From: alex@milivojevic.org

Which is the smallest problem with Sun'S Java. They don't do "alternatives" either (you have to set them up manually, if you want to have GCC's Java in parallel). And Sun's license doesn't allow anybody to repackage it so that it blends with the rest of the particular distribution (basically, fixing the problem you had and the alternatives issue).

Yeah, that's the #1 issue most everyone has with Java.

Sun allows the JRE to be bundled with Solaris and Windows applications, but not Linux. And you have to be the size of Red Hat or SuSE to negotiate otherwise, and that's just for retail distributions.

If they SCSL/whatever it into an MPL-like, that should change though. Java seems to be the _only_ thing Sun hasn't GPL'd or at least MPL'd.

While I can understand some aspects of their viewpoint, the explicit denial of redistribution on Linux is just entirely inexecusible when they allow it to be bundled with Solaris and Windows applications (let alone the OSes).

-- Bryan J. Smith mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org