[clue] oracle discontinued JRE for linux?

[David L. Anselmi]

Mike Bean wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> Doing some things for work.  I could've sworn I heard a rumor somewhere that
> Oracle had discontinued the JRE for linux in favor of the JDK,

So perhaps what you mean is that distros will now use OpenJDK rather than the Sun/Oracle packages. 
I happened across this tonight:

http://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/sylvestre/2011/10/25/removal_of_sun_java6_from_debian

So poking at what OpenJDK is, I find that the binary package people are used to getting from Sun, 
and now Oracle, is currently called the Oracle JDK.  It has always been non-free but there was a 
license to allow its re-distribution by Linux distros.  That has ended so it now can't be 
re-distributed and Oracle expects distros to package the OpenJDK, which is a Free, community version.

The OpenJDK isn't identical to the Oracle JDK, but it seems to function pretty well with a few 
exceptions (look at the Debian bugs for it).

Dave