The culture for us leads to more problems imo. Tests aren't required. We have > 100 legacy applications (most C#, but some java). I'm currently working on porting a webapp developed 5 years ago, written on jdk6 (I think) using Hibernate 4.x.y, to java 11. There's no tests for the webapp. The majority of the code was written by contractors. I've removed hundreds (if not 1-2 thousand) of lines of commented out or dead code before I even started refactoring. In this case, which I agree is probably an outlier, updating takes too long. Or maybe I'm too inexperienced.
In my managers eyes, they see how long it's taking to migrate to JDK 11, and they don't want that for every new "major release" (12, 13, etc)
How long to manage from what version? There was one huge major version between 8 and 11 -- 9, the last one ever. So if you go from 8 to 11, then you're basically doing one major release, plus two feature ones.
> Tests aren't required.
That's unfortunate, because even patch releases can break your application (and possibly at a probability that's not significantly lower than that for a feature release, although they are both low). In fact, this happened in 11.0.2/8u201[1], which was possibly more disruptive than any of the recent feature releases. Both feature and patch releases require the same amount of testing on update. If someone thinks they don't, then they are very deeply misguided.
Getting support is good, but having an understanding of the platform is also good. Having good tests is probably better than both :)
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/ba79hh/beware_of_comp...
You need to upgrade to a new JDK every couple of months if you want to stay secure even if you stay on LTS. You are simply assuming that upgrading to patches is easier than upgrading to feature releases. I don't believe this is true, certainly not over a long duration.
The new feature releases are time-based and were originally meant to be called 18.3, 18.9, 19.3 etc. Don't be confused by the fact that eventually people preferred the Chrome-like version naming scheme to mean that the new feature releases are major ones; they are not. In fact, the probability that your application would break by a patch release and by a feature release is not all that different.
We want the feature release process to be gradual and cheapest overall. The LTS path is meant for those who for some reason need a less gradual process than either the feature releases or the old model.
Of course, as an Oracle employee, I value your business, and I hope you choose to buy our support (that includes more than patches) even if you switch to the gradual update process.