The founder of Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, has announced at UDS that despite the recent decision of Steve Jobs and Apple to move away from the Java environment, Canonical will continue to consider Java a first grade development platform.
Besides announcing a new MacBook Air and a new OS, Apple also made a much more important
announcement, which went a little under the radar.
“As of the release of Java for Max OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Max OS X, is deprecated. Developers should not rely on the Apple-supplied Java runtime being present in future versions of Mac OS X”.
Furthermore, any software using Java will not be accepted in Mac App Store.
Jobs explained in an email, for a “big fan,” that because of the difference between the release cycle of Oracle and Apple, they are forced to use older versions. James Gosling, “father” of Java made a liar out of Steve Jobs after he declared that his assertion regarding the release cycles is false.
Java developers are now forced to look for other platforms, and one of them is Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth said in the press conference call, during the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Florida, that Java will continue to be a “first class development environment”.
When asked about the recent deprecation of Java, by Apple, Shuttleworth said: “Java is a first class development environment for us, Elipse is a first class citizen on the Ubuntu desktop. I think Java developers will find that they can be comfortable in an Ubuntu environment and we have no plans to deprecate or move away from Java”.
Mark Shuttleworth even pointed out that IBM is one of the biggest supporters of Java and they develop commercial grade applications based on the Oracle’s programming language, specifically for Ubuntu.
Right now Java is riding the “train” of uncertainty with another Apple rejected platform, Flash, and no one can really tell what the future holds for either of them.
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