I have recently seen a Twitter message like this:
It looks like all the rumor is started by this post on omgubuntu with a very unfortunate title. It is not java that will be removed. It is a Sun Java, a closed implementation, that can no longer be distributed by Canonical, because Oracle has sunset the "Operating System Distributor License for Java" [1].
But please do not cry - as it was further [2] explained, Sun's implementation was no longer a match for OpenJDK. I guess the situation could be summarized with those words:
The kind is dead. Long live the king!It is actually a big thing in Java world. Oracle currently uses OpenJDK as a base for its java packages, so, who knows..., perhaps total control over java will be handled to some open source community?
We might say hello to Java in Eclipse Foundation at some time ;-). Well, that's at least what I would wish for.
Just a small note for those of you who thought about abandoning Ubuntu and installing other distributions, like Fedora - let me quote to me a couple of words from fedoraproject.org:
We try to always do the right thing, and provide only free and open source software. We will fight to protect and promote solutions that anyone can use and redistribute.So, go ahead, and install Fedora, but because of its security, open-source purity or lack of Unity. But not because of Sun Java, which is not there!
[1] http://jdk-distros.java.net/
[2] http://robilad.livejournal.com/90792.html
Just to make it crystal clear ... Sun Java never was part of Fedora, and since couple of years ago Fedora (and RHEL, BTW if you need some confidence) had OpenJDK as its default Java (we used gcj before that).
ReplyDeleteSounds good but there is a catch: The JDK which you can download from the Oracle website is *based* on OpenJDK but it's not the same - for some core components, OpenJDK uses open source reimplementations which just don't have the same quality as the old, closed source ones, yet.
ReplyDeleteSo if you use Java for production (like running Eclipse on it), OpenJDK is not (yet) an option for you.