Let's have a chat about Java licensing, says unsolicited Oracle email

Oracle is firing off unsolicited emails to businesses offering to discuss Java subscription deals, seemingly in an effort to extract information that could be to its benefit in future license negotiations. The email, seen by The Register, arrives from a Java enterprise account executive and promises "some news to share …

[F. Frederick Skitty]

We use OpenJDK on our servers, and for the only client side Java app we have it's running on Azul's free distribution. Can't see any reason why we'd run Oracle's "official" distribution of Java, particularly for server side stuff where our Linux distro already has OpenJDK in their own package repos.

[abend0c4]

Obviously, I would know my compliance position

True creative licensing ensures there's always scope for doubt and uncertainty about compliance.

[OhForF']

Re: Obviously, I would know my compliance position

Keep in mind that it was Oracle licensing expert Craig Guarente, Palisade Compliance founder and CEO that said he'd know his compliance position.

He probably wouldn't mind companies asking Palisade for assistance before responding to that mail from Oracle.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Obviously, I would know my compliance position

And how could he know anything about licencing compliance when the Oracle inspector had yet to decide on what grounds it wasn't compliant?

"He probably wouldn't mind companies asking Palisade for assistance before responding to that mail from Oracle."

I think he might have been encouraging companies to phone Oracle and then they'd be more likely to ask Palisade for assistance.

[xyz123]

Can't say which place, but recently Oracle "demanded" £72,000,000/year to use Java, so company shut down ALL java projects, uninstalled java from every single machine and brought in dozens of programmers to recreate their systems in HTML etc.

[Lee D]

Which is the only sensible response to discovering that a product you hold is now licenced by Oracle.

[Wanting more]

10 years ago we had a project to migrate our databases to Oracle.

We now have a project to migrate our database off Oracle (to Postgres in the cloud). You can guess the reason why.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a fundamental challenge with all the recent licensing model changes, especially moving to subscription models... It is easy to price the product out of the market.

Far too few sales droids apply common sense to the quotes they send to customers. "My customer's has a $50M annual business, hey let's send them a $72M quote and a new license model non-compliance nasty-gram."

[Baximelter]

It is easy to price the product out of the market

The parasite that kills its host is not long for this world. In the case of Oracle, if only . . .

[unimaginative]

That is unbelievably stupid given they could have just switched to OpenJDK.

Replaces with HTML implies only java clients and none on servers. Very unusual.

[Lee D]

I don't think it's stupid - I think that's a sensible business decision, because Java is about to start going the way of the dodo because of actions like this, and who wants to deal with any fallout from - say - an Oracle/OpenJDK lawsuit, hassle from Oracle over your exact usage, etc. etc.

If the time was already ripe to consider moving, and you start getting this hassle, and you feel there's no future in Java - that's the time to just burn the bridges and start afresh on something without any such licensing whatsoever.

And if you have no Java on servers... even more of a case to just move in the modern age. Why would you want to be dealing with Java clients nowadays?

I'm watching vendors who are dependent on supplying Java software (including some embedded in hardware) scramble to move us to their new versions that aren't. Java is being tainted by Oracle, and people are beginning to want nothing to do with it. Even if that's executives misunderstanding and just decreeing "No, no more Java, or anything associated with it, I don't want to see another threatening Oracle bill!", that's no bad thing from the business's point of view. Oracle's, yes, but not the business.

[werdsmith]

Not stupid at all. True stupid is allowing anything tainted by Oracle anywhere near your business.

Expunge everything. Even Java runtimes, VirtualBox, MySQL and Maria. Burn them all.

[FIA]

It's not stupid to cancel all Java projects and spend a load more money hiring a boatload of programmers (with all the associated business disruption that entails) rather than simply switch to a non Oracle version of Java??

If you're serious that's insane, not stupid.

If you use Java just move to OpenJDK.

If you're still worried about the long term you can then plan a sensible migration safe in the knowledge you're not having to give money to Oracle.

