I'd like to take a poll. I know it's easy for me to do this, because no one reads this, and thus not much work to tally the results :
Question #1 : Do you believe that the JDK is a common term to describe the JRE + 'standard' tools?
Question #2 : Do you expect that you can get a JDK from any vendor, such as IBM, BEA, Sun, Apple?
I say yes to both...
Yes to both. JDK is 'Java Development Kit', and any licensee can provide a kit for developing Java, so it seems rather odd after allowing that big thing to then not allow them to describe what it is!
In common usage, everyone refers to the bundled JVM in Macs as 'Apple's JDK', and makes disparaging remarks about 'IBM's JDK
Yes to both, too.
Not sure if SUN JDK has some authority for java developers? ;-)
I vote for JWiesel.[1]
[1] See the Mozilla vs. Debian drama.
Yes to both
1) sometimes I almost use it as a synonym for Java
2) you forgot Apache in your vendor-list ;)
Yes and yes. The question becomes, do you have everything you need for a jarsigner, keytool, etc.?
1. Yes
2. I expect to receive only the one true JDK. As Geir is fishing for it somebody had to say it.
Yes on both.
But a JDK from a vendor should not produce code that cannot be run by other vendor's JRE except for those cases where vendor specific specializations are explictly used by the application
Venkat,
Agreed 100%. In all of these cases, I am assuming strict compatibility with all the specs. So it's not about vendor specific code, but vendor specific features (like performance) in the VM that you are using, and then just getting a JDK for convenience so you only have to install one thing to work with.