java not working

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 17 Mar 2017 14:50:05 +0100, Xen wrote:
>Ralf Mardorf schreef op 17-03-2017 13:43:
>
>> That is how my Arch Linux does look like right now [1].  
>
>I cannot interpret that.

It shows all packages I installed from official repositories, that
suffer from known vulnerabilities.

>> For example, you still could compile Claws-Mail with the fancy plugin
  
>You cannot seriously argue that, if this is some important email
>client, that the security issues surrounding the viewing of HTML
>emails dwarfs the usability concerns with regards to _being able to
>read them_ in the first place.

I'm a claws user and never displayed HTML. There are other ways to
display HTML, the fancy plugin not necessarily is needed to do this.

>In other words, you might as well argue that browsers should drop HTML 
>because it is too vulerable. There is a point where functionality is 
>important enough to warrant the work. And of course the work has to be 
>done by someone, that is not the point. All of the things you *DO*
>agree with also have to be done by someone. That is no different here.

HTML is required for a browser, but not to view even HTML formatted
emails.

>Webkit, I do not know how webkit is being developed, Obviously both 
>Opera and Chrome and also Safari make use of it. I would suspect there 
>would be enough developer potential there. No, I do not want to argue
>my point here completely, I just wanted to give my opinion.

Webkit isn't = webkit, as GTK is not = GTK and Qt isn't = Qt. Therer
are releases, e.g. Qt3, Qt4, GTK2 and GTK3 and for webkit it's the
same, AFAIK not all webkits are continued by upstream.

>But I just feel these decisions are not made for technical reasons,
>but rather moral reasons, in the sense of _deciding for other people_,
>not for the developers themselves or their time. I could even say that
>many of the failures in the modern world result from people _deciding
>for other people_ but let's not get into that.
>
>And I also do not want to make a topic out of this, but the recent 
>announcement that PowerPC architecture would be dropped was met some 
>time ago by a message on ubuntu-discuss by basically the most
>important PowerPC maintainer _who was not consulted_ for this decision
>at all.
>
>His name was Ben Collins and the message was on 22 december of 2016.
>
>He wrote:
>
>"I’m completely surprised that the TB did not reach out to an Ubuntu 
>Core Dev who is also the owner of the Ubuntu PowerPC architecture team,
>(...) before making this decision. (...) I’m a bit disappointed by
>this decision, especially when you did not, in any way, reach out to
>one of the most prominent participants in the Ubuntu PowerPC
>community. (...)".

A lot of distros will drop even the more used i686, IOW 32 bit PC
architecture. Not many people are still using PPC.

>That's the same reason I was able to use the software in the first 
>place. Someone did the work. Now security is part of that, if we want
>no security issues at all, we should stop making software. Making
>software involves dealing with problems. You cannot argue in full that
>every feature that causes trouble needs to be dropped.

I didn't mention it. What's dropped in this case is something that does
cause serious issues, while at the same time other stuff is improved,
e.g. HTML5.

>The whole premise of Linux (or Ubuntu) is that you are in control of 
>your own system and you should keep that high, I feel, and that is all
>I can say about it.

We don't lose this freedom, if the Internet goes through an evolution,
to improve security.

Human kind has got another issue with digitization. All our
newer documents, many new books, most new music etc. is archived on
digital media only. 1. A lot of those media aren't long-lasting. 2.
Even if those media should last long enough, often the gear to read
those media gets lost.

We are losing some freedom, by the short lifespan of our cultural
achievement, not because old software concepts for daily use get
replaced by more secure software.

Regards,
Ralf