Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Posted Dec 18, 2011 9:43 UTC (Sun) by geuder (subscriber, #62854)
In reply to: Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin by muwlgr
Parent article: Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Well, I would have preferred to use OpenJDK with my banking applet. But it didn't work. I created a bug report in launchpad and offered my help to debug it but got no reaction from any maintainer. I investigated on which irc channel Ubuntu's maintainers are supposed to hang out, but no reaction there either. So I eventually installed Sun JRE and have at least been able to use my bank for a bit more than a year now.

Now it looks I'm have to change bank (which I should have done anyway because of their incompetent IT strategy), but it has all kind of economical consequences. Or kick Ubuntu / OpenJDK guys even harder. Or just use the one and only PC in the household that is able to dual boot to Windows. 3 not so tempting choices. Sometimes it really sucks to be a Linux guy.

(well there is the 4th choice that the problem has just disappeared by itself in a bit more than a year, need to check again)

(and as I'm whining here a 5th choice comes to my mind, maybe just download OracleJRE from Oracle directly. If I understood the article correctly Canonical does not distribute the new version with security fixes because of some inter-company legal nonsense, which I wouldn't care about)

Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Posted Dec 18, 2011 11:58 UTC (Sun) by tkiss80 (guest, #81876) [Link] (1 responses)

I totally understand your problem, but for the "inter-company legal nonsense, which I wouldn't care about" part I'd like to add the following:

Imagine you have a neighbour who has a contract with a chocolate factory: he gets the chocolate for free, in order to distribute it (e.g. for marketing purposes, it's irrelevant in this example). You get as many as you want from him, and you can be sure it's always fresh and properly packaged (your neighbour takes care of it). What happens when the chocolate factory eliminates the contract? Do you expect your neighbour to steal the chocolate so he can continue distributing? Do you think if you knock harder on his door he will be able to give you chocolate?

Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Posted Dec 27, 2011 17:14 UTC (Tue) by steffen780 (guest, #68142) [Link]

This analogy is completely wrong. Key points:
- Physical objects are not AT ALL the same as thoughts/ideas such as software
- Copying software is not the same as stealing an object, since copying doesn't take away the original, whilst stealing an object does.
- Oracle hasn't stopped giving away their JRE, you can still download it free-as-in-free-beer. They're just being assholes to free software for no recognisable purpose, as they do so often.
- The post you replied to never said anything about kicking Ubuntu to get OracleJRE inspite of this being technically illegal - it talked about kicking them to try to track down and fix the bug in OpenJDK

Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Posted Dec 18, 2011 15:42 UTC (Sun) by teknohog (guest, #70891) [Link]

> maybe just download OracleJRE from Oracle directly

This is how it already works in Gentoo, along with a lot of other proprietary software. You have to download the tarball yourself, but Portage takes care of setting it up.

Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Posted Dec 18, 2011 16:41 UTC (Sun) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link] (2 responses)

> I created a bug report in launchpad and offered my help to debug it but got no reaction from any maintainer.

You might want to file a bug report upstream against IcedTea-Web if the package maintainer is unresponsive: http://icedtea.classpath.org/bugzilla

Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Posted Dec 18, 2011 17:50 UTC (Sun) by gnu_andrew (guest, #49515) [Link] (1 responses)

I'd suggest that too. A lot of the issues with fixing problems with the plugin and banking sites has been that we can't reproduce the problem as we obviously don't have an account with them to login and the code tends to be obfusticated. However, with a responsive reporter who's responsive and willing to try things, some progress may be possible. If you don't get a response in a reasonable time there either, ping either dbhole (the IcedTea-Web maintainer) or me (gnu_andrew) on IRC (#openjdk on OFTC).

Note that the plugin is one of the areas where Sun/Oracle have not released their code as FOSS and, along with the accompanying javaws, the only one not to have any replacement in OpenJDK itself.

Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Posted Dec 18, 2011 20:24 UTC (Sun) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link]

Thanks mjw and gnu_andrew for your concrete pointers and suggestions.

I'll come back to them when I have a bit more time and can overcome my reluctance to address that nasty banking stuff again... I guess chances are still good that I'll do it before migrating to Windows permanently ;)

> A lot of the issues with fixing problems with the plugin and
> banking sites has been that we can't reproduce the problem as
> we obviously don't have an account

Absolutely: I have actually contacted my bank last time when I was fighting with the problem and asked them to provide a demo account. Unfortunately without any concrete results. They promised to retun to the issue later, which they haven't done. Some banks here have a demo account just to show how great their pages are. But the guys with the Java stuff don't.

Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Posted Dec 19, 2011 11:28 UTC (Mon) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link]

> Or kick Ubuntu / OpenJDK guys even harder. ... Sometimes it really sucks to be a Linux guy.

Option 8, find other Linux users with same bank and collect a fund to contract someone to fix OpenJDK applet code to work with your online bank.

It may suck to be a Linux guy if you solely depend on goodwill of others. Sure, there is lot of goodwill around, but you can't depend on it. Free software really shines when people scratch their own itches and contribute back the results.

Ubuntu disabling the Sun Java JDK browser plugin

Posted Dec 27, 2011 17:21 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

You might consider reporting the bug upstream and not deal with the distribution maintainer at all. IcedTea which is really what is distributed under the OpenJDK name has its own bug tracker.