Can anyone familiar with the Java ecosystem chime in here? Is this more of a marketing ploy it are they actually releasing features at a significantly faster rate?
Yes, there are new features and I would say at an accelerated rate (though slightly arbitrary). It also means features that were being punted back from releases (like modularity in jigsaw) get a chance to surface without waiting several years, which in turn allows releases to hit schedules since the downside is reduced.
sure. It used to be that major releases were tied with major features. InvokeDynamic on 7, Lambdas on 8, Jigsaw on 9. So since these were the features that were expected, the release only shipped when they were fully baked. Now is on a train-release model. You get whatever is ready to ship (big features can't delay a release anymore).
Java 8/9 releases where a disaster from a organizational perspective.
The quicker pace with smaller changes will hopefully help with this friction.
Yes, it's been getting faster and faster. We were stuck on Java 6 for 5 years and now we're getting stuff every 1-1.5 years.
New features are released every 6 months. Is there another extremely popular language with a quicker release cadence?
While Rust is not "extremely popular", Rust releases every 6 weeks.
Yes, there is also monetisation of LTS versions which ppl seem to over see