Oracle VirtualBox licensing tweak lies in wait for the unwary Oracle has introduced new licensing terms that some users may see as hidden within the terms for VirtualBox, the general-purpose virtualization software for x86_64 hardware. An eagle-eyed licensing consultant in Germany has spotted that licensing terms for downloads from the VirtualBox website have changed, effectively ending …
Can you explain why you think Larry Ellison owes you anything?
In another breath some people complain that free software developers are not paid enough/paid at all, and the world can't rely on such an unstable foundation. It seems that some people want it both ways - free software and complain when somebody wants to fund it. The fact that Larry Ellison is rich is irrelevant - some people seem to think he should do it for free, which strikes me as jealousy.
So instead of resorting to nasty slovos, why not get off your arse and get coding up some virtual machine software. And then not charge for it.
If not, reach into your pocket.
VirtualBox itself is GPLv3 and this won’t change as Oracle learned their lesson from buggering about with OpenJDK, OpenSolaris and OpenOffice. Also, USB 3.x support and the other bits most folks need got merged into the base product, meaning the main reasons to use the PUEL-licenced extension pack vanished.
The remaining featureset exposed by the extension pack is arguably pointless for most users.
Let’s go through the list:
VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP) support. This can be replaced by modern RDP which works better.
Host webcam passthrough. Can be replaced by a number of network-enabled webcam servers.
Intel PXE boot ROM. Can be replaced with a PXE boot ISO or EFI NetBoot utility.
Disk image encryption with AES algorithm. LUKS, BitLocker, FileVault… works fine due to CPU AES instructions.
Cloud integration features. Just use cloud VM management tools supplied by the cloud vendors themselves.
Also, who in their right mind would use VirtualBox for anything other than basic desktop virtualisation? The Linux kernel module is ‘tainted crap’ (LKML said that due to historically poor code quality, not me) and on Windows, there’s been more than one security issue caused by insufficient checks to ensure only the signed application binaries can make use of the type 2 hypervisor drivers,
TL;DR: Nothing to care about here. The car is a Reliant Robin missing a front wheel, not worth “stealing”
The issue tho is VMWare Workstation is practically discontinued at this point. It may receive the rare security fix but aside from that no new features.
Guess I have to learn how to use Qemu+KVM then. Shame it doesn't have a nice shiny frontend like Virtualbox or VMWare Workstation. The few frontend for it is unintuitive. But I'll live.
With virt-manager (GUI), using a KVM based virtual machine instead of Vbox or Vmware workstation is not a very steep learning curve. You'll be glad you did.
Qemu, as a command line utility, is pretty nifty though, you have your entire VM configuration in the command line. Once you get that worked out it's easy and reliable to just run a script to launch your VM.
That and Virtualbox is supposed to be FOSS software. Sun released it as such.
Guess that's one more FOSS project Oracle is killing just like OpenSolaris, Java and OpenOffice and MariaDB before it.
Maybe someone can fork the last actual GPL version of Virtualbox one day. One can dream...
I have in the past attempted to buy a licence for just this bit of software.
They only licence it for sale in at least lots of 100. When you only need 5 licences it becomes prohibitively expensive for a small company.
They do not provide links to resellers.
Thus this is a really bad trap for unwary users...
We ended up going with VMware professional at the time. Partly because we'd tried to comply (and contacted oracle) and needed an audit trail of compliance.
They could at least make it easier to comply?
Like the bus, train, airplane, taxi etc. you pay them the price they give you.
Now whether that price is worth paying…
I’m sure the mis-selling compensation law firms will be looking at the HP Autonomy case to see if the judgement (namely Autonomy did overvalue their company/product) be more widely applied.
"This is more like, you looked at the bus time table, and then have to pay for the ride you might have taken"
You look at the timetable, wait at the bus stop, never turns up but your taxes normally pay for the "service" ; the fare is just a fine for having the temerity of actually trying to use the "service." ;)
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Except there wasn't a big notice on the oracle website. Some guy actually read the T&C in detail and noticed this. What was free is now charged for AFTER you download. Using your bus analogy, you'd been using the bus systems free downtown only service. One day you get on the bus, they've snapped your photo, identified you, and 3 months after you get off you get an invoice in the mail for 10 bucks. And because there was a 3 month delay in the system, you get for the next 3 months an invoice for 10 bucks. After you got that first one, you stopped riding, but you still owe for all those trips between when they first decided to charge and when you stopped. Now does that sound fair?
