Red Hat has the baton Oracle acquired with the support of OpenJDK 6, the open-source implementation of Java 6. The software company hopes so as its customers can continue to operate with updates now Oracle no updates for Java 6 will release.
According to Red Hat, the decision to have OpenJDK 6-community control contribute to the renewal of the support of the software platform. Because of this, because that use Java 6 still be offered updates after the Oracle public updatecyclus for Java 6 after the release of Update 43 will officially cease. Oracle will still only for Java 7 security updates or only against payment Java 6 users two years of support.
The step from Red Hat to take the lead in the development and support of OpenJDK 6 is not unexpected. Many business customers of the company use software that depends on OpenJDK 6, such as JBoss, while the company, for developers, the open source Java development platform, IcedTea offers.
It would be for Red Hat to be relatively easy to make future updates for Java 7 by means of backports also by entering in the code from OpenJDK 6. How long will Red Hat still OpenJDK 6 will actively support, is not yet known.