back to article Gartner: Oracle probes orgs for Java compliance after new licensing terms

Gartner is warning that Oracle "actively targets organizations" on Java compliance following the introduction of new contractual terms for the code. In a research paper, the global tech analyst said both existing Oracle customers and those with no Oracle products were being targeted by Big Red after the software and hardware …

  1. TVU

    Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

    This comes across as just more of Oracle's usual snakery* - customer compliance audits that invariably find in favour of Oracle.

    The moral of this tale is to wean your company off any of Oracle's proprietary products at the earliest opportunity because one day they will come for you too.

    *Definition:

    The act of doing something shady. To be conniving, plotting, evil-doing. Trying to screw people. To act like a snake in the grass, e.g. Larry was up to his usual snakery.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

      > wean your company off any of Oracle's proprietary products

      That's why they are going after Java.

      You dump Oracle but you use Virtualbox or the next bit of infrastructure Oracle buy

      1. captain veg Silver badge

        Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

        Hmm.

        I choose to run a few VMs in VirtualBox (strictly for personal use) on Linux for a couple of reasons.

        1) It virtualises the guest machine's display and shows it in a host system's window.

        2) It continues to work when you upgrade from one (free beer) version to another.

        I dunno how things are now, but going back the free version of VMWare suddenly changed to rendering the guest display in a Java applet embedded in a web page, which was deeply unwelcome, and Hyper-V only gave you any kind of display via RDP.

        Should the free version of VirtualBox suddenly cease to exist then I dare say that something like KVM will step in to the void.

        -A.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

          >I choose to run a few VMs in VirtualBox (strictly for personal use)

          The concern, that led to a lot of businesses banning it, is that a bunch of the plugins aren't free.

          So a user somewhere in your organisation plugs in a USB device, clicks OK to some pop-up without reading the small print - and you trigger an Oracle audit.

          1. Skiver

            Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

            : The concern, that led to a lot of businesses banning it, is that a bunch of the plugins aren't free.

            That's what happened where I work.

          2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

            Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

            There is only one plugin and since version 7 it isn't needed for USB2/3, so that argument, legitimate in its day, no longer applies.

        2. Bebu

          Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

          I stopped using VirtualBox on Linux some years ago when it starting causing problems with dkms with nvidia drivers.

          I have used virt-manager (RHEL7/CentOS7) to spin up the odd OS image (BSD, OpenIndiana etc) and mostly works fine.

          Its just kvm + qemu afaik.

          Anything to avoid oracle skulduggery.

          Even when java was sun I avoided it like the plague - anything coded in it was always suspect and for sysadmin applications usually had to run as root.

          Once oracle bought sun even more reason to avoid. More like ebola than plague :)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

            Virt-manager is also libvirt. Notably libvirt generates very long Qemu command lines, enabling more features than you see in Qemu scripts on blogs.

          2. matjaggard

            Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

            No need to avoid Java, it's actually pretty good and getting better. I code in quite a few languages, including supposedly more modern ones but I still like Java the best - it's got just enough boilerplate (and much less now than older versions) that you can tell what every part is doing. Groovy is the worst - there's no telling what's a method call or a reference to an object or a function in that.

        3. msknight

          Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

          What about XCP-ng ?

    2. captain veg Silver badge

      Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

      > Gartner is warning that Oracle "actively targets organizations" on Java compliance

      Surely it's "compliancy"?

      -A.

      1. David 132 Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

        All they want from their hostagescustomers is total obediency.

        1. Snowy Silver badge
          Trollface

          Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms

          That and all their money.

  2. EricM Silver badge
    WTF?

    Is there still _any_ reason to run Oracle-branded Java?

    Old, non-portable Java 8 code can stay on old, license-free Java versions.

    New stuff under active development can be run on OpenJDK/Temurin or derivates.

    What use cases of Java do really require considering this Oracle-extortion scheme?

    1. matjaggard

      Re: Is there still _any_ reason to run Oracle-branded Java?

      Literally nothing. Even the support is better from other vendors.

    2. sebacoustic

      Re: Is there still _any_ reason to run Oracle-branded Java?

      some power-user add-ons such as a kind of "flight deck" thingie i can't remember the name of, java web start that isn't an utter nightmare, and a windows control panel.

      Altogehter not worth it _for our organisation_ but ymmv

  3. b0llchit Silver badge
    Mushroom

    ...showed between 2x to 4x price increases...

    That is what you will pay now and it excludes the exorbitant cost of lawyers when dealing with oracle.

    Never deal with the devil. You will always burn in the process. Time to invest in porting to openjdk and friends, which will be massively cheaper than continuation with the devil.

  4. Mostly Irrelevant

    Oracle really is the worst.

    Oracle seems to be on a quest to make Microsoft look good, even they aren't this craven. Hell, Microsoft gives away the dotnet compiler, library and even the VSCode editor including the source code.

    1. Korgonzolla

      Re: Oracle really is the worst.

      I’ve spent the last few years working for a global organisation who have aggressively moved away from everything Oracle. No Oracle DB, no packaged Oracle DBs sitting underneath an application, complete rewrite of applications off the Java stack, no support for Java on their virtual desktop and Citrix environments, end-user device level software licensing running to ensure nothing has Oracle underneath the hood. It’s a strategic objective of the CIO and CTO functions.

      1. TVU

        Re: Oracle really is the worst.

