Java is still available at zero-cost

Nice idea on clarifying what the word "free" means in this context (gratis, not libre) by prefixing it with a dollar sign. This is the first time I saw this, is this usage widespread?

I was burned, badly, when try to port a huge ERP from .NET 1.1 to 2.? (if I remember the numbers correctly). Other projects get the slowdon, but that was truly a nightmare. That my brain trauma make forget much of it.

After that, I move very very fast. I prefer to hit "small" pains in short-term that try to do a huge jump later.

This mean that as long as I'm coding in a project (I'm contractor and do freelancing) I upgrade to whatever stable version my tools trow at me ASAP. And even minor versions or sometimes betas.

Not only language(s) - I keep at the same time different codebases in different languages, one main active plus maintenance-, I try to move everything: OS, RDBMS, IDEs, Editors, Frameworks, Libraries, etc. I probably hit "upgrade" every few days per week!

ONLY after the project stabilize and I do a few changes per-year, I stop doing that. And if the project somehow accelerate again I try to port ASAP.

How crazy is this? If the ecosystem I'm doing is nuts (ie: js) very clearly this reckless behavior show that.. QUICKLY.

...and then I need to pay more attention to my depencencies (keep them small) and choses only stable stuff.

I hit breaking changes not as often. And when see something painfull then I pin versions and keep them for a while.

This mean that I move ASAP and stay current as much as possible. I slow down when enter production, and slow down/stop again when the customer(s) stop requesting work.

This demand to use logging and have some testing, fast deployment/rollback, automate backups and use source control, very soon in the project, but this is good things anyway. (and maybe have a few VM or dockerized stuff but not as many despite more than 20 years doing crazy).

So far, this have work great for me, and never get stuck for months in rewrites like in the past. I get use to rewrite fast, that compensate to the fact that I'm a slow developer.

I've never seen it either and found it to be immediately clear. I wonder what similar prefixes could be used for "libre not gratis" and "libre and gratis". I know that "Free" could stand in for the second, but it's more ambiguous than "$free" was in this article.

That sounds like a disaster, the developers at oracle no longer have any personal incentive when it comes to producing quality, maintainable software because it is no longer a problem they have to deal with. Because they're not feeling any personal pain from bad decisions they will no longer learn from them.

This is close to the consultancy business model that's been at the root of so much bad software.

The question is, and we won’t know the answer until this is been going on for a while, how many releas(es) back will continue to get security updates from the community.

Will they decide on arbitrary long-term releases? Maybe 11 and 15 and then 19 get three years of support?

Or will the community extend the length of security patch releases by some sort of fixed margin, say 6 to 12 months, and leave it at that.

Right now no one truly knows how it’s going to work out.

I find it interesting that a company that pushes out updates much more frequently than every six months is uncomfortable updating the software THEY use every six months.

It’s not like there should be big breaking changes problems, you can rely on the TCK to know that your code will continue to work.