Java 8 is still under Extended Support until 2030 (and indefinite sustaining support). Java 11 left Premier Support September 2023.
"Java SE 8 has gone through the End of Public Updates process for legacy releases. Oracle will continue to provide free public updates and auto updates of Java SE 8 indefinitely for Personal, Development and other Users via java.com".
Oh that’s right. My company didn’t want to pay the insane Oracle fees to keep getting support. I think it wasn’t even a discussion once the saw the number, but that’s basically a rumor.
So we have to stick to OpenJDK which means 8 doesn’t receive security updates and is untenable.
Seems like willful incompetence on the company’s part.
Just for note, JDK 8 came from the same time as Windows XP. Sure, the attack surface is different, but if they have no plans on moving forward and doesn’t even want to pay for support, then frankly fck them. Then they just surprise pikachu when a bunch of their user data leaks.
Part of the problem is the changes made between 8 and 17 could be incredibly disruptive depending on your libraries.
If they had stuck to not using sun.* stuff you were pretty safe, but a few very popular things did.
Then somewhere in there a lot of the common server stuff moved from javax.* over to jakarta.*.
Both were needed and very good, but could turn into dependency nightmares. So depending on your app/stack it wasn’t an easy transition.
17 is fantastic though, especially coming from 8. I’m excited about what’s already in 21 (latest LTS) and coming in the next LTS after that.