Expunge everything. Even Java runtimes, VirtualBox, MySQL and Maria. Burn them all.

Maria isn't Oracle.

I'm all for not using Oracle (I've encountered enough Oracle Applications before), but be sensible about it.

[werdsmith]

Maria uses innodb or ISAM which is still Oracle.

And getting rid of Java is a good idea even if it wasn’t Oracle. Disinfecting everything of dirty contaminated toxic crap is never a bad idea. At least have a road map leading to eventual cleanliness.

[hittitezombie]

You're aware of MariaDB's license and it is open source, right?

[werdsmith]

Contaminated.

[FIA]

Maria uses innodb or ISAM which is still Oracle.

And GPL2 licenced, so not a problem. In fact, if you dislike Oracle surely using their work without payment is the ultimate 'fuck you'? (I'll be fair to them, they aren't that bad at databases).

And getting rid of Java is a good idea even if it wasn’t Oracle.

I'd argue that depends on your reasons. The language isn't great. (IMHO), but the VM and runtime are okay.

Disinfecting everything of dirty contaminated toxic crap is never a bad idea. At least have a road map leading to eventual cleanliness.

Yes, a roadmap is the sensible approach.

Also, ask yourself 'why' too. If it's personal dislike, then make sure you're also doing it for good technical/business reasons too. Often these kind of projects can spiral, and if you're not doing them for good reasons in the first place you're just pissing away good money after bad.

For example, I worked at a Java place that disliked the way Java was head, so they moved to Groovy (A sadly overlooked replacement). This was a really sensible approach. It meant programmers could develop in a nicer language, but the existing codebase wasn't invalidated as the two interoperated well. Se we got all the syntactic sugar benefits and the resultant improvement in development time; but we didn't have to re-factor a large portion of the codebase. It could be done piecemeal as components came up for change.

I've seen the 'rip it out because some suit has a panic' approach in the past, it often doesn't work well. Or actually work at all. Heck, I once worked at a company where their new product (to replace their old crusty product) was 15 years old... they were still running the old product too.

[werdsmith]

If you’ve got an organisation of any size, there’s always a risk that whilst using gpl2 open source stuff, somebody is going to take the lazy decision to download some or other tool that is not free for commercial use. In fact Oracle make this very easy and do not make the conditions of use clear.

So who has mysqladmin? Or VirtualBox extensions?

[sbegrupt]

Did someone try to tell those poor sods about Eclipse Temurin?

[Kevin Johnston]

CMOT Oracle

If there was only one flavour of Java available and it was a critical system with no other way to code then I could see this approach having some merit. In reality this is the Twitter approach to building your business

[Bebu]

Re: CMOT Oracle

Sausage-in-a-bun or rat-on-stick (named species meat optional extra cost)?

Honestly I would prefer dealing with Mr Dibbler (obviously forearmed with antibiotics and a stomach pump.)

The adage about a long spoon and the devil apply doubly here I should think.

[alain williams]

Simple solution

Create a company with one employee and spin off all Java applications to that company. Permit use by the parent company.

OK: I suspect that Oracle's license terms will forbid that, but creative solutions like this should be used while you transition away from Oracle supplied Java.

Is Larry Ellison a cousin to Ryan Air's Michael O'Leary ?

[Paul Crawford]

Re: Simple solution

Better still purge your business of ALL software from Oracle.

In a past job we had Sun stuff, once it became Oracle we knew it was game over so all that was not already paid for / permanent was decommissioned and free options from Linux and similar used instead. OK, not everyone has that luxury as they may lack developers or be tied to COTS stuff that only works with X.Y.Z version (hopefully from pre licence change!), but if you are using Oracle they will come after you for serious money have the the legal form for making you pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Simple solution

When we were told we were going to be audited for java we removed EVERY oracle product we had. Our oracle spend was over 100M annually. When they decided to tack on java etc, we removed everything bar a handful of RDBMS cores we cant migrate due to the software requiring it [we are EOLing this vendor now].

