You aren't Oracle's customer. The Fortune 1000 are their customers. Oracle doesn't care about nerd outrage, the developer community, or end users.<p>Former Oracle employee, via acquisition. Horrible place to work.<p>This post is my own opinion and does not relflect insider or confidential information from Oracle.
And people are suddenly surprised there is strong anti-vaccine movement. <i>This</i> kind of things is <i>the real</i> reason for it.<p>From the producer who decides to reduce the amount of good in a box, while keeping the packaging and price tag the same, to the grocery store clerk that sells you meat that was already twice washed with dishwashing liquid to appear fresh (a very common practice), to the company that regularly sends you 4W LEDs when you order 5W hoping you won't notice, and if you challenge them they'll tell you it was a factory labeling mistake, to the smartphone vendor that tells you about amazing experience and then sells you equipment loaded with so much crapware that you cringe every time you turn it on - everyone around you is out there to get you. So many businesses try to fuck you over, all the time, and they totally get away with it.<p>And then everyone is surprised people have trust issues. It's hard enough to get people to install any kind of updates in the first place - and how we're expected to have a secure Internet if people have <i>a very good reason</i> not to install new versions of things?<p>Seriously - companies like Oracle, like Ask.com, like Lenovo, SuperFish, like Uber and like so many, many others - start-ups, mom&pop's, medium companies, big corporations - they all found a very profitable business model: taking the common value of trust we have in society and burning it to earn money. And I guess it works well - if you're an executive who's going to get a pay raise and maybe a promotion for literally shitting on the faces of your customers, when why wouldn't you do it? Well, except of having <i>any decency at all</i>?<p>Whoever decided to bundle this crapware with Java Runtime, if you're reading this - you're actively contributing to one of the biggest problems our civilization is facing. You should feel responsible. The next time someone dies because he refused to follow established procedures out of lack of trust, this is - in a small but important part - <i>on you</i>.<p>It may feel like I'm exaggerating here, but just look around and think for a minute. The collapse of trust we see in contemporary society is raising to the level of becoming an existential threat for our civilization. And I wish I knew a way how to reverse it...
My fear would be:<p><pre><code> brew install java-runtime
==> Downloading http://oracle.com/osx/java-osx-8-x86_64.tgz
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Downloading http://ask.com/osx/asktoolbar-2.4.tgz</code></pre>
TL;DR<p>If the user keeps to the default installer settings and goes next, next, next... AND in Safari deliberately selects "Install" (not pre-selected) in the confirmation window, the ask.com toolbar will be installed.
Oracle could have made a fantastic app ecosystem, with a great AppStore application, given how their vm is installed on very many PCs around the world. They could have done the 30/70 split and potentially gotten heaps of money out of it. Sun was even up to it at some point, but it was horrible, the way that only Sun could make UX horrible. But still, the potential is so enormous that I cannot fathom how they miss it.<p>And this Ask-crap is what they do instead, making pretty much every user in the world hate them. (Not to mention the insanity of how they handled the security problems they found themselves in right after acquiring Sun and Java)
Desktop Java apps should just bundle a JRE.<p>Launch4j: <a href="http://launch4j.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow">http://launch4j.sourceforge.net/</a><p>Legality: <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/readme-142177.html#redistribution" rel="nofollow">http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/readme-142177....</a>
The bigger context is this: jamf makes software to help manage fleets of Macs, by providing abilities such as deploying a package to a group of Macs. It's quite good and IIRC Apple uses it for configuration management. If a vendor gives you a normal package, as Java once was, it was fairly easy to deploy.<p>Contrast deploying the JRE with a simple package vs deploying it on Windows, which usually required an ever-evolving set of hacks to extract MSIs from the installer and install it in an automated fashion without installing bloatware, having it sit in the taskbar, auto-updating (which is a no-no in an enterprise environment), etc.<p>Now, thanks to this change, people on the Mac side will get to experience all the joys of deploying the JRE on Windows.
Crapware in installations must end.I made a desktop PC for my sister with nothing but Windows 8.1. It only took my sister, an otherwise competent computer user, 48 hours for her computer to become infested with some web-ad hijacker and numerous IE toolbars.