To be fair, Oracle have made it clear in the T&C's !!!
The fact you did not read them is NOT Oracles fault !!!
The fact you did NOT use the download is also NOT Oracles fault !!!
The fact that you did not conceive of the idea that T&C's can change IS YOUR FAULT !!!
Oracle do have the right to change the T&C's and charge whatever THEY think is appropriate.
I am NOT an Oracle supporter BUT I do know what the commercial world is like and I am therefore NOT surprised.
Very very little is actually Free ... you have to 'pay' in some form somewhere along the way !!!
Simple answer is use the 'Free' version ... for now ... BUT check the T&C's before use ... THEY MAY CHANGE !!!
P.S
Regarding the "You download but DO NOT USE Oracle's software. You still pay Oracle." point.
When you obtain a Book from somewhere ...
do you only pay IF you read the Book ...
or do you pay simply for changing who possesses the Book, which you 'MAY or MAY NOT' read at your pleasure ???
:)
> The fact that you did not conceive of the idea that T&C's can change IS YOUR FAULT !!!
Actually, to give Oracle some credit !!!! The download box on the download page on virtualbox.org very clearly carries the phrase “ VirtualBox Extension Pack Personal Use and Educational License”.
From the few times the Wayback Machine has snapshot the downloads page, it would seem that sometime after January 2024 the download page was reworked to its current incarnation to include the above text.
If you want to use the book analogy, if I walk into a book shop and open a book, but then put it back on the shelf, I'm not charged for having done so. I am charged for that book when I want to take it with me out of the shop. That is how the shop determines the difference between people who intended to purchase the product and those who haven't made that choice yet. If they want, they can make sure I'm not reading that book inside the shop.
And so far, we aren't really arguing whether the thing Oracle's attempting is legal. So far, we're mostly arguing whether it is ethical, which I think it's not. There are reasons to think it's not legal either. It would be if people installed the software and used it for commercial purposes, but clicking a download link which isn't gated is unlikely to be considered entering into a contract. But most of what we dislike is definitely legal; it's totally legal for Oracle to call people who once downloaded a file, accuse them of having broken a contract, and demand lots of money, just as it is legal for me to call you out of the blue, accuse you of having broken a contract that never existed, and demand lots of money. It would only become illegal if I actually took that fallacious case to court and lied to pretend a contract existed when it didn't, which Oracle might not do because the chances are too high that they'd lose, but they can threaten it because that can scare people into paying up. However, if I did call you with such a threat, it would quite clearly make me a bad person, and some of us think that Oracle's being similarly immoral with this little change.
Not really.
This is more like you going to a free concert, for years. No problem.
Then, on the 12th year, you continue to going to the concert - still advertised as "free" - but you go to the bathroom, and do not notice the writing next to the door that says you are now liable for a $200 admission fee, whenever you enter the loo. Whether you pee or not. And whether you watch the band or not.
(in small print, naturally).
This is precisely the trick they pulled off with Java.
Larry says he's building free and open public transportation by bus. People help maintain the bus, people help plan routes, and people build bus stops. Larry says the bus is always free but it travels on some Oracle toll roads that cost $200/person. You'll need to be vary careful about where you get on and off of the bus, or you can pay a $100000 annual bus toll pass.
A more accurate analogy would be:
You ride a bus. You are told the ticket is free. 6 weeks later you get an invoice for $63,000 and a legal notice for improper usage of your bus seating license.
You eat food. Grocer says your onions are $3. As you are serving a nice beef pie to guests the grocer turns up to audit your kitchen and gives you a $100,000 bill because he only licensed the carrots for raw usage. Turning them into a pie requires a completely separate license. It's your fault for not asking to see the terms of sale.
