Hi, I've been pretty deep inside the Logback code. In fact I wrote a comprehensive explanation on the bootstrap procedure here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/38317149/421049 We've created a library called Csar that allows one to configure various configuration "contexts" within the same JVM, for a program that has different locales at the same time, or different logging configurations for different users, etc. I explain this all at https://dzone.com/articles/creating-local-globals-with-csar . Our Clogr library used Csar to allow different logging configurations (or even different logging libraries!) to be set up for different parts of the application. (Imagine a server with different user sessions, each session being logged to a different file.) We got this working great for Logback. In fact we integrated it into our software development course; read about it here: https://clogr.io/learn (See the section on Clogr and compartmentalized configurations with Logback at the bottom.) The problem is that the initial bootstrap sequence of Logback was brittle, relying on a static class that could appear across modules. The appearance of the Java 9+ module system prohibits this altogether. But I had already created a ticket https://jira.qos.ch/browse/LOGBACK-1196 for how to fix this, long before the Java system was released, using the standard service provider mechanism. But now I see at https://logback.qos.ch/news.html that Logback will remove contexts altogether. This will break our ability to configure loggers separately in our application, and to use Clogr to manage them. Why remove this? There was nothing wrong with the simple context selection. The problem was how it was configured, using a static classes that had to be placed in a module outside its package. Just implement https://jira.qos.ch/browse/LOGBACK-1196, please. Don't break our application. I even provide much of the code to do this at LOGBACK-1196. What can we do to keep this from being removed and breaking our library? Why do we need to remove it in the first place? Why not fix it? (Ironically I was just told that Log4j 2 supports contexts, so maybe our application will have to switch back to Log4j. But I would prefer to have Clogr support both Logback and Log4j 2. There is no reason to remove this capability from Logback.) As I mentioned two years ago in LOGBACK-1196, I'm willing to contribute to fixing this. Let me know how to go forward. Thanks, Garret Wilson President GlobalMentor, Inc.