The future of OpenJDK6

[Andrew Hughes]

----- Original Message -----
> On 03/14/2013 02:44 PM, Andrew Hughes wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >> On 03/13/2013 07:47 PM, Andrew Hughes wrote:
> >>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>>> Oracle ended public updates of JDK6 at the end of last month.
> >>>>  Many
> >>>> people seem to have concluded that the OpenJDK6 project will
> >>>> therefore
> >>>> end at the same time.  This is incorrect: OpenJDK6 will
> >>>> continue,
> >>>> but
> >>>> will be maintained by the community outside Oracle.
> >>>
> >>> 1.  Oracle had three main roles in relation to OpenJDK 6; acting
> >>> as
> >>> gatekeeper over which patches were accepted into the repository,
> >>> providing security updates and making releases.  The third of
> >>> these
> >>> doesn't seem to be addressed above.  Will new releases of OpenJDK
> >>> 6
> >>> be made?  IcedTea for OpenJDK 6 uses release tarballs as a base
> >>> so,
> >>> unless there are further releases, none of the changes made
> >>> upstream
> >>> in OpenJDK 6 will be consumed by IcedTea downstream.  I believe
> >>> we
> >>> are already overdue a new release as there is no release of
> >>> OpenJDK
> >>> 6 containing the last three sets of security updates.
> >>
> >> Indeed, we need to make a new release of OpenJDK 6 with the
> >> security
> >> patches.  There may be infrastructure issues here as we don't
> >> AFAIK
> >> have access to Oracle servers on which to place release tarballs.
> >>  Or
> >> do we?
> > 
> > Not as far as I know, but I don't see how it matters where they are
> > located,
> > as long as people are notified of the location.
> > 
> > I'm more concerned that they happen promptly and tarballs are
> > produced with
> > the same form and contents. Hopefully, there is some obscure
> > Makefile target
> > that creates them but I'm not aware of it offhand.
> 
> OK.
> 
> >>> 2.  What many people actually see as OpenJDK 6 at present, in the
> >>> form of their GNU/Linux distribution package, is actually IcedTea
> >>> for OpenJDK 6.  Unlike 7, where the changes in IcedTea are just
> >>> to
> >>> make it "distro-ready" (using system libraries, etc.), there are
> >>> now so many backports and other fixes local to IcedTea 6 that it
> >>> is effectively a different beast altogether.  Will OpenJDK 6 be
> >>> open to accepting some of these fixes, many of which were added
> >>> to
> >>> the proprietary version of JDK 6 maintained by Oracle a long time
> >>> ago, so the two can eventually be in sync?
> >>
> >> That would, in my view, be a huge waste of effort.  It also risks
> >> breaking things for no net gain.
> > 
> > The gain would be to shift the focus from IcedTea6 to OpenJDK6.
> > Pretty much no-one uses OpenJDK6 directly, as far as I'm aware.
> >  All
> > the distro packages I've seen use IcedTea6 to build it with these
> > patches applied.  When I last tried OpenJDK6, I had to push four
> > changesets upstream just to get it to build on a modern system.
> > 
> > If things were broken with these patches, we'd surely know about it
> > because everyone using OpenJDK 6 packages is using them with these
> > patches.
> > 
> > I agree it's a lot of wasted effort for no technical gain.  It
> > would
> > be simpler and easier to just stick with IcedTea.  But that does
> > make OpenJDK 6 a bit pointless, to be frank.
> 
> I think we'll have to agree to differ on that question.
> 

Ok.  Maybe you could explain what kind of changes you do foresee going
into OpenJDK? Changes from IcedTea6 were proceeding upstream
under Oracle's leadership (albeit very slowly) and your original e-mail
suggested the acceptance policy, in general, wouldn't be changing.

> Andrew.
> 
> 

-- 
Andrew :)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

PGP Key: 248BDC07 (https://keys.indymedia.org/)
Fingerprint = EC5A 1F5E C0AD 1D15 8F1F  8F91 3B96 A578 248B DC07