OpenSUSE Ambassador Roger Luedecke has just started a petition towards the Hewlett-Packackard Company (HP) to release the WebOS source code under the GPL license. Luedecke says, “I care deeply about this very important issue”. WebOS is a mobile operating system based on Linux and was originally developed by handheld computer producer Palm, who are now a subsidy of HP. According to Luedecke, HP is know to be FOSS friendly to a remarkable degree. There are hopes that his petition might trigger some action at HP, though nothing can be forced. That’s why the openSUSE community is asked to support this petition. Luedecke writes: “Ultimately we can’t pressure them in regards to a technology they own, not poxet 30 so far as I know. But its worth a shot.”
Month: September 2011
bookmark_borderOpenSUSE 12.1 drops Sun/Oracle Java
Today, openSUSE Program Manager Andreas Jaeger announced that openSUSE will stop shipping Sun Java in the upcoming 12.1 release.
Distribution users will now only be offered the GPLed openJDK. In a recent announcement, Oracle declared openJDK to be the new official reference implementation for Java SE7. Along with that move, Oracle dropped the “Distributor’s License for Java (DLJ)” which was required for redistributing Sun Java. Users depending on Sun/Oracle Java are now required to download it directly from the oracle website. Since the acquisition of sun by oracle, the companny has been known for questionable moves which alienate parts of the opensource community. Among these was the OpenOffice dispute which led to the departure of many developers to form LibreOffice. The former sun-owned mysql database has also seen a fork called MariaDB. According to Jaeger, openSUSE will continue to provide the existing packages in the Java:sun:Factory project but will not update them anymore and won’t ship them with the new distribution. Users are urged to switch to either openJDK or the versions available directly from Oracle.