Cassandra 2.0.12 and Datastax Enterprise 4.6 both recommend using Oracle Java SE 7. However, public updates of Java SE 7 will cease in April 2015 meaning security updates and bug fixes will not be available without a support contract with Oracle.
My preferred option would be OpenJDK to avoid legal hassles with Oracle's click-through license (technically I can avoid the problem, but legally I cannot). However, it seems that OpenJDK is not recommended for 'reasons'. I can only see minor reasons why it doesn't work (using the string 'icedtea' in the version string) and no recent discussions, so I'm assuming it is not being tested and should be avoided.
Should I be doing new deployments with Oracle Java SE 8, OpenJDK 7, OpenJDK 8, or some other variant?