&gt; They will switch from the basic jar (zip) format to a more optimized one.<p>Straight from the article:<p>&gt; A modular JAR file is like an ordinary JAR file in all possible ways, except that it also includes a module-info.class file in its root directory.<p>&gt; A modular JAR file can be used as a module, in which case its module-info.class file is taken to contain the module’s declaration. It can, alternatively, be placed on the ordinary class path, in which case its module-info.class file is ignored<p>So no.