Oracle Demostrates Great Community Support and Fixes Eclipse

Every once in a while I am reminded of the lunacy of the Internet, especially headline writers.  On Monday of this week, Oracle released an update to the Java 1.6 update 21 that fixes a problem in a previous version that broke Eclipse.   All the details can be found in the bug or Neil’s good summary.  The good news is that Eclipse is no longer broken!!

The irony however is that the issue just yesterday shows up on Ed Burnette’s ZDNet blog ‘Oracle Rebrands Java, breaks Eclipse‘ and the pillar of all Internet lunacy, slashdot Oracle Java Company Change Beaks Eclipse .   Credit to Ed for actually reporting and testing the fix.  However, the slashdot posting is the following:

crabel writes “In Java 1.6.0_21, the company field was changed from ‘Sun Microsystems, Inc’ to ‘Oracle.’ Apparently not the best idea, because some applications depend on that field to identify the virtual machine. All Eclipse versions since 3.3 (released 2007) until and including the recent Helios release (2010) have been reported to crash with an OutOfMemoryError due to this change. This is particularly funny since the update is deployed through automatic update and suddenly applications cease to work.

No mention the problem has been fixed and wrong on the fact the update was deployed through automatic update; update 21 hadn’t been pushed out yet via automatic update.  Of course the typical slashdot comment ensued, granted some of the comments do point out the reality.  However, as with anything on slashdot, people repeat the headline “Oracle’s Java Company Change Breaks Eclipse” on things like twitter, so the meme continues.  Let me be clear, the problem is fixed:  Oracle Demonstrates Great Community Support and Fixes Eclipse

Eric has already praised Oracle’s response to the situation.  I would like to add my thanks to Oracle for quickly resolving the issue.  I spoke to Oracle about the issue and I can tell you they had already decided to fix it before I spoke with them.  Oracle should be applauded for their response to the bug.  This type of bug could have easily lead to lots of finger pointing but Oracle just did the right thing for the community.  THANK YOU

From http://ianskerrett.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/oracle-demostrates-great-community-support-and-fixes-eclipse/