Interesting conclusion. This is not like the Flash situation. Both JDK's are acceptable on a technical level. The Sun one is just a bit faster and more polished. In other words: this doesn't really affect the kind of end-users that would be affected by a missing installer for Flash. Oracle is just creating a nuisance for system administrators and developers in a market that Linux is already dominating: servers. These users know how to install the Oracle packages outside of the package system and understand the licensing issue.

The problem here is not GNU/Linux, but Oracle playing politics (again). The result is that they will continue to alienate developers, while their cash cow won't suffer in the short term (hackers aren't responsible for the majority of their business, business-type decision makers are). The decision to focus on an open alternative instead of working around Oracle's antics is what makes GNU/Linux what it is. GNU/Linux isn't just a practical piece of software, but also an idea. That being said, focussing developer time on the OpenJDK seems like a pragmatic move from a practical point of view as well, because licensing reasons are not something you can just ignore when convenient (without exposing your users to a possible lawsuit from Oracle).

"The Sun one is just a bit faster and more polished."

And that is why it is the preferred one! For enterprise stuff you have to have the "more polished" one.

That is what I meant when I said that Oracle is mostly creating a nuisance for the server market. It forces sys admins and developers to jump through more hoops to get the software running on their servers (as well as to keep it updated in large deployments!). That is, those that really need it, because I'm sure some people will just switch to the OpenJDK instead, because it isn't unsuitable for production use either.

Please give me bug reports which shows that openjdk is not ready for production. I will be interested to report them upstream.

The trouble with this sort of argument is that it's not always clear what the bug is, only where it is.

For example, I work on browser-hosted user interfaces that sometimes rely on Java applets. I don't know why an applet frequently doesn't work with IcedTea. All I hear back via customers-of-clients is "Your interface doesn't work on Linux".

The advice to uninstall IcedTea and replace it with Sun's (OK, Oracle's) version is now as routine to our client's support people as telling someone with Windows troubles to reboot was a few years ago. That answer has a 100% success rate with these "bugs" so far, so I don't suppose those support staff are going to change their policy any time soon.

As a software developer, I appreciate that this is not at all helpful to those working on OpenJDK/IcedTea. However, as a guy whose rent is paid by what he earns from his clients, I can't recommend that anyone use IcedTea for anything until its well-deserved (in our experience) reputation for poor reliability is addressed.

I was using a double negative, so I never meant to or did say that OpenJDK isn't suitable for production. Apologies for the confusing phrasing if you misunderstood me, but I was stating the opposite of what you seem to have assumed.

> For enterprise stuff you have to have the "more polished" one.

Actually, you need the one built better, with better and longer term support. There is a lot of enterprisey stuff running on Java 1.2 out there.

I disagree with you. Making good free software improved GNU/Linux position (GCC, Linux kernel, Apache httpd, python and may other successful projects) instead just providing what vendor is shipping binary (drivers for graphic cards, Sun-Java...) All good free software projects would not exist if we ignore them and use proprietary software instead, and community could not have impact on features that are important.

And you can never ignore the possibility of the proprietary software vendor deciding to make your life hard. With free software it's you, not them, who are in control.

And that's what they fear the most.

Sometimes the juice is worth the squeeze.

Only when we squeeze it.

As the author of this "crap", I am taking the opportunity to detail this position.

If you are interested in such issues, you are probably aware that Oracle has made the openjdk-7 the base target development of the JVM. Proprietary versions (sun-java7 is you will) are based on the free version. This is the opposite of the current version (6).

If we do not encourage users to switch to the Openjdk, bugs won't be fixed in the 6 or 7 for a while.

It just seems to me like reinvention of the wheel for its own sake. Why not just make it as easy on the user as possible by providing very easy installs for the most well-developed software, and for more experienced users, continue providing these open-source efforts?

Seems like the same thought process at work that brought us cruft like the Unity UI in 11.04, then forced it on users as default, instead of just offering it as a new, less-stable alternative.

We are not reinventing anything. We are dropping a package which won't be supported anymore. More over, JDK/JRE 7 is already in the Debian archive and available.

Hate to tell you - it's already prime time in business, just not in consumerland. And that's only because it doesn't have MS Office/Photoshop.