Canonical To Remove Sun Java From Repositories, Users' Machines

New submitter an_orphan writes "Apparently, Oracle's 'Operating System Distributor License for Java' is expired, causing Ubuntu to not only remove sun-java from the partner repository, but from user's machines."

Re:"from user's machines"

[rtfa-troll]

The difference is that automatic updates are optional for Ubuntu, so if you've turned them on you have already opted in to Canonical managing your system. This is especially true because in this case there are security reasons to remove the packages.

Bad summary!

[xavdeman]

From the article: "Oracle, in retiring the ‘Operating System Distributor License for Java’, means Canonical no longer have permission to distribute the package." So it's not that Oracle has lost their right to distribute Java (JDK) or something, but they are retiring the license Canonical is using that granted them the right to distribute it with Ubuntu. The summary also states (correctly) that Ubuntu will remove the sun-java package from the repository and user's machines, but does not state why: “Due to the severity of the security risk, Canonical is immediately releasing a security update for the Sun JDK browser plugin which will disable the plugin on all machines.” Ubuntu’s Marc Deslauriers wrote in a mail to the Ubuntu Security Mailing list. “This will mitigate users’ risk from malicious websites exploiting the vulnerable version of the Sun JDK.” Summarizing: there are two things going on here, one is that Oracle has revoked the license Canonical is using to distribute Java (JDK) freely so it will not come with Ubuntu anymore. Java must now be downloaded from Oracle's site. Second: The java jdk package will be removed from user's computers because of severe security holes. Java must now be downloaded from Oracle's site. So, two things, one article and one terrible summary.

OpenJDK

[Anonymous Coward]

Sensationalist headline is sensationalist.

Ubuntu will still have the OpenJDK, which is maintained in part by Oracle. "Sun Java" refers to a specific JVM installation.

Re:Bad summary!

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenJDK is still the default, and still distributed. And like TFA pointed out, the Sun/Oracle version is old and has security issues anyway.

SUN JAVA is not the only JAVA

[xee]

Ubuntu uses OpenJDK Java by default. Users have for years had the option to switch out the default OpenJDK Java for an alternative package in the 3rd party repository which is Sun Java. That alternative is being removed. In fact, it has never been available in the latest Oneiric 11.10 release of ubuntu. In the latest release OpenJDK is the default & the only java available from the package repos.

Most people use OpenJDK on Ubuntu and for them this news means nothing.

If you're using an older release (11.04 or earlier) and you have sun-java installed, simply remove the package & install default-jdk. problem solved.

Re:Is this April first?

[Yvanhoe]

On Linux, most java developers consider that OpenJDK is the default implementation and that Sun JDK is more or less discontinued.

OpenJDK is a GPL release of Sun's code. It is the official Java (SE) implementation :

http://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/entry/moving_to_openjdk_as_the [oracle.com]

Re:"from user's machines"

[Anonymous Coward]

What "difference" are you talking about? There are *no* automatic updates on Apple stuff (OSX or iOS) - you have to agree to them each time. Please stop trolling about things you clearly don't know anything about.

Re:And OpenJDK still not working

[jaymz666]

doesn't work with crashplan, either

Re:Why do they need a distribution license?

[Trepidity]

OpenJDK is based on the open-sourced version of Java, and Canonical continues to distribute that (and it's the default on Ubuntu). What's being removed is the official Sun (now Oracle) Java packages. They used to include those as well, because there were some compatibility issues with OpenJDK and some apps (especially commercial apps).

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because nothing breaks if you do that.

The only reason I have Sun's JRE on my system is that I have software that won't run on OpenJDK because of improper dependency on com.sun.* packages. Is Canonical going to distribute a com.sun jar for use with OpenJDK?

Re:"from user's machines"

[Targen]

While I love to bash on Ubuntu on every (reasonable and merited) opportunity available, and they certainly aren't scarce, this isn't one of them. As others have already pointed out, the packages were removed because Oracle will not license updates, and the latest distributable version has important security vulnerabilities. It would be irresponsible to keep the current packages in the distribution and illegal to update them.

