Blackdown Java: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:37, 4 May 2010

Revision as of 14:02, 25 October 2010

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| archivedate = 2007-06-27

}}</ref>

In [[1999]] Sun Microsystems hat to publicly apologize to the Blackdown developers<ref>{{cite web

| title = Sun apologizes to developers of Java on Linux

| url = http://edition.cnn.com/1999/TECH/computing/12/10/sun.apology.idg/index.html

| accessdate = 2010-10-25

}}</ref>. Days before the apology Sun, together with [[Inprise]], had announced<ref>{{cite web

| title = PRNewswire: Inprise Collaborates With Sun...on...Java(TM) 2 Platform For...Linux...

| url = http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-12-07-047-04-PR

| accessdate = 2010-10-25

}}</ref> a port of Java to Linux, shunning Blackdown and Blackdown's Linux porting work and not giving them credit. The Sun/Inprise port, however, was based on Blackdown work<ref>{{cite web

| title = LinuxGrrls: New JDK for Linux snubs Blackdown developers

| url = http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-12-08-010-04-OP

| accessdate = 2010-10-25

}}</ref>. The incident revealed that there were long standing problems between Sun and Blackdown.

Despite widespread confusion, Blackdown was neither [[free software]] nor [[open-source software]]. It was the default Java in [[Gentoo Linux]] and many other distributions, because the binary redistribution policy allowed it to be pre-installed or distributed through that distribution's package management system, whereas at the time, Sun Java's binary redistribution policy did not.