Sun is now staying the executioner's axe by another ten years for the 1.4 version of JavaSE. 1.4 is the now ancient version of Java from the era before Sun simply ditched the "1." from the beginning of the nomenclature. I can think of a couple of programs (SAS being the most notable) that still require 1.4.x and will install it if it doesn't find it in your system; so I suppose the support extension is important in that respect.

"This is for paying customers only. Others must upgrade to the latest edition of Java SE, with free support slashed from six to three years - or fend for themselves using Sun's OpenJDK."