Distributing the JRE

If we have products built on the Java platform, we have to provide the appropriate
runtime environment (JRE) for that
platform. If we have distribution media (a CD or DVD), one option is to include
the JRE as part of the distribution.

What about the license?

I’d been looking for some time into how licensing works for the JRE
from Sun. The first important point is
that you accept the license terms when you download the JRE. You can find the license
on Sun's site (for example, the license for j2re 1.4.2.02) or
in the installation directory.

The most interesting part when reading the license is the SUPPLEMENTAL LICENSE TERMS.
Since my colleague and I were interested and didn't want to draw our own conclusions,
we sent a question straight to the company's Czech office ([email redacted]).

Question:

Hello,
I'd like to ask whether we can include the Java Runtime Library
(JRE) on a distribution CD. The JRE would be an installation component
needed to run the application server that we're
distributing.

Reply:

Hello,
you may distribute the JRE if you comply with the license terms you
accepted when downloading it. In practice this means leaving the name,
functionality, license, and so on unchanged.

Regards,

Ales Novak