Depends entirely on what it achieves. As has been pointed out here, there & everywhere, ad nauseam, there is no significant evidence that JPlay actually achieves anything at all. What I find particularly amusing is the myriad of options that 'affect' the sound. I would have more respect if the authors had the guts to define what they thought was right, and stand by it.
I've seen strong opinions from the team leader of WMA that iTunes is perfectly fine is setup properley. This is flies in the face of a lot peoples' experience. Jriver will soon release a MAC version of JMRC; Amarra, Audirvana et al will no doubt offer some options. How will Jriver cope with that?
The fact that there is an attempt to hang on to someone else's coat-tails is the issue – and if you don't believe that is a problem, then perhaps a closer examination of your own ethical values would be prudent.
Ad Hominen is not the way to deal with this.
I've worked in the software industry for a long time, over 35 years. I deal with these sorts of issues. Let's be clear; Jriver are benefiting from using a standard. When you use a standard you open up the potential for others to enter your eco-system. Standards promote inter-operability. If you want to stop your users have any freedom then don't use standards. The standard Jriver use is one they have not developed so they are benefiting from someone else's standard and work.
I can understand the Jriver may not welcome JPLAY in their market but the Jriver response has been unprofessional. They have also alienated the faction of their customer base who have bought both Jriver and JPLAY. JPLAY can be seen as a competitor to Jriver in that it's a player but in truth the player is so stripped down it's much more likely that JPLAY would actually bring sales revenue to Jriver.
What Jriver should have done is:
1) issue a statement saying they believe their customers best interests are best served by using Jriver on its own.
2) state that for support where JPLAY is installed, JPLAY must be uninstalled and the issue replicated via vanilla Jriver.
For Jriver to delete posts on their forum about JPLAY was wrong (but their prerogative), they should have closed the threads and requested JPLAY users to do 2) above or used the JPLAY forum.
For Jriver to insert a redirection onto their customers computers was the wrong thing to do, customers with JPLAY feel their supplier (Jriver) has invaded their privacy.