Oracle to hold off on its new release
Contributed by: Email on 04/25/2013 01:48 PM
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Oracle plans on putting its release of Java 8 on hold until the first quarter of next year. Java has taken a beating from hackers in 2013, mainly from watering hole attacks and a pair of take downs at Pwn2Own.
Mark Reinhold, chief architect of the Java Platform Group,said Maintaining the security of the Java Platform always takes priority over developing new features, and so these efforts have inevitably taken engineers away from working on Java 8. Looking ahead, Oracle is committed to continue fixing security issues at an accelerated pace, to enhance the Java security model, and to introduce new security features. This work will require more engineer hours than we can free up by dropping features from Java 8 or otherwise reducing the scope of the release at this stage.
We have told you for a while now to "Disable Java"!! For the average user, that's a good strategy. It won't impede your average browsing use. Web functionality won't be impaired and you lessen your exposure to exploits. It's the business end of computing where disabling Java becomes sticky. Many numbers of home-spun applications rely on Java, as well as some well-deployed mobile banking, e-government and enterprise services applications. Disabling Java means real costs to those organizations and an impact on availability of services.
So that puts a real pressure on Oracle to fix these security holes before it rolls out any new version that will employ new functionality.
Mark Reinhold, chief architect of the Java Platform Group,said Maintaining the security of the Java Platform always takes priority over developing new features, and so these efforts have inevitably taken engineers away from working on Java 8. Looking ahead, Oracle is committed to continue fixing security issues at an accelerated pace, to enhance the Java security model, and to introduce new security features. This work will require more engineer hours than we can free up by dropping features from Java 8 or otherwise reducing the scope of the release at this stage.
We have told you for a while now to "Disable Java"!! For the average user, that's a good strategy. It won't impede your average browsing use. Web functionality won't be impaired and you lessen your exposure to exploits. It's the business end of computing where disabling Java becomes sticky. Many numbers of home-spun applications rely on Java, as well as some well-deployed mobile banking, e-government and enterprise services applications. Disabling Java means real costs to those organizations and an impact on availability of services.
So that puts a real pressure on Oracle to fix these security holes before it rolls out any new version that will employ new functionality.
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