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Canonical To Remove Sun Java From Repositories, Users' Machines
New submitter an_orphan writes "Apparently, Oracle's 'Operating System Distributor License for Java' is expired, causing Ubuntu to not only remove sun-java from the partner repository, but from user's machines."
Java was always a huge fuckup of a language, with its balonulous lazily-typed variables and its snordoblulous memory "management" and flubriglated syntax. Only idiots use it, good riddance.
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I can see how Apple can survive and prosper. They've targeted customers who are either spending somebody else's money (mainly the children of the wealthy living off of "daddy's money" or trust funds), those who are financially foolish (people who buy useless gadgets on credit), and those seeking a modern religion (the so-called Apple fanatics). This has let them put out sub-par products with pretty horrible limitations, but they can still sell them outrageous prices, and coupled with third-world manufacturing it allows them to make a very sizable profit.
Canonical has none of this. While it did put out some useful extensions to the Debian Linux distribution, they just don't seem to have the ongoing financial stranglehold that Apple has acquired. They aren't targeting the children of the wealthy, or those who waste money. Some degree of religious fanaticism has arisen around Ubuntu, but it surely doesn't seem capable of providing the financial support that Apple's religious following does.
Moves like continuing to use GNOME when KDE was clearly the better desktop environment, then later ruining the desktop experience by moving to Unity, and now stuff like this are exactly what will drive users away. Many of the smartest Ubuntu users have moved to Linux Mint. The remaining Ubuntu users seem to be those who aren't smart enough to learn about the alternatives. They don't seem like the kind of people who will pay good money for Ubuntu, either.
Apple's financial strategy seems to be pretty solid, but I just can't see Canonical's at all. How can they survive as a company without financial backing?