Sun JDK & Android AOSP

Posted Dec 16, 2011 19:04 UTC (Fri) by mikov (guest, #33179)
In reply to: Sun JDK & Android AOSP by jspaleta
Parent article: Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Uh-oh, I don't see a .deb package on Oracle's site.

No use pretending like this is a harmless unavoidable logical step from Oracle. Removing the DLJ has absolutely no benefit for OS distributors, developers or users and it does cause severe problems for everybody ... except Oracle.

If the "official" JDK is so close to OpenJDK, and if Oracle is providing "gratis" packages anyway, where is the harm in allowing Ubuntu/Debian/etc to package them for everybody's convenience??

I can't help but see as the next step in Java's unavoidable death by the hands of Oracle. Especially if they succeed in killing Dalvik as well.

Sun JDK & Android AOSP

Posted Dec 16, 2011 19:28 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (4 responses)

I'm not saying it isn't a headache. I'm saying its exactly like the situation was back in 2005 that everyone prior to the formation of Ubuntu was dealing with already with Java.

It'll be interesting to see what Debian decides to do with the sun-java6-jre package in nonfree which ironically were derived from Canonical's partner repository packages.

And really you shouldn't be too upset that Oracle isn't building debs. Even for those of us who use rpm based distributions, the rpm packages provided by Oracle (and by Sun back in the day) aren't particularly stellar. There's a reason why the jpackage project exists and encourages people to rebuild rpms using their nosrc approach instead of the Sun/Oracle packages to build well formed rpm packages.

And we've already seen examples of Debian doing this sort of workaround when redistribution of the code is not allowed by the license. I'm pretty sure the standard debian and Ubuntu flash-plugin package has historically had to work around a lack of redistribution rights and pull the flash-plugin payload at package install in what is essentially a fake package wrapper that sets up the dependencies correctly and what not. I'm sure a similar deb packaging technical workaround can be found for the oracle jre6 bin if there is enough desire to do it.

-jef

Sun JDK & Android AOSP

Posted Dec 16, 2011 19:53 UTC (Fri) by mdeslaur (subscriber, #55004) [Link] (2 responses)

Debian has already removed it from the archive:

http://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/sylvestre/2011/10/25/rem...
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=646524

Sun JDK & Android AOSP

Posted Dec 16, 2011 20:20 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

With that bit of historic information in hand from Oct, the move by Canonical is even less newsworthy really and should have been expected.

Also worth noting the the deb bugreport discussion stresses migration to openjdk instead of trying to support the download packaging hack used by flash plugin package. Seems all the important considerations are all old news.

-jef

Sun JDK & Android AOSP

Posted Dec 17, 2011 6:25 UTC (Sat) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

For Debian stable/oldstable it seems that it will stay around. Although non-free is not supported by the Debian security team, it sounds like they might issue a DSA stating that there are unfixable security issues and strongly encourage switching to OpenJDK.

Sun JDK & Android AOSP

Posted Dec 17, 2011 17:04 UTC (Sat) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]

Prior to the DLJ, there was a "java-package" tool that did exactly what you describe (but imho was much more robust than the flash installer).

Someone may reintroduce it, or support could be grafted into a generic packaging helper tool such as 'game-data-packer' (which could rename and lose the 'game-' prefix).