I'm stating what I want in my tools. I've been very clear that, while I am entirely convinced that they are wrong and will suffer for it, they can do whatever the hell they want and I'll respond in kind. Where is the lack of empathy here?
And, as coldtea notes, lashing themselves to boat anchors hasn't done Java, or Java's owners, much good throughout its history.
There's nothing wrong with saying what you want in your tools. But it's rather weird (though a common sort of move on the Internet) to follow that up by saying that the Java maintainers are making the wrong decision and therefore they are courting disaster. Why draw that conclusion? I'm assuming you're not so much of an egotist to think your desires are that important?
A more reasonable conclusion would be that what I want, or what you want, and what's good for Java have little to do with each other. You should use another language that fits better (since you're fortunate to be free to switch), and Java will probably be fine.
Because the history of tech and business is "stagnation kills"? I cannot envision a mindset where "we exist because we can't be excised from decades-old businesses" is a desirable place for Java and the JVM to be. If Oracle thinks they can grow the JVM off of stagnant customers who can't afford to move, they're nuts. If they think forward-looking customers are going to settle when competitors are getting better, faster around them, they're also nuts.
I want healthy competition, and so yeah, my jimmies are rustled when they're making bad decisions because even if I exit the JVM ecosystem for my own purposes, one of the major players being too afraid of their own customers to fix a central rot of their product is bad for us all.
The issue is whether it's actually "central rot" or not. That's not an objective statement. It depends on your point of view. If you're putting your customers first, you have to look at if from their point of view.
Startup thinking is that you never have enough users, so you have to appeal to a lot of new users or you die. Companies selling consumer products are similar - you have to convince a lot of new customers every year. But that's not where Java is. It's going to last as long as COBOL and Fortran and C++. Making small, careful changes and paying attention to migration costs so you don't leave people behind will work fine.
For a business with many large, satisfied, long term customers, the software can survive as long as they're willing to pay maintenance. The userbase may slowly fade, but the customers they have aren't going to be too quick to move if things are working. If anything, disruptive changes will make them move away faster since they're forced to do something, so why not do a rewrite that's bigger impact?
Making migration easy is not "stagnant", it's good customer service, allowing old code to be modernized a bit. If you know the real cost of upgrades, a more dramatic change may not be worth it.
And for those of us doing new projects, well, there are a lot of other shiny toys to play with. We don't have to disrupt everything.
And, as coldtea notes, lashing themselves to boat anchors hasn't done Java, or Java's owners, much good throughout its history.