How to install OpenJDK6 on F17

[Fernando Lozano]

Hi Deepak,

>java-1.6.0-openjdk and java-1.7.0-openjdk can co-exist side by side
>happily -- you can even use alternatives to switch the default if you
>really want to.
>
>We just cannot ship 6 in F17 because it will EOL well before F17 does
>and we cannot ship a known insecure version.

Thanks for the info, I feel better with RPM packages (even if I have to reinstall after upgrades) than custom-built binaries. So I'll give it a try.

But about the EOL date, I could only find on google an EOL date of Nov/2012 for Oracle JDK, which is the proprietary, commercialy supported build by Oracle. I could not find any EOL for the OpenJDK project or the IcedTea project.

My expectation, based on current use of Java by developers I know, and past experience with other Java updates, is that JDK6 will be the most used JDK release for much longer than the Oracle EOL date. Nothing prevents the open source communities to continue supporing OpenJDK and IcedTea past Oracle EOL date. I see there's strong demand for that. So why not doing? Too few people working on that outside of Oracle?

You could at least package OpenJDK7 in a way it doesn't obsoletes OpenJDK6, so if anyone wants to mantain an OpenJDK6 repo for F17 and beyond they can do so.


[]s, Fernando Lozano