I was just going to point out that look, right there on Oracle's website, you can download the JRE. Even the "latest" version 8. Then I opened adoptOpenJDK in another tab and realize there is version 15 already?!
Seems like a marketing fail - not the JRE is gone, but all the recent versions of Java without a JRE are.
From the non-developers' perspective (end users and admins), "Java" is still very much a system component. The perception is basically: The only reason it is not preinstalled is due to some legal keruffle in the Windows XP era, you don't have to care about versions because it updates itself (annoyingly). It's sad that the idea of a JRE on every device has been given up.
I don't think it is sad at all, because the JRE was replaced by something better -- or, at least, more suitable to the current software landscape -- if perhaps still misunderstood: a software vendor decides which runtime to use, how to manage it and whether to share it among multiple applications rather than a third party controlling a component the end user doesn't understand.
As to the marketing front, I would admit a failing on our part. Marketing has been centrally controlled by Oracle rather than by individual product divisions, which has made communication cumbersome, although that is now changing. This is perhaps a good time to emphasise that I'm not speaking on behalf of anyone in any official capacity, just on behalf of myself, as one of the hundreds of people working on OpenJDK at Oracle.
In any event, that is the situation and people might need to change their perception. They don't have to like the new situation, but they do need to understand it, although so far it seems that once they understand it, they also like it.
Seems like a marketing fail - not the JRE is gone, but all the recent versions of Java without a JRE are.
From the non-developers' perspective (end users and admins), "Java" is still very much a system component. The perception is basically: The only reason it is not preinstalled is due to some legal keruffle in the Windows XP era, you don't have to care about versions because it updates itself (annoyingly). It's sad that the idea of a JRE on every device has been given up.