This certainly poisons the Java well a little bit more in general, and desktop Java in particular. Android and a sea of line-of-business webapps will keep the Java platform healthy for a very long time, but this kind of thing makes me shake my head in sadness.<p>More positively, this is a an <i>excellent</i> data point for both free software advocates ("look at the abuse closed source enables") and Apple ("do you really want to foist crapware on your users? just use our awesome native tools to write apps!")<p>I imagine that this move infuriates much of the Google Android team (because it weakens the developer story slightly) and makes them very glad that they have "Android plan B" with Go.
There was a similar story relating to Java updates and Ask toolbars in 2013. There is some history to this.<p><a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-close-look-at-how-oracle-installs-deceptive-software-with-java-updates/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-close-look-at-how-oracle-inst...</a>
Even though I love Java and the ecosystem, this is one time I feel really embarrassed asking a non tech person to install Java.<p>Is Oracle really getting substantial money out of this deal?
So everyone who said "Windows just has all these problems. Just get a Mac instead! Nobody creates viruses or crapware for mac"... Guess what you just did?<p>Yup. You gave Mac enough market-share for it to be profitable to bundle crapware there as well. This is probably just the start and more will follow.<p>Whatever you do, please <i>don't</i> tell people to install Linux. I like it the way it is and I don't want any of this shit coming here.
Search companies now have to pay third parties to get their product out. Google pays Apple to be on the iPhone. Yahoo pays Mozilla to be on Firefox. Bing is on Microsoft products because they're the same company.
Now Ask is paying Oracle to push their search.<p>This is strange. Google, Bing, Ask, Yandex, and Baidu provide very useful services and put vast resources behind organizing the world's information. Two decades ago people would have paid serious money for any of those services. Yet now, search companies resort to expensive or, in this case rather pathetic, measures to get people to use their product.<p>Even the social companies (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) don't need to do that.
Will it happen on Mac? <a href="http://static.spiceworks.com/images/how_to_steps/0000/3886/too_many_toolbars.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://static.spiceworks.com/images/how_to_steps/0000/3886/t...</a>
This is really f<i>&</i>ed up. They are clearly against the common user that only wants to use their software.
They advocate so much about security but embed a undesired software with their runtime. I really can't understand.
As some commenters pointed out, the installer is now an APP instead of a PKG. The original PKG is inside the APP at Contents/Resources/JavaAppletPlugin.pkg (right click on APP -> Show package contents).
Does this still work?<p>How to disable offers in the control panel.<p><a href="https://www.java.com/en/download/faq/disable_offers.xml" rel="nofollow">https://www.java.com/en/download/faq/disable_offers.xml</a>
It's been awhile since I've used OS X, but I don't recall there being any bundled installers on anything.<p>Hopefully there will be some backlash; that was one of my favorite parts of the platform.
If you are developing products that require Java you are a huge part of the problem. Learn a new language and start porting.<p>I am tired of 100% of the blame for these situations going to Oracle and Adobe, they are just doing what they were designed to do, make money by any means necessary. The developers who voluntarily learned a language and joined a community that is controlled by a for-profit company are the only thing keeping them alive. Every new product they make entices another end user to install crap on their computer.
I worked on a couple of large Oracle projects, and they were probably the worst vendor I've dealt with in the last decade. They had the potential to solve really compelling problems, but it was overshadowed by how poor their products were and the eye-watering costs.<p>Once you're hooked of course on their financial stack you have little choice but to remain.<p>I'm watching with interest the adoption of Workday as a replacement for Peoplesoft, and wonder aloud if someone will unseat them in their related product groups.
I suppose this system could be crashed by automatically installing hundreds of millions of instances of the Ask toolbar to the point that it is economically infeasible for them to pay Oracle.
It's mind boggling that they pay as much as $2 per install but can't afford decent design. I've never seen a good looking toolbar, it's as if they try to make them ugly.
This is the number one thing that I uninstall from my computer and friends and families computers when they accidentally click too fast. These kinds of add-ons are incredibly annoying.
I don't understand why OpenJDK hasn't been able to supplant Oracle as the standard Java distribution. That would eliminate reliance on the corporate whim of Oracle.
Could someone please confirm that original JRE installer downloaded from www.oracle.com contains this? (I dont have a mac). On Windows you often get modified installers, if you download from 3td party website.
Just add "127.0.0.1 ask.com" to /etc/hosts?<p>While you're in it, add<p>127.0.0.1 doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net<p>also.