You get your hair cut. Barber cuts off your ear but nothing you can do about it because you signed a contract and the barber has a massive team of lawyers.
With VAT HMRC can go back 20 years.
A company, a friend was the FD, raised a query about VAT, HMRC decided to review, as a result of their review they decided the reasonable interpretation the FD had made was incorrect and so went back 20 years, A period of time where the organisation had had multiple FD’s and senior management changes, and naturally did not have records to challenge whatever HMRC determined they owed, so had to find £100+K HMRC had determined they owed… For a not for profit with a gross turnover of circa £1M (ie. Both VAT’able and non-VAT income) that was a big hit…
I download tools, I try them within their trial period or with whatever functions are disabled and if they do what I want I will purchase or contribute - whatever method is there
If I do not use beyond the trial I see no reason to pay for it and this is what this article is saying that if you use the Extension pack and have removed it you could still be hassled.
That is wrong.
@VoiceOfTruth: I think you're missing the point. This isn't in the news because people object to paying for software they use in production, it's about the three-month trial version being charged-for.
If I represented a company that was prepared to commit engineering time, hardware resources and so on in order to explore if VirtualBox would serve us well by consolidating hardware, I certainly wouldn't expect the software vendor to charge me for the test license. I suppose there's possibly a grey area when it comes to full-load testing: It might need to be put into a 'safe' production environment in order to evaluate it under stress conditions - but by the time I'd got that far, I'd know I was serious, they'd know I was serious and I'm sure a reasonable company would be happy to allow finite testing under suitable terms.
By making an evaluation license chargeable, Oracle's conduct is...questionable...the OP is simply offering a summary view!
Thank you for your considered reply. I'm just thumbing my nose at the knee jerk swear words.
I get it all right. But the change is not hidden. It is clear in the licence FAQ on the VB site:
Does the Oracle VirtualBox PUEL provide for trial use of the Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack software for evaluation purposes?
No, in the past the VirtualBox PUEL provided for 30-day trial use of the VirtualBox Extension Pack software. Trial use has been discontinued with this license.
That is Oracle's prerogative. Some may not like it. I get that. Updating, maintaining, improving, expanding these extensions has costs. Somebody has to pay for it.
Thank you for your considered reply. I'm just thumbing my nose at the knee jerk swear words.
I get it all right.
So you're objection to someone swearing is to deliberately misunderstand them and rile against that???
Next time your baker is looking confused at you when you're telling them about your dodgy knee this is the reason.
He doesn't owe software to anyone, he's more than welcome to put his software up for sale and pursue anyone who tries to evade the license just like any other software vendor. The problem is that his business model is more akin to scammers who target tourists by giving them a "free" bracelet and then demand that they pay for it - that's not a free market, it's a shakedown.
> Can you explain why you think Larry Ellison owes you anything?
That's the wrong question, or a "straw man" as some put it.
I either sell stuff or give stuff away via free downloads. I personally actually do both.
But for the stuff I sell, I make it clear upfront, that we are talking about a sale, while, when I give away via free or trial downloads I do not pull a Darth Vader by changing the fine print sneakily after a few years, so a free download somehow turns into an obligation to pay me money.
Doing so is simply dishonest.
That said, while some of their products and services are really good from a technical standpoint, one should simply not touch any Oracle software or service licensing without a legal bomb disposal squad at hand.
Oracle is not a company one should put any form of legal or commercial trust into.
Make sure you understand every word in the contract and be prepared to stand your ground if Oracle pulls one of their stunts.
>> I make it clear upfront
What part of the license, and the FAQ, on the VB web site, is unclear to you? The FAQ is there to clarify the legalise. It's not in the fine print. It is in the FAQ. Point 5:
Does the Oracle VirtualBox PUEL provide for trial use of the Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack software for evaluation purposes?
No, in the past the VirtualBox PUEL provided for 30-day trial use of the VirtualBox Extension Pack software. Trial use has been discontinued with this license.
That is very clear to me.
