alt Hacker NewsUntil 2021, now some do require a paid license for commercial use and some Java versions from Oracle can be used for free for commercial use.
Or do what the rest of the world does, use Eclipse Adoptium (the best JDK in my opinion) or the one from OpenJDK, Microsoft, etc.
You and the parent raising the specter of Oracle's Java licensing isn't applicable any more. It isn't 2009.
The point is, there are legal complexities which make it unsafe for an employee to go out on their own and download a JRE - sure, they might download Adoptium and be fine, but they also might download one of the ones which requires a commercial license. An IT department isn't going to be comfortable with that risk.