        "It’s a strategic objective of the CIO and CTO functions".

        ^ Now that is an eminently sensible strategy to have the removal of all costly Oracle products as a job description objective for senior executives.

  5. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Mark of the devil

    Make sure you never have a file named .oracle_jre_usage

    Some old apps bundle an Oracle JRE that will pop up a security warning and ask to update to the latest ($$$$$) version. Kill it all with fire to be safe.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Mark of the devil

      JRE/JDK 8u102 stopped making the .oracle_jre_usage directory, if you use software which comes with an older version of Java then it will re-appear.

      In any case you're safe with anything up to and including JRE/JDK 8u202. If you need anything anything higher there's e.g. Adoptium.

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Mark of the devil

      Do any anti-virus packages detect this file?

  6. devin3782

    Oracle: I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Now I am thinking of the Robot Chicken take on this.

      I don't want to see a dress, bonnet, and unicycle suddenly turn up at work. There are enough clown shoes already (or is that clowns wearing shoes - with the C-Suite I don't know anymore).

  7. DrXym

    Time to bail

    Use the OpenJDK or a supported dist like Coretto. No issues with licences to worry about and certainly better than giving money to Oracle for little or no benefit. It always surprises me that they have any customers at all given the cost & complexity of their products and onerous terms of using them.

  8. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

    .NET Switchover

    Let's face it: these con-man practices are almost certainly going to lead to an enormous stampede towards .NET.

    1. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: .NET Switchover

      There's a fire under that frying pan.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    LibreOffice is nearly free of that infection by now

    I haven't been following it (because I had no need for the bits that still needed Java), but I recall from quite a few years back thatthere was a hard push in LibreOffice to lose its dependency on Java completely.

    It appears that that work has as yet not yet been completed. These new Oracle shenanigans ought to provide a compelling argument to close this off, but I know refactoring legacy code is quite a swine to do.

    1. matjaggard

      Re: LibreOffice is nearly free of that infection by now

      I disagree. There's no need to get rid of Java for that reason at all. They likely included a fully free version anyway

  10. Robert Halloran

    At this point Red Hat, IBM & Microsoft all offer no-cost support for OpenJDK on their respective platforms. Unless your procurement crew insists on a single "throat to choke at 0300" for such things, why in the name of Everything Round would you continue to pay the Danegeld to Oracle?

  11. Long John Silver Bronze badge
    Pirate

    We all pay 'rentier taxation'

    Oracle's behaviour exemplifies ills created by misconceived introduction of legalised monopoly into commerce and manufacture. Although some believe otherwise, rentier economics is inimical to market-capitalism of the nature construed by Adam Smith.

    Ill-effects arise from pricing being arbitrary. The underlying logic is price adjustment to maximise overall profit from those willing to pay. This replaces the 'price discovery' offered by competition in an open market.

    Rentiers within the field of digitised (or digitisable) products are in extremely privileged position. They vend products which inherently lack scarcity because they have no physical substance other than that of any medium in which they might be embedded in any one instance. The most abstract example is an idea itself even should expression of that idea lead to a tangible physical artifice.

    The monstrous monopoly pervades almost all aspects of culture ranging from recorded caterwauling of 'pop singers' to presentation of (occasionally) deep ideas in academic literature. The ersatz nature of monopoly 'competition' requires bolstering by an army of investigators and lawyers whose cost is factored into the prices of rentier goods.

    Every citizen and aggregate body (e.g. government) feeds rentiers. Even when not buying an overtly rentier product, it is highly likely that somewhere in the cost of its making, payment has been handed to rentiers; for example, few businesses these days are not reliant upon proprietary computer software. Although it qualitatively is a different form of rentier economics, rental of office and retail premises is an identifiable component of price for many things; physical rental does broadly conform to supply/demand economics but contains huge distortions favourable to landlords.

    Whereas markets determine price of many goods and services, there is no mechanism for external price restraint to be imposed upon vendors of digital goods which inhabit walled gardens,

    1. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
      Go

      Re: We all pay 'rentier taxation'

      How do you program ChatGPT to spew this?

      1. bpfh

        Re: We all pay 'rentier taxation'

        Ask amanfrommars1...

      2. Scene it all

        Re: We all pay 'rentier taxation'

        Only an economist would use a word like "rentier" (A person who lives on income from property or investments.)

  12. xyz123 Silver badge

    I work for a fairly large employer.

    Oracle demanded $80,000,000 PER YEAR just to use Java for small single-purpose apps. This excluded Devs costs.....just 80mil USD for end-users to ACCESS apps.

    So we reprogrammed everything to remove Java from ALL systems. Dumped it in the trash

  13. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
    Pirate

    Martti Ahtisaari

    I came here for the artwork of the skull in the coffee that accompanies this article. There's a song called "Sjeef by die koffie" (poison with the coffee) about Martti Ahtisaari claiming that the previous South African government tried to kill him by poisoning his morning coffee. Possibly the real reason he felt so sick was that he was observed drinking a great deal of produce from the Cape Winelands at a dinner the previous evening.

    Anyway, Oracle is obviously poisoning your coffee with their Java offering – stay clear of the toxic waste. Capable programmers do not need anything that Java or .NET have to offer.

    PS. If Twitter cost $44 beellion, and Java only fetched $7.4 beellion it should be indisputable what a worthless piece of hogwash Java really is.

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