“I'm really dubious that Debian will endorse a Java license that does not comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (under “social contract” on their web site),” longtime open source advocate and former Debian project leader Bruce Perens told DesktopLinux.com via email. “If the Debian project leader did this, his developers would kick his butt. They're in the Free Software business, not the distributable-but-modification-restricted business. If Blackdown (a project that provides Sun's Java environment to several distributions) is endorsing this, they aren't doing so on behalf of Debian — just themselves.”

Debian project leader Anthony Towns responded in an email, saying: “Bruce is mostly correct here; Debian is focused on free software, and we will continue supporting free implementations of Java in preference to those that don't satisfy our free software guidelines (which formed the basis of the open source definition).”