Under a proposal put forward by Oracle on September 6, there will be highlight releases of Java, made by one or a few important new innovations, every six months. Every three years, the feature versions will be a long-term maintenance release, with the next long-term maintenance release, to be named Java 18.9, coming in September 2018. The version label of 18.9 specifies the year and month of the release’s entry.
Java 9’s feature announcement status does not refute its point, Oracle argues. The organization believes developers will need it for the new capabilities it brings, despite its release classification. Some people, especially developers, will require hopping on JDK 9 right endlessly to access its new features, said Georges Saab, vice president of the Java platform society at Oracle.
However, companies running applications in the product may want to remain for the next long-term release, providing Oracle and authors of third-party Java libraries and frameworks time to move out any bugs in the major new functionality.
“This is no different from the way from early adoption cycles of major announcements,” Saab said. Updates for long-term maintenance releases are to be free for at least three years. These releases are provided to enterprises preferring security, enabling them to run large apps on a single release.
The next point release following Java 9 would be Java 18.3, due next March. Aside from innovation and long-term support releases, there would be update announcements for feature releases, limited to determining security vulnerabilities, bugs, and regression issues.
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