Re: Is it time to remove sun-java6?

[Matthias Klose <doko@debian.org>]

On 11.10.2009 11:03, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Bernd Eckenfels:
>
> > In article<[🔎] 87d44vrp09.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de>  you wrote:
> > > Not necessarily.  It could also be a genuine compatibility issue with
> > > the IcedTea plug-in.
> >
> > We regularly see Bugs different from the ones on the Sun distribution. And as
> > a commercial software vendor we just dont support OpenJDK for that reason
> > (with a normal support contract).
>
> Apart from font issues, we've received very few bug reports on
> OpenJDK.  I know of one C2 bug in stable which I probably should
> report, but there is no isolated changeset we could backport, so it's
> only fixable by moving stable to a newer IcedTea release. 8-(

Then let's talk about how to get a current openjdk-6 build accepted for 
stable-updates. There are hardly new features except for the plugin (which you 
even could consider as bug fixes compared to the sun plugin).

> > Since other software vendors try to reduce the number of supported
> > platforms as well, this is a strong reason for still providing a
> > debian package for commercial JRE.
>
> Well, that's their decision, but it also means that OpenJDK is doomed
> to fail.

No, try to educate software vendors to test against a spec, not a product. If 
TCK compliance is an issue, find somebody who does or who does sponsor the 
certification.

> Most hard OpenJDK bugs (those affecting Hotspot or core libraries) are
> also present in Sun's proprietary releases, but Sun periodically
> bundles fixes for them with critical security updates, so they tend to
> vanish after a while.

and unfortunately this upgrade process is not yet very transparent... it's an 
issue shared across linux distributors.

  Matthias