Oracle Begins Aggressively Pursuing Java Licensing Fees (theregister.co.uk)

Java SE is free, but Java SE Suite and various flavors of Java SE Advanced are not, and now Oracle "is massively ramping up audits of Java customers it claims are in breach of its licenses," reports the Register. Oracle bought Java with Sun Microsystems in 2010 but only now is its License Management Services division chasing down people for payment, we are told by people familiar with the matter. The database giant is understood to have hired 20 individuals globally this year, whose sole job is the pursuit of businesses in breach of their Java licenses... Huge sums of money are at stake, with customers on the hook for multiple tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Slashdot reader rsilvergun writes, "Oracle had previously sued Google for the use of Java in Android but had lost that case. While that case is being appealed, it remains to be seen if the latest push to monetize Java is a response to that loss or part of a broader strategy on Oracle's part." The Register interviewed the head of an independent license management service who says Oracle's even targeting its own partners now.

But after acquiring Sun in 2010, why did Oracle's License Management Services wait a full six years? "It is believed to have taken that long for LMS to devise audit methodologies and to build a detailed knowledge of customers' Java estates on which to proceed."

Comments

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[phantomfive]

I honestly don't know. At which point do you need to pay for Java?

You don't need to pay for Java. Java is open source, and there's some question of whether a language is even copyrightable at all.

You have to pay Oracle if you start using J2EE, or other proprietary libraries. This is the same as it's been for a long time now.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

"Java SE Suite, for example, costs $300 per named user with a support bill of $66; there’s a per-processor option of $15,000 with a $3,300 support bill."

It has long been a standard practice with Oracle that they won't even sell you any of their 'Enterprise' products unless you also pay them for 'support' (i.e., their products are shit and after you buy them you have pay extra if you want them to actually work)

A while back, someone analyzed Oracle's financial reports and found that their licensing division, which also handles the support contracts, is responsible for nearly all of Oracle's profits.

Larry must want to buy a new island.

Re:At which point do you need to pay for Java?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

JEE is not proprietary. JEE is a (dead-end) standard for which multiple open source and proprietary implementations exists, both free to use (with paid commercial support) and fully paid.

What the article is about is about Java SE (Standard Edition) Suite and Advanced. This is apparently just Java SE with some additional (non-gratis) tools.

Re:C# here we come!

[TheRaven64]

Microsoft has released a CLR implementation under an MIT license, has put everything required to implement the CLR into an ECMA standard, and has released a public promise not to sue for any patents involved in the implementation of a CLR. Some of the APIs are exempt, but these are largely the Windows-specific ones. If you write portable C# code, then it's basically impossible for Microsoft to sue anyone that provides you with a platform on which to run it. Oracle has shown that this is not true for Java.

Re:-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures

[Just Some Guy]

Very true. Now pay your legal team $1400 an hour to supervise the audit to show you've never done that.