Why is OpenJDK 8 supported for longer than OpenJDK 11?

Issue

• The OpenJDK Lifecycle shows that OpenJDK 8 will be supported until Nov 2026, nearly 2 years after OpenJDK 11 support will end in October 2024.
• Why was OpenJDK 8 supported extended from June 2023 to Nov 2026?
• Why does support for OpenJDK 11 end before OpenJDK 8?

Resolution

Red Hat recognizes that moving past Java 8 can be a significant undertaking due to the high number of changes that were introduced in Java 11, major ones highlighted in the solution Major differences of OpenJDK 11 and OpenJDK 8.
However, moving past Java 11 is not as significant a change given the short gap between the subsequent expected LTS (Java 17, in September 2021 ) and the availability of interim releases every 6 months to enable testing against the newest changes.

Therefore, taking this into consideration, Red Hat decided to extend Java 11 to match with the ELS 1 EOL of Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 (which is October 31, 2027), explained in Red Hat JBoss Middleware Product Update and Support Policy. By doing so, Red Hat provides sufficient time for customers to migrate to the next supported version of Java. For ELS support on both JBoss EAP and OpenJDK, an ELS subscription would be required for both EAP and OpenJDK.

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