Gotta love a guy with selective amnesia. Or, how did that saying go? "You can't convince someone who's paycheck depends on them not being convinced"
By forgetting the history of Oracle and how they "alter the deal" AFTER their product has been used (and legally purchased per the original license), you give the impression that you're an Oracle employee pimping for Oracle.
But I forgot myself - you're just a jerk with an agenda too. Not only about Oracle.
So, just to check, am I presented with that before I can download the software? Is it perhaps buried in a long document telling me that I can't reverse-engineer it, by downloading it I don't own it? Or is it just on another page?
On legitimate software, terms like that are presented before you can use it. For example, you're asked to connect it to the license you bought, which indicates that you need one. It doesn't sneak up on you by masquerading as a free trial which then springs a payment requirement on you later and uses "well you didn't read the FAQ page" when you complain. I don't care how much they charge for this or that they don't offer a trial, but I will object if they use tactics to collect on that which appear tailor-made for getting people to be unaware of it until it was harder to contest it. Legitimate businesses tell me how much it costs to do something before I do it and make it clear what limits apply on free trials they make.
"That is very clear to me."
And yet, for YEARS, they have allowed a "free" 30 day trial by simply downloading the s/w. Yes, the Ts&C's have changed, but they still allow you to download the s/w without an up front payment, only charging for the download after the fact. There are not many commercial operations that "sell" s/w like that. Normally you get to a payment option before the download is authorised, or a key is provided. That's what is known in the trade as "dark patterns", i.e. the users have an expected historical behaviour, but the vendor changes the results of the expected behaviour while "hiding" the changes in a multi-page Ts&Cs document. Technically, it's legal, but it's extremely shitty behaviour used mostly by scammers or companies on the edge of going bust.
The point here is not pay for commercial software no one is pirating this in the scenarios described. The issue is Whilst open source solutions liek KVM, UTM and others exist when it came to convenient desktop software everyone used to use VMWare or Virtual box as they were free and did the job even in a corporate environment of the project was less than three months or you needed a poc you could just use the evaluation. What people object to from Oracle is the bait and switch Java was free under SUN then you only paid if you used for who used then you paid per employees theoretically they can all benefit. Now with Virtual box they changed it so commercial use does not get a free evaluation unless you log in and the buried the change in terms and conditions they know no one reads demanding back pay as if it was used comercially from the moment of download. If a street trades said as meany words as there are in t&Cs very quickly evry time then tweaked the speech and started keeping your wallet or debit card and demanding double or triple the police would shut that down but since Orcale did it with fancy contracts and because regulators in his home market don't tend to push back on this BS it is being allowed to stand.
As I said people don't like being conned
Can you explain why you think Larry Ellison owes you anything?
To be fair, that's not what he said.
He said: Larry Ellison is a cunt. A greedy cunt.
Now, as someone who's in the top 10 richest people in the world he's definitely greedy.
As to the other matter... that's entirely subjective... but I'd suggest that the ire is not to do with 'freeloading' it's to do with the manner in which the licence change has been enacted. (Which, after all, is what the story was about).
Every article relating even tangentially to America or China features a scathing anti American / pro Chinese diatribe from VoiceOfSomething right at the top.
This sudden pivot to defending what some people (including me) see as one of the worst examples of American capitalism is both fascinating and hilarious.
I'm going to need more popcorn for this.
"The fact that Larry Ellison is rich is irrelevant - some people seem to think he should do it for free, which strikes me as jealousy."
Do *what* for free, exactly? Because he sure isn't developing VirtualBox. Developers at Oracle are. And you can bet your ass that none of this money is ending up in *their* bank accounts.
The core product is still free-as-in-speech and could be forked if necessary. (I suspect you'd struggle to find maintainers. As far as I can tell from occasionally browsing the forums, it is nearly all Oracle staff doing the hard work at the moment.) This article only concerns the extension pack which for most users contains nothing useful.
The Brum mess happened because the people defining the RFI/RFQ weren't specific enough in the initial requirement and didn't have proper oversight/understanding of what was being implemented.
