Apparently Sun has finally relicensed Java in a way that Debian can ship packages in it’s non-free section. I guess they’ve been realizing that people started using other Java implementations or Mono instead, that were easier to install on Linux systems.

A couple of things were wrong with Java before that, making it a pain to install. The Debian Java people had gone a long way to fix that (e.g. by making the nice make-jpkg application that will convert the official Java into a nice Debian package you can install on your systems, but just cannot give anybody else). While installation wasn’t hard with that tool anymore (download, run make-kpkg, install package), this still couldn’t give you automatic upgrades. The free java implementations had huge benefits here, so does Mono.

Sun Java still has shortcomings with installation, though. First of all, it’s in the frowned upon, second-class “non-free” part, secondly you need to agree to it’s license on installation, making unattended installation (legally) impossible, I guess. (You can probably just preseed the debconf flag, though)

I’ve recently been recommending people to use Mono instead of Java if they only have these two choices. Mono apps are supposed to run on Windows as well, look a lot better than Java, are apparently more fun to write and easier to install. Now let’s hope no patenting issues will be used by Microsoft to make Mono go away. (I wonder if that is one of the reasons why they absolutely do not support Mono meetings at their Dot-Niet gettogethers, because you could use that in a legal trial as them acknowledging Monos use of their stuff, because overall they are benefiting from Mono being .Niet on Linux and thus being a bit more platform independant…)