When they came back the following year we had dropped our spend to ~50M. Year two was under 10M. Year three is now a couple of K.

When they came back year 1 and saw what we were doing the sales droid try to give us free java etc. He was told to fuck right off. Glad the twat lost our numbers on his sales.

[MyffyW]

Re: Simple solution

@AC this is much the best approach to these shysters

[David 132]

Re: Simple solution

I applaud your (company's) action, but I have to say that on a personal level, I can't wrap my head around the idea of any organization paying $/£ 100 million annually in software licensing costs alone. Yeah, yeah, enterprise scale and all that, but that's a mind-blowing level of spend. I presume that prior to the Java shakedown, it was deemed a good investment inasmuch as it was facilitating considerably more than that amount in annual revenue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Simple solution

Same, lab I worked in had loads of Sun kit, once Oracle got their hands on Sun everything was replaced by DELL Precision workstations running Linux. The last thing to go was EMC Networker running on a Sun box. Utter shisters

[bregister]

Re: Simple solution

cousin or acolyte.

To be fair to MOL though, he stays in Ireland and pays his taxes.

Many others do not!

[CoolKoon]

Re: Simple solution

"Is Larry Ellison a cousin to Ryan Air's Michael O'Leary ?" - Bwahahahah :D :D :D The sad part is that he's actually starting to make Michael O'Leary look good in comparison.

[bsdnazz]

*So* glad we moved to OpenJDK some years ago when it became obvious Oracle was going to change the license terms so they could charge for licenses.

[Anonymous Coward]

We're constantly checking PCs & servers to make sure they don't have Oracle Java on them. As a general rule, we're moving away from Java as a development environment because of "Oracle"

[devin3782]

Dear Oracle,

Do please go directly to hell.

Deeply unkind regards

A Java Developer whom soon won't be.

[b0llchit]

Dear sir,

We cannot comply and go to hell. We are already well positioned in hell and love the hot jars.

Sincerely, Oracle

PS. You are a Java Developer by your own admission. You have been tracked down for an audit. We at Oracle believe in paying devil's due. You have been flagged as trying to flirt with heaven and such behaviour can and will not be tolerated.

[Paul Uszak]

Audit? We don't want no audit.

What's this about Oracle "auditing" companies? By the Oracle police? We use Java where and how we want. If you want to "audit" us, I suggest bringing a court order, armed police or destroyer droid. Otherwise you risk annoying James on the front desk (ex. Royal Marine sergeant). But doesn't work Tuesdays... damn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

If you have signed a contract with Oracle for anything, they will have the right to audit you

[b0llchit]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

Lesson learned: Never sign a contract with Oracle.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

Never sign a contract with Oracle.

Aye. It's a Faustian bargain at best..

[Bebu]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

《Never sign a contract with Oracle.

Aye. It's a Faustian bargain at best..》

Dr Faustus got off lightly in comparision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

They can apply for a court order whether you have a contract or not. Having enacted Anton Pillar orders against the Mirror Group and Tatung in the 1990s you won’t necessarily know anything about it until they turn up on your doorstep.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

Note: Some of Oracle's license audit team went to OpenText, who is now equally or more hated that Oracle!

[Plest]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

You know that when you installed it a huge block of text came up that had "EULA" written at the top? Did you read that? I suspect not, 'cos in there it will say something like "If you use this software we can come round to where you work and re-enact a certain scene from the movie Deliverance if we want!".

[jockmcthingiemibobb]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

Bollox. EULAs aren't worth the pixels they're displayed on

[Vometia has insomnia. Again.]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

Quite. Based on the ones I have read in full, I now just expect that most if not all EULAs are (often substantially) less than the legal minimum anyway. And the longer they are, the more dishonest they are.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

"EULAs aren't worth the pixels they're displayed on"

For consumer products, terms that purport to waive statutory rights can have no force in any jurisdiction that protects cunsumer rights. For commercial products you might find courts consider the customers to be big boys who can change their own nappies now.

