diff --git a/hadoop-project/pom.xml b/hadoop-project/pom.xml
index 48928b508e318..205588c3e776c 100644
--- a/hadoop-project/pom.xml
+++ b/hadoop-project/pom.xml
@@ -2399,6 +2399,7 @@
             <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
             <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
             <configuration>
+              <source>8</source>
               <additionalOptions>
                 <!-- TODO: remove -html4 option to generate html5 docs when we stop supporting JDK8 -->
                 <additionalOption>-html4</additionalOption>