Concern about Java 7u40 timeline

[Sam Reid]

JDK7 Team,

My team expressed concern when I mentioned that the Java 7u40 release 
was being pushed back two weeks to the second week of September.  Our 
software relies on Oracle's Java and Java Web Start to work, so this 
will make it very difficult for fall classes to use our award-winning 
[1] educational materials - used over 40 million times per year. I fear 
they will get a negative impression both of our group and of Oracle 
software.  I know that many steps must be completed to release a new 
update to general availability, but if there is anything that can be 
done to accelerate this timeline it would be appreciated by us and our 
many users.  Additionally, if there is something that we can do to speed 
up the process or help prevent similar issues from happening in a future 
release, please let us know.  One more thing, JDK-8017174 is still not 
listed in the j7u40 features & changes [2] even for build 35 so I am 
still a bit confused about that.

Thanks!
Sam Reid
PhET Interactive Simulations
University of Colorado Boulder

[1] http://thetechawards.thetech.org/the-laureates/stories/1647
[2] 
http://download.java.net/jdk7u40/changes/jdk7u40-b35.html?q=download/jdk7u40/changes/jdk7u40-b35.html