[CoolKoon]

Re: Audit? We don't want no audit.

The tricky part is that they can't enforce anything unlawful even if they put it into the EULA that you're forced to accept. Or well they can try (they can even put there that they can sell your organs at will), but they'd never be able to enforce it anyway.

[dawidpotocki]

> Oracle licensing expert Craig Guarente, Palisade Compliance founder and CEO, told us organizations should reply to Oracle

What? Why would you want to talk with them at all? The safest option is to not engage at all. What could you possibly get out of it?

[Fred Daggy]

Better the devil you DON'T know, in this case

If one talks to 2 different Oracle Licencing experts about compliance, expect (at least) 3 different versions of "no, you're not compliant".

Don't deal with the devil.

[Mark 65]

I read

It's Oracle's IP, and they have a right to monetize it the way they see fit, and every customer who uses it has an obligation to be in compliance. No one is questioning that, but if I were receiving that email, I'd probably make a phone call back to Oracle and have a conversation with them and ask them questions without giving much information away.

and thought "I'd just tell them to go get fucked"

[Alistair]

Excuse me while I giggle

On the RH sources thread I think I made a comment that is slightly relevant......

RHEL has only one target

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun Micro

See, we did monetize our purchase of Sun Micro. Enjoy.

[Anonymous Coward]

What three words

You only need what three words when dealing with Oracle "fcuk off cnut" that includes those that work for them. Only been able to use them twice at a couple of parties, the look on thier sales droid faces was priceless as you walk away.

[Danny 14]

Re: What three words

I would treat it like all other sales stuff. Delete and ignore.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Looking for work

I've been looking for a new software developer/architect job but clearly the big money is helping companies ditch Oracle. I can 100% guarantee that my code runs on free and sanely priced software environments.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never talk to the police

Isn't this a bit like talking to the police? Never talk to the police even if you are innocent. They are just of a fishing expedition to find you guilty of something, even if you aren't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Never talk to the police

Oracle's audit team are more like Rohm's brownshirts, a self elected body of thugs that will make you wish you've never so much as heard of Oracle by the time they've beaten an audit out of you and your finance dept!

[Anonymous Coward]

We "WERE" getting compliance emails from oracle wanting to talk about license changes

Note that the word were is stressed for this statement.

We sat down with our developer and all systems we use either have an older version of Java that predates any of the newer more restrictive licensing, or OpenJDK.

they were sending us emails once every couple of days, so I created a proofpoint mail filter to block emails from Oracle. I knew better than to respond to them.

Oracle can pound sand, we're not bound by their current licensing and we are compliant for the version of the license that the versions we do still use on older systems were licensed under.

I had a similar exchange with Adobe in regard to licensing, which was sent under the guise of reviewing our current products to see if there was a better solution for us. When I graciously declined, I got a nastygram back telling that it is a licensing audit and that it is mandatory. My response was that the users in my company that are using adobe creative suite are using licensed versions that were downloaded from their portal that are tied to their adobe user accounts, and that they only have the software installed on one machine per user.

I never heard back from them after that. Adobe can eat a bag of dicks too; I hate their bloated software.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: We "WERE" getting compliance emails from oracle wanting to talk about license changes

My response was that the users in my company that are using adobe creative suite

"who are still using" might have been a bit more pointed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the License Audit unit at Big Red

Is datamining all responses and salivating at the opportunities to put the screws to customers out of compliance with their actual usage!

[Tim99]

A saw from the "early days" - V6?

Q: What do you call Oracle customers? A: Hostages.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time To Think About Moving Away from Java

Move legacy apps to OpenJDK. I would consider a move away from Java entirely for new apps, as there is always a risk that in the future Oracle will somehow find a way to assert that OpenJDK needs a license. I'm thinking of a situation like the Oracle versus Android debacle.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: Time To Think About Moving Away from Java

Java is fine. Too many big companies, including platform and cloud providers, have invested and contributed to OpenJDK. Even with as many lawyers as Oracle has, they would probably be swiftly extinguished from everywhere except history books and shocking stories about old ways.

