[CentOS] stock openjdk vs. epel

[R P Herrold]

On Thu, 31 Dec 2009, Mathieu Baudier wrote:

> I do believe that with Java now GPL, Linux+Java can be a great platform.
> But there are years of parallel development paths and, if I can put it
> that way, mutual distrust, that need to be overcome.
> So it is still a bit painful (but much much better than a few years ago!).

A partial Java implementation, mostly GPLv2 -- see the 
""CLASSPATH" EXCEPTION TO THE GPL" in the License file; 
lacking in a FOSS conformance testing suite needed to 
permit reproduceable testing of the result

It's not there yet; Sun's future is up in the air, and given 
the pushback on the Innodb (prior Oracle acquisition, left to 
largely rot since) backend / MySQL 'merger hold' concerns by 
the EU's anti-trust review organ, it remains to be seen if 
this will turn out well.

See also this post:
 	http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/011481.html
by a rather prominent former Yahooian/MySQL maven

Ellison trotting the penguins out on the stage and being 
tossed a softball question by the then-most prominent MSFT 
covering analyst at Goldman Sachs, showed him as 'gaming' 
Linux.  Have you seen a lot of good and community oriented 
support of OEL 2 out there since ORCL started using some 
un-modified CentOS images in their SRPM rebuild efforts?

my $0.02

-- Russ herrold