Nearly 3 out of 4 Oracle Java users say they've been audited in the past 3 years
- Reference: 1752596179
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/07/15/oracle_java_users_audited/
- Source link:
Deal to 'save' UK colleges £45M in Oracle Java licensing fees followed audit requests [1]READ MORE
At the same time, nearly eight out of 10 Oracle Java users said they had migrated, or planned to shift, to open source Java to try to avoid the risk and high costs of the dominant vendor's development and runtime environments.
Oracle introduced a paid subscription for Java in September 2018, and in January 2023, it [2]decided to switch its pricing model to per employee rather than per user, creating a steep price hike for many users. In July 2023, Gartner recorded users experiencing [3]price increases of between two and five times when they switched to the new licensing model.
Two years later, the survey conducted by market research firm Dimensional Research showed only 14 percent of Oracle Java users intended to stick with the vendor's subscription model.
The [4]research was commissioned and authored by ITAM Forum, an independent group representing IT asset managers and Azul, which provides open source Java products and services.
[5]
It points out that Oracle introduced four licensing and pricing policy changes between 2020 and 2023. "To avoid Oracle's price hikes, Java customers must upgrade to the latest Java version every three years to continue receiving free support under the Oracle Java SE Universal Subscription or otherwise migrate to an open-source alternative," the report said.
[6]'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit
[7]Oracle cuts support for South African energy biz Eskom in long-running licensing dispute
[8]Only 1 in 10 Oracle Java users want to stay with Big Red
[9]Oracle's Java price hikes push CIOs to brew new licensing strategies
The survey also revealed the cost of audits. While vendors have the right to charge for copyright-protected software, 25 percent of survey participants said complex software configurations make tracking application usage more difficult. At the same time, 29 percent of ITAM professionals reported that their organizations struggle to manage this information, especially when tracking software usage across teams or between on-premises and cloud platforms. More than half of survey participants (54 percent) said their organization spent more than $100,000 a year on resolving licensing non-compliance issues, while 27 percent said the figure was more than $500,000 a year.
"The results highlight a fundamental mismatch between the complexity of modern software licensing and the resources organizations rely on to effectively manage software compliance," said Martin Thompson, founder of the ITAM Forum.
[10]
He added that ITAM professionals need the resources and executive buy-in to ensure compliance and successful license management.
Oracle has been offered the opportunity to respond to the survey. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/20/uk_colleges_45m_saving_deal/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/oracle_java_licensing_change/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/24/oracle_java_license_terms/
[4] https://www.azul.com/what-keeps-itam-sam-leaders-up-at-night/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aHbPcTUqSuU4e1E_5JISEwAAAYo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/06/oracle_audits/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/19/oracle_eskom_support/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/29/only_one_in_ten_oracle/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/02/oracle_java_cio/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aHbPcTUqSuU4e1E_5JISEwAAAYo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Lube
Oh dear sweet summer child...
Oracle will charge you merely to produce the QUOTE for the lube. The lube itself... will not be cheap.
Free Libre Open Source Java
It always puzzles me why a company decides to pay Oracle loads of money, to be abused for license compliance on top, for the use of software they can use as they see fit for no money.
If they want support, they can hire consultants or companies that will do that for a fraction of Oracle's fees and audit costs without the insults.
Somehow, they must get more out of Oracle than out of FLOSS. Or is it simply masochism?
Re: Free Libre Open Source Java
I imagine it's complicated if you're still using an Oracle database. They have armies of layers to maximize product performance.
Re: Free Libre Open Source Java
I imagine it's complicated if you're still using an Oracle database. They have armies of layers lawyers to maximize their product performance profits.
FTFY
Re: Free Libre Open Source Java
I once heard it referred to as "The Arsehole Pipeline".
Oracle have a lot of sales staff who, it is hypothesised, having made money selling the stuff then go into consultancy to tell people how to use it better. (For a very low given value of better.)
They know Oracle better than other options, so constantly recommend it. And companies tend to think that at the price they're charging, they must know what they're talking about.
I've seen ex-Oracle people push Oracle as the database for solutions, stating no other database will possibly work, even when the solution vendor's own documentation said otherwise. After calling my colleagues liars, they were confronted with the documentation - at which point they then tried the "alternatives will have abysmal performance" line. It was noted that the maximum users would be ~1000 people, and you'd be unlucky to have more than 100 concurrent operations in that scenario, which SQL Server would handle just fine. Yet it was still a fight to get them to acknowledge that SQL Server could even work.
Given that the organisation already had SQL Server expertise, experience, and infrastructure it should have been the natural selection. Instead the ex-Oracle consultant made it a hellish fight.
And guess what? Yes, that's right, the solution ran just fine on SQL Server, no problems at all.
But if the IT department hadn't pushed back, then they'd have suddenly acquired a very expensive Oracle system.
I've heard the same from a number of people over the years. There's just a pipeline of the buggers somewhere, spewed out into the world to put the con in consulting...
Re: Free Libre Open Source Java
Well that neatly explains Birmingham city council's encounter with oracle.... and we know how much that cost them
Oracle's use of confusing licensing intentional and malicious
> "The results highlight a fundamental mismatch between the complexity of modern software licensing and the resources organizations rely on to effectively manage software compliance"
That's not an oversight, that's the entirely intentional point. You're *not meant* to be 100% confident that your setup is compliant and that you haven't missed *any* of the countless areas where your organisation may have infringed the intentionally complex licensing terms.
That way, Oracle's sales can use the threat of an audit and the implied "nice setup you have here, be a pity if anything non-compliant were to be found" to coerce companies into signing up for more of their obscenely overpriced products and services.
Lube
Do Oracle use lube or is it extra?