Comment 18 for bug 420426

In Karmic, you can always download the newest JRE from the website of Sun. A manual installation of JRE is not so hard; Sun has provided an instruction for that.

I think Canonical has made a good decision: apparently, there's not enough manpower available, for keeping JRE safe with security updates in Karmic. So they've made the choice to abandon JRE in favour of OpenJDK.

A wise choice: better not provide this very popular package at all, than provide it without security updates. JRE is far too popular and widely used for that: you don't want millions of computers at risk.

When you install JRE manually, you are aware that it's up to you, to keep it safe by checking regularly at Sun's website, for a newer version.

So: kudo's for Canonical, for putting security first!