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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."
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."
A former client actually had this policy specifically related to Oracle products. No stuff allowed that doesn't run on the free JRE, and no Oracle database products at all, unless it applied to a mission critical piece of software for which there was no viable alternative. The reason: Oracle was too expensive, and they were tired of the audits and the constant nickel & diming. And this was a Fortune 500 company with deep pockets and no fear of (over)spending.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I have seen them try to claim license fees for trivial things within my own company. It cost them in the long run, since IT abandoned their software in short order, due to this vindictive approach.
The crazy API copyright case made Java a non-starter for any new projects, since they effectively want to contaminate third party code bases with their copyright, if you use any Oracle APIs, making it impossible to port/wrap Oracle designed interfaces. It was something our legal people couldn't countenance, resulting in a Java ban. Not a good way to run your business.
I don't see Oracle having any long term future. Nobody would make a new deployment of any of their products. The Oracle database is still a good product, but for most workloads, open source or commercial alternatives are cheaper/faster. In my opinion Oracle is still a better all round product than nearly all the alternatives. That's not enough any more though. The prohibitive costs, poor support, threats, and contempt for customers are insurmountable barriers. Like Sun, I think Oracle will vanish in the long run.
According to most developers who know both C# and Java, C# is the better one.
That's like saying you prefer drinking the water from the Pacific ocean over water from the Atlantic ocean. For th emost part, both languages are the same......enough so that you can accidentally be looking at one and think you are looking at the other.
C# programmers will say they prefer C# over Java, and the reasons they give are usually syntax-sugar related. Properties are kind of cool, I agree, but that misses the point of the purpose of Java:
Java exists to make things very simple, so that even incompetent programmers can work in it without messing things up too badly. By adding extra features, although they are fun features, C# messes that up, allowing programmers to do really stupid things. That's not the worst insult I have for C# programmers, but I ought to keep it polite.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I know everyone loves to hate on Java and Oracle, but my understanding is that in order to access the licensed features, you have to deliberately add the command line arg "-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures". It doesn't seem like rocket science what this might mean...
I remember when I was working in a large bank that went thru a merger of equals many years back.
The other bank is a Sybase shop with "enterprise" licensing based on total staff numbers.
Within a week of the merger, Sybase came knocking claiming that the bank now owes them USD 50 million because total staff numbers have basically more than doubled due to the merger.
To put that in perspective it was a few times larger than the then largest contract which was with Microsoft involving every windows desktop, laptop, windows server, office and other Microsoft stuff.
The CIO was so pissed that he had to spend all his time negotiating a new contract for the first month of the merger instead of actually planning the technology integration.
Naturally he ordered the bank to completely get rid of Sybase within 3 years. After 3 years, Sybase was almost completely gone except for a few trading systems that had major problems and risks moving.
Interestingly most of the DBs was switched to Oracle.
Anyway you screw with your customers enough, they will get rid of you. Even big banks which are dinosaurs when it comes to technology change will not be held ransom.