top of that Amazon provides support for Corretto on AWS, if you are using e.g. EC2 you get it as part of the fees, not exactly free, but cheap, considering you already pay for the VMs. I appreciate any corrections/clarifications.

pron 3y ago
> Oracle publishes updates for latest release until the next release. This is changing every now and again. For example, the Oracle JDK builds for JDK 21 will be offering free updates for three years (https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/ https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/) > and keep supporting/backporting fixes, with the help of other vendors and the community. So when you are using 8/11/17 from RedHat/Adoptium/Corretto/you name it, you are actually using what RedHat provides to its customers as LTS, unless they have some private build, which I seriously doubt. This is where things get complicated, and given that there are all done by companies that fund their Java operations by selling support -- just as Oracle does -- clearly they don't offer their paid service for free. What you get for free is some backports from the mainline, i.e. only the intersection of the old and current JDK is maintained. Now, I believe that Red Hat specifically offers the same builds as they do to customers, that is not what you want if you really care about a fully maintained JDK. And that is for the following reason: If you're stuck on an old version, that probably means you're using some aspect of the JDK that's been removed or else you'd be using a new version. But the only things we remove are things that aren't widely used. This means that the fix you need is probably not the same as one some other customer who is stuck on the old version needs. If you're not a customer, your issue will not be fixed because no one offers original work on old releases for free. Of course, if your software is heavily maintained, the safest, most secure, and cheapest option is to always use the current version rather than an old one. Once you get used to doing that, it's also the easiest.
kaba0 3y ago
Due to the GPL, eventually all commits will find their way into the OpenJDK repos, it is sort of similar to how vulnerabilities are handled — with paid support, you will be the first to get updates. Also, since Oracle does most of the development on the main branch as is, they have deep understanding of those patches - while during backporting it may not be as expertly implemented. But Oracle also backports commits to older JDKs, e.g. Java 8 is supported for 2030, though that is paid. The main takeaway is that it is still a singular project where bugfixes definitely, but even most custom features find their way eventually back to mainline (e.g. it was the case that Microsoft made some specific feature for their usecase, that was later merged).

pron 3y ago

> Oracle publishes updates for latest release until the next release. This is changing every now and again. For example, the Oracle JDK builds for JDK 21 will be offering free updates for three years (https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/ https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/) > and keep supporting/backporting fixes, with the help of other vendors and the community. So when you are using 8/11/17 from RedHat/Adoptium/Corretto/you name it, you are actually using what RedHat provides to its customers as LTS, unless they have some private build, which I seriously doubt. This is where things get complicated, and given that there are all done by companies that fund their Java operations by selling support -- just as Oracle does -- clearly they don't offer their paid service for free. What you get for free is some backports from the mainline, i.e. only the intersection of the old and current JDK is maintained. Now, I believe that Red Hat specifically offers the same builds as they do to customers, that is not what you want if you really care about a fully maintained JDK. And that is for the following reason: If you're stuck on an old version, that probably means you're using some aspect of the JDK that's been removed or else you'd be using a new version. But the only things we remove are things that aren't widely used. This means that the fix you need is probably not the same as one some other customer who is stuck on the old version needs. If you're not a customer, your issue will not be fixed because no one offers original work on old releases for free. Of course, if your software is heavily maintained, the safest, most secure, and cheapest option is to always use the current version rather than an old one. Once you get used to doing that, it's also the easiest.

kaba0 3y ago

Due to the GPL, eventually all commits will find their way into the OpenJDK repos, it is sort of similar to how vulnerabilities are handled — with paid support, you will be the first to get updates. Also, since Oracle does most of the development on the main branch as is, they have deep understanding of those patches - while during backporting it may not be as expertly implemented. But Oracle also backports commits to older JDKs, e.g. Java 8 is supported for 2030, though that is paid. The main takeaway is that it is still a singular project where bugfixes definitely, but even most custom features find their way eventually back to mainline (e.g. it was the case that Microsoft made some specific feature for their usecase, that was later merged).