'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

A retired CIO has offered advice in dealing with Oracle audits: the vendor will try to work from its current licensing policies, yet users should stick to their contracts with the global tech giant. "We had to educate them [Oracle] on our arrangement and we had to set our posture based on the Ts and Cs of the signed agreements …

[Doctor Syntax]

"We came up with a non-Oracle based architecture for development and we implemented a policy that pointed towards the other development platform and we evaluated methods to discourage or prevent the download of Java software,"

Never give a customer reason to review the market.

[Michael Wojcik]

Thing is, the Oracle licensing team is incentivized to find billable non-compliance today. What happens tomorrow is Not Their Problem. And if Oracle ends up robbing Peter (sales) to pay Paul (licensing), that'll still look good on the next set of quarterlies — even if it precipitates long-term decline.

As with much of modern capitalism, it's full of perverse incentives, and many organizations continue to function mostly because there's enough tension between opposing goals and friction within the organizational structure that no one really succeeds well enough to bring the whole thing down.

[johnmc]

That perversion is deep.

"As with much of modern capitalism, it's full of perverse incentives, ..."

Yes and the core of it is owning vs subscription. That difference is at the core of the perversion itself. Nor does the issue lay solely with software. Way too many products today you simply don't 'own'.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just business

The UK the NHS will not let me have an operation to fix an issue, and yet happy to pay 2-3 times that expense on drugs to counteract the resultant side effects each year!

[Pascal Monett]

That is why web site Ts & Cs are not a contract

A contract is a binding agreement between both parties.

Oracle can drum up all the changes it wants, none of them are valid if nothing is allowing them in the existing contract.

That is why contract amendments are made. They add to and change the initial contract, and both parties must agree to them before they can be implemented.

And that is the essential difference between an actual contract and web site Ts & Cs. The web site can change them at any time and if you don't like it, your only choice is not to use said web site any more. You cannot argue that you wish stay on the pre-change version.

Ts & Cs are not a contract.

[Lee D]

Re: That is why web site Ts & Cs are not a contract

A contract is a "meeting of minds" legally, so many T&Cs are not enforceable, and are often found to be that way in court.

However, there's also a factor of variation and acceptance of that variation when you start.

What people often don't realise is that even a contract is not cast in stone - and there may be unenforceable parts within it, everything from the jurisdiction (i.e. a US company doing business with EU companies can't always have every aspect of their business contract only be answerable to US law/jurisdiction, it simply doesn't work like that) to the actual thing they are trying to do.

"Your statutory rights are not affected" means something, and doesn't even need to be explicitly stated (it often is, but for other reasons!) - because those rights are statutory and are not affected whether they tell you that or not!

To be honest, despite having screwed several companies to the wall with their own contracts in the past, I wouldn't touch or deal with Oracle contracts. They are certain companies you just should not be doing business with.

[abend0c4]

Advice in dealing with Oracle audits

The best advice would seem to be to fully inform yourself of the potential consequences before you even consider Oracle as a potential vendor.

[aerogems]

Re: Advice in dealing with Oracle audits

And then run in the opposite direction screaming?

[JohnSheeran]

Re: Advice in dealing with Oracle audits

That's great advice if you don't already have Oracle. If you do, not helpful.

[Kurgan]

Re: Advice in dealing with Oracle audits

If you do, then try and find alternative solutions and stop being an Oracle customer.

[werdsmith]

Re: Advice in dealing with Oracle audits

Have end of life for the Oracle software on your strategic road map. Start the process immediately.

[JohnSheeran]

Re: Advice in dealing with Oracle audits

One does not simply get off Oracle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Advice in dealing with Oracle audits

Yes, best to lock yourself in your data centre screaming then.

The fans cover much of the noise and you're never getting out.

[TVU]

"For example, Gartner estimated the new subscription model to be two to five times more expensive than the legacy model"

Beware the counsel of the Oracle! (the Austin, Texas one, that is)

[MOH]

Well, that's Gartner, do guaranteed to be wrong. Only question is which direction

[Sparkus]

As the old saying goes......

Larry needs a new sailboat......

[RedGreen925]

Re: As the old saying goes......

"

As the old saying goes......

Larry needs a new sailboat......

