I keep getting the following error trying to start Birt RCP Report Designer 4.8.0-20180626
Birt RCP Report Designer 4.9.0-20220315 works without any problems. What could be the problem? I downloaded both from the official site
I have JDK 17 running.
BIRT 4.8 needs a Java version between Java 6 and Java 8. I'm not absolutely sure, but AFAIK it even needs an Oracle JRE.
BIRT 4.9 needs Java version >= 11.
And no, Java definitely isn't always backwards compatible. Only most of it, most of the time :-)