Sun use Java update to push Open Office

I was quite surprised to notice today that the usual Java runtime automatic update which is present on almost all Windows machines (using software written in Java) was trying to convince me into downloading and installing the completely unrelated product, Open Office in addition to the its latest Java update.

Although Open Office is free and open source, Sun Microsystems reputedly have a large controlling influence, I guess this is through investing their own developers to work on the platform. I don’t know why they would want to push Open Office as opposed to any other open source product or even why they aren’t using the space to advertise something more commercially valuable.

The origin of this feature is even more interesting. The Sun Developer Network reveals the birth of this feature as a couple of “bug” reports logged in November 2007. Interestingly, these “bugs” in the Java deployment updater are classified as “high” priority and not minor as most feature requests are usually.

• Incorporate OpenOffice.org download offer in the Update dialog
  (http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6595064)
• Wording changes for AutoUpdate dialog to give more info on OpenOffice.org offer
  (http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do;jsessionid=89776f4156ad612b5aae4b5aa0748?bug_id=6595531)
• All text in update dialogs/bubbles should be configurable through xml file
  (http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6595901)

This all seems like rather a lot of work to push an unrelated free office product, although advertising during software installations is an interesting technique that I might explore for future releases of our own software.

Does anyone know definitively why Sun Microsystems is pushing OpenOffice in it’s Java updates?

Update to Java 6.2 for Windows Vista Aero

Have you ever noticed when browsing using Internet Explorer 7 on Vista, sometimes you’ll come across a site that uses Java applets and before you know it your screen flickers and bang, you’ve been dropped back into Vista Basic mode? Sometimes with an accompanying info message:

It happens to me all the time, and it’s very fustrating. Lots of sites use Java applets and the first thing you’ll know when you come across one is that you lose the glass transulency, Alt-Tab previews, taskbar previews, and Flip3D. Once you’ve finished browsing the site with the java applet that caused this whole mess, Vista doesn’t automatically switch back to Aero. You have to kill IE7 completely - Vista then flickers back to Aero.

The problem was caused by an old version of the Java VM that comes packaged with Vista. The Java VM allows Vista to understand how to run Java applications, and it had some safety code in it which as a side-effect caused Vista to “trip” into the Vista Basic interface every time it was called. You can read more about this on Chet Haase’s blog.

Since Java is owned by Sun Microsystems, updates are not distributed through Windows Update. Java is third party software, so you need to take the upgrading action yourself. Fortunately this is easy enough to do. Head over to http://java.com/en/ and follow the instructions to download and install the Java Standard Edition 6 Update 2 for Windows Vista.

Reboot and the problem is solved