"

Or another island his capricious consumption has went to another level now, boats are no longer in vogue with the parasite billionaire class these days....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: As the old saying goes......

next step combine the two, a floating island

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: As the old saying goes......

As the saying goes....

One

Rich

Arsehole

Called

Larry

Ellison

[Tim99]

Re: As the old saying goes......

I've posted this before - I heard this at the bar on a UK Oracle training course in the 1980s...

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

[Nate Amsden]

I had to educate Oracle on their own software

Haven't had any serious Oracle software in a while but at one company went through two audits, back in 2006-2007. First audit I was a brand new employee so wasn't involved. Company ignored my advice to change from Oracle EE to Oracle SE telling me "we got it all figured out", until the 2nd audit where they got caught with their pants down again and had to pay up big (for them anyway). I recall being in that audit and educating the Oracle folks on Oracle SE CPU licensing vs per core on EE. They didn't believe me at first but later checked and verified I was right. I was quite surprised they were not aware of that basic thing at the time. The company originally licensed Oracle SE One (before I started), and their DB consultants deployed Oracle EE (Because that was their standard, perhaps they were never informed of the license requirements). After 2nd audit then I moved everything to Oracle SE and optimized things quite well, such as changing from Dual socket/Dual core processors to single socket/quad core (in a couple of cases HP had to replace the motherboards as they advertised their DL380G5 supported quad core, but the early generation did not, they later updated their docs to reflect this).

A couple jobs later I licensed a tiny Oracle SE 20 user something license for VMware vCenter(so I could run the DB on Linux, I had some history with Oracle unlike DB2 which was the other option, wasn't going to use MSSQL since I wanted Linux and that didn't run on Linux at the time). I believe I kept it in compliance without issue the whole time I used it(retired it when I deployed a new vCenter 6.5, and retired the 5.5). Though Oracle would often ask me what I was using Oracle for, when I told them they always shut up fast and never brought up any possibilities of audit.

Main thing I miss about Oracle DB anyway is enterprise manager's performance stuff, that was so cool. And at least with Oracle 10G you could use it (even though technically it required a EE license) with Oracle SE, so at that job in 2007 that is what I did, and I could wipe all evidence of it easily if needed with a single command. Oracle 11G or 11GR2 or whatever closed that licensing loophole, so at my next gig with the vCenter stuff I was unable to install that performance pack to enterprise manager. I haven't seen anything come within 1000 miles of being as useful as that instrumentation and the web based ease of use for identifying things since. Fortunately my day job is not DBA so I guess it's not my responsibility, still was so nice to be able to easily self serve information like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I had to educate Oracle on their own software

you get a down vote for not ripping oracle out, therefore you are an oracle enabler. boo

[Bitsminer]

I had to educate management on the Oracle software...

Complementary to Nate, we had very assertive yet wrong management who insisted, decades before ChatGPT, that they knew what was what according to Oracle.

We were delivering turnkey systems to customers and needed EE due to Spatial. Oracle 8 (and 9 and 10) included spatial, trusting that you would pay Oracle for EE prices if you used it. (The features and software quality of spatial was, however, something else altogether...)

I had several complaints to our management about (a) why Oracle (b) again, why Oracle, and (c) when do we move to Postgres plus PostGIS for the spatial features.

Turns out they had only recognized the name, never mind the cost. PostGIS got serious, afaik, around the time Oracle 9 came out so we gradually moved ourselves and our customers to that.

Oracle's "development" license was, in fact, only a testing license. Whenever we asked what that really meant, their interpretation was that development activities were "production" and therefore license fees, plus annual maintenance fees at 15% or 20% of list price, were due for factory integration and test systems. Eventually management noticed this and accelerated the switch.

This was all for deliverable systems. Corporate IT had their own shitshow with Oracle audits. Think VMware.....oh my!

[rcxb]

Non-Oracle Java

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

Even for old platforms there OpenJDK builds out there, they're just difficult to find:

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/

[aerogems]

The Subway of the Tech World

Just like Subway is a business that sells franchises and also sometimes sandwiches, Oracle is a business that sells software licenses, and occasionally the actual software.

[TheWeetabix]

Re: The Subway of the Tech World

Lovely analogy. I may steal it.

