[AtlasBarfed]

Basically yes.

Longer answer: devs back in the day couldn't really grok the difference between green and real threads. Java made its bones as an enterprise language, which can have smart programmers, but they will conversely not be closer-to-metal knowledgewise. Too many devs back in the day expected a java thread to be a real thread, so java re-engineered to accomodate this.

I think the JDK/JVM teams also viewed it as a maturation of the JVM to be directly using OS resources so closely across platforms, rather than "hacking" it with green threads.

These days, our high performance fanciness means the devs are demanding green thread analogues, and go/elixir/others are seemingly superior because of those.

So to remain competitive in the marketplace, Java now needs threads that aren't threads even though Java used to have threads that weren't threads.