Dear all,
The OME project has evaluated the level of Java 5 usage across all of the libraries, clients and server components which we support, from Bio-Formats and its ImageJ plugin through to OMERO.server and its clients. We have found that the level of Java 5 usage has steadily declined throughout 2012 and 2013 to very low levels at the present day. Most components currently have zero Java 5 usage. A very small number of OMERO.insight users and a very small proportion of Bio-Formats users are still using Java 5.
In the absence of any major blocker, we plan to remove support for Java 5 in the upcoming 4.4.9 release, and in the next 5.0 beta release. At this point users and developers will require Java 6 or Java 7 for these and future releases.
Note that Java 5 has had no public updates since April 2008, and was end of life in October 2009 (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html). In particular, please be aware that it no longer has security updates.
We would be interested in hearing feedback if you are in a situation where it is not possible to upgrade to a more recent version of Java, and this change will cause problems. In particular, it would be useful to have the details of the system you are using.
Regards,
Roger Leigh
