[Mageia-dev] Removal of sun java

Fri Mar 30 15:04:54 CEST 2012

Hi Dimitrios, *,
+
+On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Dimitrios Glentadakis <dglent at gmail.com> wrote:
+> [...]
+> I interpreted Guillaume's approach as about the impact that can have Mageia's decisions in a
+> system and the respect of the user and his system as a priority, but it was finally interpreted
+> as he wants something for his personal use or he does nt care about a security issue, for the
+> same reason.  At least, is what i got.
+
+Well - that is what he said:
+"Don't push security updates to users by replacing package A by package B."
+Or: "I don't care that other people will continue using software with
+security flaws, since I know what I am doing."
+
+And I strongly oppose to this attitude/point of view. Not limited to
+Java, but in general. When a package *cannot* be updated and thus
+there will never be a security fix (and not just a delay of a couple
+of days/weeks), then the only sane thing for a distro is to replace
+the package by something equivalent. In the case of Java it is just so
+much easier, as there already exists a package that virtually does the
+very same thing.
+
+He wants to keep java for a special need, so that "I don't want this
+package A to be removed" is his own personal use. I'm sure that >98%
+of the users will not be amused when you tell them after a year or two
+that they have been running a version of java that has a big security
+flaw for all that time, just because one didn't want to obsolete the
+package.
+
+Of course "obsoletes" shall not be taken lightly. But i the case for
+Java, the rationale that oracle gives for no longer having the
+distributor's license is that OpenJDK and Oracle's java are now very
+close, that they are no longer separate things, but that Oracle's Java
+just builds on top of OpenJDK.
+
+For people just in need for "java" there will hardly be any
+difference. People with a special need for specific versions of java
+can still download and install java from Oracle's site.
+
+It is not a case where installing OpenJDK would make using Oracle's
+java impossible/that you have to install OpenJDK in the first place.
+
+ciao
+Christian
+