[wolfetone]

Dear Michael Cahoon

How are you fixed for a working holiday to Birmingham, UK? I'll even collect you from the airport.

[Anonymous Coward]

Old Oracle licenses

I've seen companies running Oracle Java 8 because it's bundled with the Oracle database license and everyone is terrified of what might happen if someone uses OpenJDK 21. Even worse, what apocalyptic license clause might trigger if an OpenJDK app connects to an Oracle database?

[Strider]

Audit checks

Do all software companies not do periodic checks on their customers' use of their software? And of course this should be based on their contracts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Audit checks

Oracle and IBM are a bit notorious for changing the licensing model and then trying to bully you onto the new (more expensive) model.

Especially around per core, per cpu, per user stuff, and how instances on hypervisors get counted.

[Dinanziame]

Re: Audit checks

I suppose their contacts contain clauses like "we might change the licensing model at any time once you're locked in"?

[PM.]

Re: Audit checks

..or "pray,we don't alter it further"

[John Riddoch]

Re: Audit checks

Most software is installed in a single use case with a fairly clearly defined license requirement and it's relatively simple for a company to stay within those bounds.

Oracle RDBMS has so many options available for use it's hard to keep track of which ones might be enabled and what the impact to your license fee might be. Don't run diagnostics pack without licensing, because that's another charge. Add in the complicated (and self-serving) virtualisation rules and you can end up using significantly more licenses than you think you're using. Next, we add on the fact that Oracle licenses are expensive and there's a strong incentive for Oracle to investigate your usage because you're probably using more than you should without realising and they can extract lots from you.

[hittitezombie]

Re: Audit checks

Even if you install the cheapest Oracle SE, if you run an AWR report suddenly you have to pay for additional packs which come per cpu core.

The biggest problem I have had in the past is ignorant DBAs. If something is bundled in, waiting for you to use, it doesn't mean that your license covers it. AWR reports and partitioning are two very simple examples of this.

[johnmc]

Re: Audit checks

How to you like your MS Win 11 transition? Oh, you thought you had a choice? Some companies don't bother with checks and just force upgrades and new licensing terms in the process.

[trevorde]

Big red (Oracle) flag

That there is a cottage industry dedicated to assisting with Oracle license audits

[Fred Daggy]

Re: Big red (Oracle) flag

Its not just Oracle.

Its MS, its Cisco, IBM, if it has a licence - it will be audited. I am sure they also share intelligence (or the same company does the audit for multiple customers)

And then don't go in to scum that have a single patent and a company registered in East Texas that troll the legal department for "patent licence fees". Actual proof of patent use is as thin as the toilet paper here at work.

[Robert Halloran]

Ongoing ORCL problems --> squeezing customers?

Big corps are evaluating/going to Other Databases with friendlier terms, more than a few of their app suite projects have gone sideways (see other headlines on this site), their cloud business has come up day-late-$MONEY-short vs AWS/Azure/Google/etc, and their ongoing efforts to monetize Java have only accelerated adoption of OpenJDK and its derivatives. Their latest quarterly earnings came up short of market expectations as a result of all this so it seems their only option is squeezing the existing customer base for added licensing money?

[captain veg]

FUD

Speaking as someone completely outside of the Java ecosystem, I was under the impression that it's FOSS. Why would anyone need to pay licence fees?

Tell me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you can buy Java from Oracle or simply use the OpenJDK for free gratis. Wikipedia states that OpenJDK is the reference implementation. Quite apart from avoiding sending cash to the Ellison yacht fund, wouldn't that mean saving a packet in not having to deal with periodic audits?

Can anyone enlighten me?

-A.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: FUD

At some companies (run by stupid people) management believes that having paid 'support' somehow gives them somebody to go after when something goes wrong.

It doesn't, of course. Those contracts are set up with so many loopholes that the chance of successfully suing a company like Oracle when a software failure shuts down your business are nil. So they buy Larry another yacht for no good reason whatsoever.

In other cases, Java got installed back when it came from Sun and was free. They have Oracle Java because it auto-updated. For small businesses that don't have any Oracle database licenses they can simply tell the would-be auditors exactly how far up their behinds they can stick their audit. But for big companies that do... yeah, they've got to rush and make sure they get rid of all the Oracle Java before any audit happens.

