It looks like Sun is going to bundle Derby in the JSE 6 distribution and this has caused a bit of confusion in the community. First point, this is a bundling just as NetBeans is now bundled with the JSE 5. And just as NetBeans is not part of the core, Derby is also not part of the core JDK.
As long as Sun provides us with an unbundled version of the JDK I’m just not sure what all the fuss is about. As an aside, try getting an unbundled JDK and runtime from IBM and how come I don't see anyone fussing about that?
When're you going to spell "Derby" as "Derby?"
Like this?
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/