Developing after end of support

Hello,
I am not a real developer, so two stupid questions. I’m developing themes/plugins for the version Confluence Server 6.13.8. For this I’m currently using the SDK 6.3.12.
Everything is working fine at the moment. 1. To which version of the SDK can I update to without hesitation. 2. Let’s assume my company doesn’t buy a cloud license for Confluence. How long can I continue to develop the existing plugins for Server? In plain language, would there be problems from February 2024 if I use, for example, the command “atlas-package” because the system recognizes that it is for an old version?
Thanks,
Volker

Welcome to the Atlassian developer community @VolkerWeinreich,

To my knowledge, the SDK is built on Maven, and the underlying Maven repository retains versions of our products indefinitely. Therefore, in general, you should not be afraid to upgrade to new versions of the SDK. That said, I have seen changes in JDK break our products; hence, be very careful about using the same version of the JVM for the SDK as you are running for your production instance. If the SDK drops support for that JVM, then don’t upgrade.

In theory, you can certainly continue to use your current SDK and Server versions with no specific “drop dead” date. Server licenses (and the SDK) are perpetual licenses. However, the catch 22 is that no support is provided for EOL’d versions; hence, if something environmental breaks your version (like the JDK problem described above), Atlassian has no obligations to fix or even help resolve the problem.

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Thank you for the reply, @ibuchanan. That helps me in any case already.