Yes, this is pretty poor practice for software distribution. It seems to be relatively common among a subset of Java developers, I think largely because there are some dependency mechanisms missing from available Java tools that should have long ago been provided. :-)

There's also, perhaps, some energy being lent by the "write once, run anywhere" desires folks have -- the way to 'get that', in some cases, is to bundle everything you think people might need, rather than just the class files that make up the application itself.

--e