[captain veg]

Re: FUD

Thanks very much. AC.

Indulge me a little further.

> In other cases, Java got installed back when it came from Sun and was free.

Doesn't it remain free, in perpetuity, in that case?

-A.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: FUD

Eventually people have to upgrade to a newer Java release, for one reason or another. They use third-party software that needs a more-recent version, for example. They want support, and the old version goes out of support. Their developers want the shiny new features.

When you upgrade, you get the new license terms.

As others have pointed out, the solution is to not use Oracle Java. There are a handful of alternative distributions with better licensing terms, such as Adoptium. (Horrible name, but it works well enough.)

[I like fruits]

Classic

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the classic:

It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It

[MOH]

Oracle are basically a protection racket. At some point a large sueball needs to be lobbed at them

[Anonymous Coward]

Move away

I recently was tasked with moving from Oracle to Azure Sql MI

It took 3 months to move the 2 TB data after cleaning

And

60,000 lines of oracle plsql into sql sp’s

Fully regression tested and tested in parallel

Do not be fooled that you can not move away

It saved the business £100k a year after Azure charges

Oracle & Java

Walk away there are alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Move away

From Oracle to Microsoft.. isn't that just jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Move away

No. You don't hear nearly as many horror stories around MS SQL as you do about anything Oracle.

The only vaguely dodgy thing I remember MS doing SQL license wise was around the time of MS SQL 7 when it released prior to the web really hitting its stride, and implied you could run it as a back end to a web server using a standard per user license. This was tightened up by them trying to apply an updated license to SQL 7 later on, but the original license was still there printed out in black and white. They didn't make that mistake for future SQL releases.

Ultimately you're going to have to choose your flavour of poison, and to my mind Microsoft is better than Oracle in that regard.

PostgreSQL has some impressive features, but it still feels like an open source product (the backup facility is *appalling* for instance), and if some obvious parts of the product aren't polished, what's the confidence level in pushing serious amounts of important data through it?

[Robigus]

Re: Move away

I've done PostgreSQL migrations for some critical systems in multi billion pound companies. It's fine.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Move away

I'm genuinely glad to hear it - I just haven't used it at scale. It's just that some parts of it are substantially less turnkey and don't inspire as much confidence as MS SQL.

I mean, I accept that if it Was All That, then MS SQL would be far less prevalent, but still.

[spireite]

Inspection Legality

Genuine question.......

In the UK, does the Licensor have a legal right to enter a Licensee premises to check this stuff out?

[Ken G]

Re: Inspection Legality

If that's in their contract, of course. Wording is probably just "access" so perhaps that means network not physical but it doesn't really matter because you can't see software with the naked eye.

[Anonymous Coward]

Charging for Java

Charging for Java is a huge pain for us. We provide software that requires it on user's desktops and the change has caused a fair bit of angst, especially since the charging model is based on how many employees you have, not how many employees use it. Haven't found a licence-free solution that provides a functioning WebStart yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Charging for Java

Yeah WebStart is our problem too. The next version of our LOB software is moving away from WebStart and I can't wait.

[TMMITW]

Please check spelling

You spelled Michael's last name 2 different ways, Cohoon and Cahoon. While that surname is not common it is important, at least to us.

[werdsmith]

MySQL free in some naked form. I see people downloading and using MySQL workbench My understanding that, in an enterprise, this is not free.

Perhaps the same applies to VirtualBox, where people download and install the extension pack to enhance the performance of their VMs.

Traps are everywhere.

[Steve Channell]

Oracle Bills never go down

If You find your budget for Oracle licences is going down, expect an audit.

If your user count is going down, expect your discount to be reduced to keep the bill up.

If you fail the audit you lose your discount: there was an incentive to over provision licences.

when an audit is scheduled, Shut down any servers not currently used, and spinup postgress on at least one of them

[hittitezombie]

At this point in 2024 if you haven't already migrated into an Open JDK implementation *cough*like OpenJDK *cough*, you deserve what you're about to get from Oracle.

[TheTruthYes]

There's a terrific book written by a former Oracle executive that spills the beans on Oracle's shenanigans: sales practices, corruption, it's all in there. I highly recommend it: 'High-Tech Planet: Secrets of an IT Road Warrior."