A Picture of Java in 2020
&gt; On top of this, Oracle introduced bi-yearly releases, and so not all releases are supported for a long time so Java 9, Java 10, Java 12, and Java 13 are only supported for 6 months, which is probably why they all have such a very small number of users.<p>Java feature releases have <i>always</i> been supported for 6 months. 7u4, the feature release that introduced G1, was supported for 6 months; 7u6, the feature release that introduced JavaFX and support for Linux on Arm was supported for 6 months; 7u40, the feature release that introduced Java Flight Recorder and Mission Control was supported for 6 months;  8u40, that introduced AppCDS and support for Mac OS was supported for 6 months. What seemed to be supported for more than six months were the major releases that these big feature releases were considered to &quot;support&quot; (which, back then, were called &quot;limited updates&quot; to the major release). What&#x27;s changed is that major releases are gone. If you want to think about it using old terminology, all feature releases are now part of the &quot;support&quot; for the last major release -- 9 -- which is supported for all eternity or as long as Java lasts, whichever comes first.<p>The fact that after major releases were abolished, the feature releases were given new names has certainly had a big psychological effect, but I think the main issue is that many companies are severely overestimating the cost of the one last major upgrade past 8, and severely underestimating the monetary gains in hardware&#x2F;hosting due to the lower footprint and higher performance of new versions.