More importantly, this move is exactly what Oracle wants done, and no, it's not any sort of evil move. Dalibor Topic explains in his blog [livejournal.com] the reasons behind this change in licensing: OpenJDK is (the basis of) the reference implementation for Java 7 [oracle.com], and the Sun (now Oracle) JDK implementation is now (going to be) based on OpenJDK; the gratis, non-free licensing for the Sun (now Oracle) JDK was a temporary solution that's reached the end of its applicability:

That non-open-source license was introduced by Sun Microsystems back in 2006, when the open-sourcing of Sun's Java SE implementation was announced at JavaOne, as a stop-gap measure until OpenJDK matured. It was a way to enable Linux distributions to take Sun's JDK 5.0 and provide their own 'native packages' based on Sun's non-open-source bits.

It was always intended to be a temporary solution, and the final solution has always been migrating to OpenJDK. Yeah, it sucks, compatibility is far from complete, and things will break as a result of this move, but it's always been the plan, and it's not Canonical fucking it up this time. For reference, as one of the comments in TFA points out, Debian did it too [debian.org].

In short: nothing to see here; move along. If this makes you lose sleep, maybe you shouldn't have used Java, and maybe you should migrate to something better.

Re:An the point is?

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Wouldn't Oracle want to have their platform deployed as widely as possible?

What Oracle wants is money, they don't care anything else. The new license forced Debian to stop distributing Oracle Java from the non-free repositories, I'm not surprised this happens to Canonical.

Re:just replace your cars water pump

[xee]

You're confused. OpenJDK is the OEM pump in Ubuntu. Sun java is the aftermarket optional part which isn't an available option on ubuntu cars anymore. (Though you can still do it yourself.)

Re:"from user's machines"

[toriver]

"Already demonstrated" how? To my knowledge, NO app has ever been remotely killed on iOS, though they have said they have the ability to do so. However, both Amazon Kindle (with the unlicensed "1984" edition) and Google (repeatedly to nuke apps that turned out to be trojans) have done so.

Re:Not for long?

[Nemyst]

Samsung Series 9. Asus Zenbook. If you want to get extreme, Sony VAIO Z.

Unless obviously you meant it in the way that it runs OSX, in which case I'll just shrug.

Re:"from user's machines"

[tomhudson]

Well, you're going to have a problem in the future, because Oracle is replacing Sun's Java with OpenJDK. It's going to be the "real" java from now on. The summary, like usual, left this important fact out.

Re:An the point is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry dude, I know of a highly secretive website where you can get the java warez. Are your ready for it?

OK, here it is: java.com [java.com]

Ta-dah! We'll show Oracle that they can't take their java away from us!

Re:"from user's machines"

[rtfa-troll]

Nor has any app ever been remotely killed on Ubuntu. FUD much?

Not just that no app has been killed by Ubuntu, but if you switch don't opt in to automatic updates then Ubuntu doesn't even have the ability to do remote kills without your agreement, which, despite the fanbois moderation of my above post, has been confirmed to exist by Steve Jobs himself. [telegraph.co.uk]

Re:"from user's machines"

[jo_ham]

That's not true. I have a Lion system right here and it's not an option.

You can have Software Update fetch updates in the background automatically and let you know when they are downloaded, but it *absolutely does not* install them automatically. You *must* authenticate with an admin account first.

You can turn off background downloading too, it's merely a convenience factor.

Re:An the point is?

[jedidiah]

It's not just Java. You can get Oracle's flagship database products like that. You've always been able to. They've been pretty permissive like that for pretty much forever.

Re:"from user's machines"

[LizardKing]

As someone who has to support Java applications (with Swing based front ends) on Windows, Mac OS X, and various Unix flavours I can say with some confidence that OpenJDK is as good as an Oracle branded Java runtime, and better than an IBM branded one. We (meaning my employer) support our apps on IBM's Java runtime when OpenJSDK isn't an option, but our preference is now Oracle's releases or OpenJDK with no real preference for either. The significant thing is that only a year ago this wasn't the case - we considered Oracle's releases to be the preferred platform over OpenJDK. Since then, we have seen no bug reports that have turned out to be down to bugs in OpenJDK that didn't exist in Oracle's releases. Of course if you're fucking about and using unpublished API's from the com.sun packages, then that would explain your claim to not support OpenJDK, but then by definition of what is a "certified Java application", if you are using such API's then you have no reason to complain that your apps don't work as expected under OpenJDK.