F22 System Wide Change: Legacy implementations of the Java platform in Fedora

[Andrew Haley]

On 26/02/15 14:59, Mario Torre wrote:

> In this case, it's about giving users one thing they asked, which is
> easy access to a previous version of Java. We can't afford
> maintaining it as Java Team, but this doesn't mean we will refuse to
> help people doing it. In fact, the exact existence of this very same
> discussion is our attempt to pass the ball back to the Community.

It's not just a matter of not being able to afford to continue
maintenance, but the knowledge that unless an obsolete Java
implementation is carefully locked down it may not be safe to use.
This proposal is intended to prevent the accidental use of an obsolete
implementation.  Some of the proposed rules can reasonably be argued
about, but the need to prevent an obsolete Java implementation from
accidentally being used by any part of the Fedora stack isn't.  Of
course, if a user decides to override this that's fine, and we should
not make it unduly difficult, but it shouldn't happen by default in
any Fedora installation.

Andrew.