While the SI :-
1) perhaps didn't understand the scope
2) didn't lock the scope
3) allowed scope creep
and was probably one of the big SI's who throw people who haven't done any "Consulting" before and therefore don't have the knowledge or experience to push back against Local Authority officials who were possibly quite entrenched in their views and opinions. That isn't to say the officials were "Jobsworths" but where there should have been discussions, the Consultants didn't consult, they rolled over to the Officials views..
Also switching over (details in a post below), I'd started the move a few months back when a Kernel update (that I needed) broke VirtualBox, and weeks later still no sign of as fix (is fixed now), so started the shift to QEMU/KVM. Time to pull my finger out and complete the move, and remove VirtualBox!
I use kvm on Linux. On Windows I don't need kvm because it has Hyper-V. Hyper-V does a perfectly good job of running Windows and Linux guests VMs.
I don't use VirtualBox because it's Oracle and I like to keep maximum distance from anything Oracle-stained. Whether it be VB, MySQL or Java. Sanitation and hygiene is a good preventative strategy.
Guess it's time to bump up the priority of my migration (personal use) of VirtualBox VMs into KVM (Linux is my daily driver). I only really use VMs for testing, so I have virtual versions of my various live environments, such as my desktop OS (Mint), a VR system (Arch), my NAS OS, plus some others just for reference such as Windows 10 and XP (no network), and others for test/evaluation environments (try first, then delete if not used). (These last ones, I'm just going to delete).
I only used VirtualBox as I was on Windows at the time I set things up (a few years back now), and carried on using VirtualBox on Linux, as it was what I was used to (didn't even know about KVM at the time!).
Then VirtualBox just broke after a Kernel update a few months back (all VMs hung on start up), needed the new Kernel to support my then new GFX card (9070XT). So switching back to an old Kernel wasn't really a valid option for me (the issue was fixed eventually, but it took Oracle weeks [*], so bridge burned).
So I started moving to KVM. The only gotcha I've had was that the GUI Virtual Machine Manager (which I was using as I'd not looked at the command line yet), sets up all new machines with a fixed/preallocated size disk (I was used to VirtualBox doing dynamic disks by default). e.g. If you pick 30GiB you get a 30GiB image pre-allocated on disk, and as far as I can tell, there is no option to not do this (in the GUI) and use a dynamic volume instead. Seems they expect most people to use command line to create the VMs (which does allow for dynamic disks) and then only use the GUI afterwards.
Preallocation has it's uses of course, but for me it's just wasting disk space. A quick look into 'qemu-img' command, and turns out you can basically clone the images, and switch off preallocation as you do it [*]. Once done, swap the new clone with the original one, delete the old, and your done.
* Note 1: I get Virtual box from Oracles repo, so it's not that I was on an ancient version waiting for it to trickle down into my distros repo (Mint).
* Note 2: qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O qcow2 -o preallocation=off inputvm.qcow2 outputvm.qcow2
Edit: Forgot to mention, I'd already moved some over, the ones I was actively using, it's just the less used ones I'd not moved yet. Guess I know what I'm doing tonight after making my Shakshuka!
Thanks, although my local 'testing' is more testing/evaluation of features/updates/software etc inside the VMs, and this is all manual, rather than running say repeatable unit tests or similar.
My usage is things like If I want to test out some new functionality on my NAS (actually a microserver running docker), and especially if it's something that might impact the network (DHCP, DNS etc), then I do that in a VM on an isolated (or locked down etc) virtual LAN first, before I do it on the real system.
I do the same for major updates for some of my 'appliances' (such as my media players, that use Kodi), so in the VM first, check to see if anything breaks, before doing it on the tin (snapshots and backups in use of course).
I've recently been using Qemu to test the net installer on Alpine. I have a small text file with just three commands: the first creates the HD, the second runs the installer VM, and the third runs the installed system.
By my second attempt, I was already benefiting from the repetition and reproducibility. If I had used a GUI, I would have got bored or confused (bloody "sequences") by that point and probably given up!
I recognize that you know this, but it is worth spelling it out here, for "reasons" ;)
Useful date to know if you aren't sure whether you might expect a missive from Larry's toe cutters threatening dire consequences.
