Jay: Yep, sorry it’s not Free yet – working on that ;-) With respect to other systems such as *BSD, the problem is that it’s not just a matter of distribution of existing binary bits, so I couldn’t do the “easy” fix to the distribution license to provide a palliative for the interim. Rest assured that the *BSDs are next on my list to address – I welcome contacts to help discuss the issue regardless of the kernel in use, please send me private mail to webmink-at-sun-dot-com.

Hi! Thanks for commenting. You are correct; the new packages from Sun are not free as defined by the DFSG. In fact, they are not free as defined by most anyone. That’s why noone who knows what they are talking about should have posted anything to that nature, though I have already seen some half-informed and misleading blog posts as early as last night.

Also, note that the JRE and JDK are in non-free, not contrib. Those are two distinct sections as defined by Debian Policy. As you point out, they are both not part of Debian proper, which is the section referred to as main.

So what are hurd-i386 and kfreebsd-gnu supposed to do? Aren’t we the universal operating system?

It’s nice that Sun’s making it easier for so-called “Linux” operating systems to distribute closed-source binaries of the JDK; don’t get me wrong. But I’m still waiting for Sun to close on their promises to promote an *open* system.

I guess I can see Sun’s point of view. After all, there are hundreds of distinct forks of perl, and the lack of WORA there has destroyed perl as a critical component of Internet infrastructure.

First, the license has no definition of what Linux really is. That license sez “‘Operating System’ means any version of the Linux or OpenSolaris operating systems”, but as we’re all aware by now, Linux is a kernel, not an operating system.

And second, as a generalization, Sun doesn’t understand what Open Source means. “Open Source Means No Control” (paraphrasing jwz). This means that if I think Sun has made a stupid mistake, I don’t have to ask their permission before fixing it. Regardless of whether it’s in Sun’s strategic interest for nobody to be able to fix that mistake.

That doesn’t mean my fix is right, but it does mean that Sun can’t extinguish anyone’s efforts, right or wrong, on the basis of “ownership”. Other people are smart too.

I welcome the JDK to contrib. But contrib is not part of Debian.