Java has legacy baggage but overall you can accomplish a lot with it. Performance is excellent as long as you avoid obviously slow 3rd party frameworks. Most importantly, the language is still evolving to adopt features that have proven to work well in more progressive languages.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Similar things at M$

I thought about using the automation tools in MS 352. When I discovered they change both the name and capability every year or so, and licensing seems to be based on counting random processes, I decided not to go there. The whole idea of being audited against licenses you might have used versus ones you have actually paid for seems totally batshit crazy from a customer perspective.

[Slow Joe Crow]

Java Delenda Est!

Oracle deserves to lose on this. In my part of the IT world Java is dead anyway since none of the mainstream browsers support it. Mercifully the only thing we usually needed it for was check scanners. I think a few ancient HP network switches used Java in their web UI but that's an excellent reason to bin them.

For a few old apps we do supply one of the free java run times to avoid dealing with Oracle. I'm disappointed because the run anywhere JVM had such promise and then failed

[Anonymous Coward]

ORACLE. The intruder that worms its way into the business and really doesn't want to go. My former employer decided to go for an ORACLE partnered CRM. My god, they really didn't do the requirements well, and got beaten with the chargeables stick.

But management still want "Industry Standard".

[rcxb]

Non-Oracle Java

Even on old platforms, you can find OpenJDK builds:

https://github.com/alexkasko/openjdk-unofficial-builds#openjdk-unofficial-installers-for-windows-linux-and-mac-os-x

https://github.com/ojdkbuild/ojdkbuild

https://adoptopenjdk.net/releases.html

https://developer.ibm.com/languages/java/semeru-runtimes/downloads/

https://adoptium.net/temurin/releases/

Cut out the Oracle stuff out before the infection takes over.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dracula is thirsty again

To quote the WOPR, "The only winning move is not to play"

[Danny 14]

Re: Dracula is thirsty again

Best to take off and nuke Java from orbit. Its the only way to be sure.

[hittitezombie]

... or just use OpenJDK everywhere. It's not limited to Linux.

And for Oracle, give tem the two finger salute.

[Vometia has insomnia. Again.]

"It's Oracle's IP, and they have a right to monetize it the way they see fit, and every customer who uses it has an obligation to be in compliance."

Big corporations have rights, customers have obligations. That about sums up everything that is wrong with business today.

[Henry Wertz 1]

Disingenuous

I find it to be particularly disingenuous of Oracle to put in these E-Mails "Customers no longer need to count every processor or user name" then tell people they must pay for every employee at the company. I mean, OK, technically an employee is not a user name... but obviously that's what they are trying to imply.

Anyway, yeah, I don't think I used Sun Java since the 1990s, and I've never used Oracle Java. I can't imagine not just using OpenJDK or the like instead.

[WolfFan]

Over the last decade

I have gradually removed everything Oracle from all machines under my control. Java, Virtual Box, the lot.

I have received a little note from Oracle. I replied to the effect that as I no longer had any Oracle products on any machines, no, I wasn’t interested in anything to do with licensing. In particular I wasn’t interested in paying even one penny. And, yes, they could come and have a look to verify that I wasn’t using any Oracle products… at their expense. Any problems, any disruptions, anything at all, would be billed to them. I had Legal send the note, on actual paper, using the law firm’s letterhead. And signed by a senior partner. There is, after all, a reason why we have them on retainer.

I have not heard back. Perhaps I will.

[Anonymous Coward]

offering to discuss Java subscription deals

Flick it to the barista in the canteen.

[AmazingPudding]

"We leanrded all 'bout bizniz from that Musk feller, uh-huh"

Man, this is such an apocalyptically stupid move. It's not enough that everyone with half an oz. of smarts was abandoning Oracle anyway, now this! Bless their hearts.