We use Derby daily. Our customers use Derby daily. Our sentiments precisely match Roy Minet's: "Retiring Derby" sounds unnecessarily scary. What it means is ending further development and support, but Derby will continue to be alive, well, and available. Is that correct?
I have used Derby for years and have yet to have any problems with it. I employ a good range of SQL capabilities, but try to avoid (what I would consider) excessive complexity. Derby is good and valuable software and I thank you profusely for it! I'm about five years behind (using 10.14.2.0), but have not so far been motivated to move to a latter version (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). Of course, there are alternatives to Derby as well, but I have not so far seen any reason to change. What I am most interested in is your advice for someone in my situation. 1. Stick with 10.14.2.0. It's possible that some change in a latter version could cause a problem. 2. Move to (the apparently final version) 10.17.1.0 and "standardize" on that. There are some enhancements and bug fixes in there that I may encounter the need for in the future. 3. Move to one of the other embeddable RDBMS. (Which would you recommend?) We are eternally grateful to Rick, Bryan, and the Derby community. It's a wonderful piece of software. Jerry Lampi ________________________________ From: Rick Hillegas <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, September 22, 2025 12:26 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; Derby Discussion <[email protected]> Subject: [DISCUSS] Retiring Derby It has been almost two years since the Derby sub-project published a new version. I myself have no interest in managing another Derby release. Bryan is the only other active Derby committer. Bugs are reported occasionally but they are never fixed. Mailing-list activity consists almost entirely of spam rejects. No-one has volunteered to refresh the Derby website with the new Apache logo. I think that the time has come to retire Derby. As I understand it, this means putting Derby into a read-only state: o The Derby repository would become read-only. o Distributions would be removed from the Download tab. o The developer and user lists would be closed down. Mailing list archives would still be browsable. o A prominent banner would be added to the Derby website landing page, stating that Derby was now retired and read-only. o The Derby website, JIRA, and wiki would be placed in read-only mode. Before calling a retirement vote, I would like to give the developer and user communities an opportunity to discuss this change. What are your thoughts? -Rick
