02 November 2009, 14:21

End of Service Life for Java 5

Originally introduced in 2004 with major language changes, the fifth version of Java reached "End of Service Life" (EOSL) status last weekend. To ensure the future availability of critical bug fixes, Sun Microsystems recommends that users either migrate their applications to the latest update of the Java Standard Edition (Java SE) or make use of the "Java SE Support for Business" service, which offers guaranteed support for old Java versions for up to 15 years.

The three previous Java versions (1.3.1, 1.4.2) already reached EOSL status quite some time ago, and Java 1.3.1, for instance, is now only updated for Solaris. The support for 1.4.2 ended on the 30th of October 2008. Once a version's End of Service Life has been reached, no further security updates are released for this version. Users should, therefore, consider updating all the way to Java SE 6 (currently update 16). As Java installation programs don't uninstall old software, previous versions need to be removed manually, for example via the Windows control panel.

See also: