java in the browser in the year 2025

Sometime one needs to use an ancient version of java, but since Oracle is in charge, obviously the official process is a nightmare. Fortunately some excellent person wrote a list of urls from other companies who surely have permission to offer said binaries, all available without logging in to Oracle.

This installs it to /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home/, however OpenWebstart, since it's an app bundle or something, is unable to use that, so:

$ sudo mkdir /opt/jre8
$ cd /opt/jre8
$ sudo cp -r "/Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home/" .

Now you can point OpenWebstart at /opt/jre8, but whatever GUI toolkit it's using is quite terrible, so you must go to /opt, highlight jre8 and then click "Choose".