As a network administrator who supports small business networks in the Houston area, we previously deployed JRE via Active Directory after extracting the MSI from the standalone installer. Now, we're faced with removing ALL installations of JRE from ALL systems on ALL of our clients!
Why?
Because:
1) the MSI is no longer available with the standalone installation;
2) Oracle apparently now requires the use of some kind of MSI installation utility that we cannot access and know nothing about;
3) the utility is only available via MOS (My Oracle Support) login;
4) MOS will not let me complete the registration process because we do not have access to any sort of "Support Identifier" because we have never bought anything from Sun or Oracle;
5) we am not going to visit every individual machine to install JRE; and
6) we're certainly NOT going to give users admin rights to install it on their own.
We're not going to suffer this lunacy. As Oracle apparently wants to make it IMPOSSIBLE for a small business to deploy JRE, we will oblige and remove every bit of it.
Users will be told that Oracle apparently no longer supports Java deployment without a support contract. When I tell the principals that it costs money to use Java, that will be that. No electrons will ever flow through a Java application on our client networks.
This was the intended result when someone came up with this ignorant change, yes? Well, it's your loss, not mine. Way to go on the "increasing goodwill and market share" front.