Ryan ryanag@zoominternet.net wrote:
I've noticed some other distros (*cough* Debian *cough*) are including java packages in their repo. Any idea how
they
get away with it?
They don't. The official Debian repositories do not host it.
There are several 3rd party, Non-Free Debian repositories -- let alone Debian-based distros -- that aren't legal because they redistribute such in _violation_ of the licensing agreements on the software.
When I was consulting at a Fortune 20 company as one of the Linux architects, I maintained a "whitelist" of distros. A few people gave me the title of "The Linux Nazi" as a result. ;->
Maybe Sun just doesn't want to rock the boat...
Sun allows near-free redistribution of the JRE for MacOS X, Solaris and Windows, but _not_ Linux. I assume the Java Desktop subscription has much to do with that.