Reinhold: Rhino stays in Java SE 6

In a notice this week to Java licensees, Sun wrote:

"This message is to inform you of Sun's decision to remove the Mozilla Rhino (JavaScript for Java) product from the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) 6."

The rest of the message talked about source code availability, but this sentence made many think that the Rhino binaries were being dropped as well.

Not so, according to Mark Reinhold, Chief Engineer for Java SE. He says this was simply "an unfortunate miscommunication" from the licensee support team, and that only the source for Rhino is affected:

"Rhino is still in the Mustang JDK and in Sun's JRE.  What's changed is that we're no longer re-shipping the Rhino source code in our source bundles due to licensing issues.  We'll make it available under the MPL for those implementors who want to use it."

Rhino, or JavaScript support more generally, is not technically part of the Java SE 6 platform definition, according to Mark, though Sun has decided to ship it.  "Other Java SE 6 implementors may include it at their discretion," says Mark. "This has always been the case."