Oracle's compliance cops now include Java in license audits
- Reference: 1647946926
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/03/22/oracle_starts_to_include_java/
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Big Red first introduced two new licensing models for its commercial Java platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), in April 2019 when it began charging license fees for previously free Java. This requires users to purchase an annual subscription for commercial Java SE products in order to receive patches and updates.
By September 2021, when Oracle released Java 17, it began to offer a no-fee license with free quarterly updates for three years — but only for that iteration; not earlier releases such as Java 7, 8 and 11.
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So far, Oracle has taken a soft approach to audit Java, via its sales teams. But the omnipresent software development kit has been making its way into official Oracle audits — which many users view with some trepidation — since the beginning of this year, say our sources.
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Craig Guarente, Palisade Compliance founder and CEO said his team had started seeing letters from Oracle licence management services (LMS) specifically asking for information about Java, with some customers unprepared to understand the compliance of their licensing estate.
“There's plenty of confusion out there in the market. One misconception people have is that using an older version of Java doesn’t require a license. In fact, even if you're using the older versions, if you're downloading patches and updates from Oracle's website, then you need a support license for that. Customers are getting worried enough that they're just writing big checks,” he said.
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Oracle is also using auditing in other areas, such as databases, to access information about Java usage. “Companies declaring 5,000 database licenses might get a knock on the door from a Java sales rep, saying, ‘We heard your environment is 5,000 CPUs: we don't see Java licenses for that' You can be giving Oracle information one week in one area that's being used in a completely different area,” he said.
There are two crucial differences with managing licensing of Java compared with Oracle’s other products. While databases and other on-prem software may come with a perpetual licence, Java requires a subscription. At the same time, defending audits for databases, middleware or applications requires customers to start from their contracts, whereas Java can be so widespread, it might require a technical analysis of the IT estates, Guarente said.
Earlier this year, software asset management company Anglepoint said it had spotted official Java audits coming from Oracle. Scott Jensen, Oracle practice lead, told The Register there was a group of organizations that had “wholly ignored the topic altogether” of Java licensing, creating risks for their employers.
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“You are susceptible and vulnerable to any number of risks, whether it be the financial risks due to license shortfalls, but even security risks for that matter,” he said.
Among organizations better prepared for the Oracle auditing process, some were seeking open-source alternatives, Jensen said. “I've seen Fortune 500 organizations who basically uninstall Java overnight and then said, ‘Well, we'll see what breaks and, and if it breaks, then we'll put Java back’. But many organizations have sort of done a rip and replace taking out Oracle Java and replacing it with Open JDK or other equivalents."
A Gartner research note says users require a commercial subscription to obtain critical updates for Oracle Java SE 7, Java SE 8 and Java SE 11. It recommends organisations evaluate their options by assessing the appetite to migrate to Java 17 or to switch to a third-party Java product.
[6]Openness of Oracle licensing and audit tools questioned
[7]DBAs massively over-provision Oracle to protect themselves: Microsoft
[8]Oracle creates new form of free Solaris
[9]Fujitsu confirms end date for mainframe and Unix systems
Anne Thomas, Gartner veep and distinguished analyst, said that Oracle’s view on virtualization was also inflating Java subscriptions. As with databases, organisations have to license for every processor without partitioning the virtual environment and only to licensing in one cluster, for example.
“That's why these big companies are dealing with an annual price point of more than $10m,” she said.
Another source of confusion was that Java subscriptions are required for the runtime environment, not the software development kit, she said.
“There were people who didn't really understand it. Part of it might have been the difference between the Java Development Kit in the Java Runtime Environment: Oracle's product is called Oracle JDK, even though it is a runtime. Therefore a lot of people didn't realize that the licensing actually applied to the runtime,” she told The Register .
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/17/openness_of_oracle_licensing/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/07/oracle_cloud_migration_microsoft_advice/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/04/solaris_common_build_environments_free/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/25/fujitsu_signposts_the_end_for/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Confusing mess
Absolutely!
20 years ago I was writing Java applets for websites (back when that was an actual thing). Even then I found Java's multiple file I/O handling ridiculously complex compared to plain C. It always seemed that whatever it was that I wanted to do with it was never handled by a single class in a simple manner. I pretty much abandoned the whole mess around 2001. Given the greedy way Oracle acts nowadays I'm glad I have very little to do with anything they make*.
* The one exception is VirtualBox, which I'd been using before even Sun took it over, but I am prepared to lose that should the need arise.
Re: Confusing mess
I used VirtualBox until it started breaking sound and microphone support *every* *single* release followed by a point release that fixed it then another point release that broke it again, so I switched to QEMU-KVM and haven't looked back since.
Open source isn't any better with names. OpenJDK became Adoptium then Eclipse Temurin. (whot the f**k is that?)
Re: Confusing mess
And that is "entirely as it should be" according to Oracle licensing conditions.
You are not supposed to understand the scheme. You only need to pay the bill as presented by the Oracle auditors including the usual fine because you surely did not pay enough last time.
Some advice: do not use Oracle products if you can prevent it in any way. Oracle has even more lawyers than IBM and you will always lose the argument, even when you are within your rights, by shear cost of defending any claim.
Re: Confusing mess
We actively got rid of Oracle everything, including Java, MySQL etc, and a good part of the reason was their extortion. Business software is only of value to a business if it enables more revenue than it costs. Organisations are not operated to feed Larry. We are not using VirtualBox but do miss it and I would love to find an equivalent replacement.
Re: Confusing mess
Some advice: do not use Oracle products if you can prevent it in any way.
Sound advice.
Very much so ...
O.
Re: Confusing mess
Agreed. I think they should adopt the Linux method: Ogling Ostrich should be the next version.
Re: Confusing mess
"Lack of compatibility between versions"
That's not true. The only changes to the public API that have been made which aren't backwards compatible are:
- Switching the event model used for GUI programming (back in 1997).
- Removal of the incomplete CORBA classes and interfaces.
The only other changes have been to classes in the sun.com packages, which were not part of the public API. Java provides abstractions that support cross platform coding, but lazy coders don't learn them - so it's hardly Java at fault when coders do crap like assuming a directory called "C:\temp" exists then wondering why their code fails on non-Windows systems.
Hope this kills Java quickly enough...
... and its imitations follow....
Re: Hope this kills Java quickly enough...
I would LOVE to be rid of Java... except replacements like Kotlin suck even worse.
Larry, the Putin of the biz software world!
Before you say I've gone too far, this is a company that enables paid for features out of the box and then expects you to read the manuals to find them and disable them before you get caught. They get one free year of paid up feature usage and then tell you what you accidentally left switched on out of the box.
Confusing mess
Java is a nice enough language, but the rest of it is a confusing mess. Lack of compatibility between versions, confusing version numbers and alphabet soup mess of products.