[mamon]

I might be wrong but my mind associates -dev and -devel packages with something that is provided for developers of the package itself, e.g., kernel-devel allows you to compile the kernel. I'm not going to contribute to OpenJDK project so why would I need openjdk-devel package?

[gepi79]

Good point, java-devel sounds like C++ headers and libraries and not like Java.

I do not contribute to the OpenJDK project or to the JVM either.

There are standard packages in the Java world: JRE (users) and JDK (java programmers).

The JDK is a standard set of tools and libraries related to using Java as program language. It is not a Linux distro or JDK distro specific set of libraries.