(Re-sending as I accidentally sent to just Vladimir)
Nice.
+1 to moving to gradle though I don't really have a strong opinion on the subject.
+1 to ditching JDK 1.6 and JDK 1.7 and requiring *at least* a min version of 1.8. If anybody wants to support something older than that let them hire your or Dave to custom build it for them :).
(Would be nice to codify a driver <> JDK version support timeline as well though does not have to happen immediately.)
+1 to general clean up of the unit tests. If it's easier to do via JUnit 5 then sure. I'd have that be a separate PR.