We will not fix this in jdk 6 unless this has enough soak up time in jdk7 and is found to be stable.

Alan Bateman has sent me this

Changing this in an update release is likely to be risky. I do not recommend it. As I recall, there are least issues with I/O redirection. My advice is to work with the customer to find out more about the specific issue. The escalation mentions WLS which I think has native code. The simplest solution might be to have their native code set the inherit flag on the specific socket or handle that is causing problems.

-Alan.
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Michael McMohan has sent me this.

We could probably fix this quite soon in 7, but as Alan says it would
be risky in an update release, because we have no idea how many people
might actually be relying on the buggy behaviour.

By fixing it in 7, we have much more time, to find out if people are depending on it.
Maybe after some time, and if we don't get problems reported, it could then be
fixed in a future 6 update.

- Michael.

and this

We can fix this in jdk7. Basically, the API in jdk7 has been
enhanced to allow for various different ways to deal with the
handles. They can be :-

- inherited directly to the child
- redirected to a file
- directed to a pipe connected to the parent.

The default behaviour should be the third option, and in any case,
it is clearly an error that in the default case, the standard error/in/out handles
from the parent are being inherited (as well as the pipe handles).

Thanks,
Michael.

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Copying the above here for easy reference.