I haven't bothered with VB since version 5. The only real use I ever had for VB was getting OS/2 warp running in a VM. I think OS/2 used some obscure x86 instruction that trapped under Xen or Kvm but was handled by VB. All pretty ghastly really.
There are several "rings" in x86 architecture and OS/2 is unusual in using more than just 2. Most things use 0 for kernel and 1 for user space. OS/2 uses ring 2 as well and not all hypervisors emulate it correctly (or maybe at all). VBox came from Innotek software, a German company that used to write OS/2 software so they made it work.
Innotek got bought by Sun(?) and then acquired by Oracle which is how Oracle ended up with it. I don't think Oracle bought Innotek directly, I think they acquired it via another purchase but I may be wrong about it being Sun.
It’s for the extension pack.
From my reading of the FAQ on virtualbox.org Oracle are effectively saying: download from here for free, for personal and educational use. If you wish to download for commercial use use the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. However, they are doing it in a way that will catch out the unwary.
The concern has to be that there is no real difference between the two downloads (ie. The licence in the installed software doesn’t say which version you have installed), so given what Oracle have been doing with respect to Java, they will treat downloads to systems they have identified as commercial as being for commercial usage and thus subject to license fees. Hence downloading Virtualbox whilst at work for home usage is now not a good idea.
Personally, I would include in virtualbox.org two download options, with the business use taking the user to the Software Delivery Cloud, thus not only removing ambiguity but also making it very clear the download from virtualbox.org is for educational and personal usage only.
Unless they've changed the main Virtualbox download to bundle the Extension Pack - which as far as I can see, they haven't - then this doesn't make any difference to the status quo.
The rule always was: download *only* Virtualbox (which is GPL). Don't touch the Extension Pack with a bargepole.
"To purchase Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack Enterprise Licenses, visit the Oracle Store, or contact your local sales office. Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack Enterprise Named Workstation User Perpetual licenses must be purchased in an initial quantity of at least 100."
So the post boy goes to Oracle's site and downloads VirtualBox with the extension pack onto their company PC, and somehow the business becomes liable to purchase 100 copies.
The real world does not work like that.
Yes, Oracle really doesn’t want small business and contractors to use Virtualbox.
£39.94 / Named Workstation User Perpetual, plus £8.79 for Software Update License and Support (First Year) isn’t unreasonable, just that you can’t buy it…
For context: Oracle VirtualBox Enterprise (i.e., Extension Pack) is priced at $50 per user. So why not stop whining; just pay for it?
Well… Oracle imposes a minimum of 100 users per region, per distinct download. That means a handful of developers, scattered globally and downloading occasional updates over a few years, can end up triggering a six-figure bill. Then, aggressive sales teams in overseas call centers begin relentlessly contacting company executives, alleging that invaluable intellectual property is being pirated.
As with Java, the issue is not IP infringement. It is the racket and the offensive disconnection of value from price.
By reading this comment, you agree to pay me $50. You even had notice, in the big, bold title that you agreed to this.
Now pay up, please.
Unless the whole web and internet and courts and literally everyone and everything has decided already that this is nonsense. Sorry, Oracle -- it doesn't work that way. Clicking a link, performing a download, is not an agreement to whatever terms are dictated. Unless I've missed something rather profound recently. No signed agreement? No sale.
Well...
There are car parking court cases where people have been fined, where the signs cant be read without entering the car park and so incurring a charge ... Basically, whilst the signs have to be visible they don't have to be readable before you incur a charge...
If Oracle shows you the Terms in a usable format before you download the code, then they may be in a reasonable position to claim consent, but if that's only shown during install it's past the point where you could reasonably evaluate the Terms, which would invalidate their claim to your consent.
Good luck billing me. I used a throw-away email address and fake info to access my VMWare 'evaluation' install... and after 60 days I junked it and went with a competitor. I got Oracle bumf on the throw-away email for a while, plus some spam, when the only place I had ever used that account was to get the download. I killed the account. Should Larry send a bill to that email, it will bounce, the email address doen't exist anymore, and the physical address listed is actually that of a motel on US 192 in Melbourne, Fl, where I once stayed one night too many.
