Gartner: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms
- Reference: 1676917806
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/02/20/gartner_java_licensing/
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In a research paper, the global tech analyst said both existing Oracle customers and those with no Oracle products were being targeted by Big Red after the software and hardware vendor introduced the new Java SE Universal Subscription.
In January, Oracle – which acquired Java with its $7.4 billion buyout of Sun Microsystems in 2009 – announced the new Java SE Universal Subscription as "a simple, low-cost monthly subscription that includes Java SE Licensing and Support for use on Desktops, Servers or Cloud deployments."
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"Customers of the legacy Java SE Subscription products continue to receive all the original benefits and may renew under their existing terms and metrics," it said.
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However, licensing compliance experts warned Oracle would pressure users onto the new model as time goes by. Some customers working with Palisade Compliance might see a tenfold increase in licensing Java, while an analysis on several other companies showed between 2x to 4x price increases, founder and CEO Craig Guarente [4]told The Register .
Gartner agreed that Oracle "has a history of changing offerings and metrics across its entire product portfolio and generally not permitting long-term renewal and/or modifications to the legacy offerings."
[5]Experts warn of steep increase in Java costs under changes to Oracle license regime
[6]C++ zooms past Java in programming popularity contest
[7]NSA urges orgs to use memory-safe programming languages
[8]Meta met a programming language it likes better than Java
The analyst said Oracle is targeting organizations on Java compliance and deploying its global Java licensing team to enforce, according to statements from its clients.
"While Oracle states that the new Java SE Universal Subscription will remove the need to count desktops and servers, it is not yet clear if the compliance-targeting will decrease. Given the broad scope of the employee metric, sourcing, product and vendor management leaders may need to justify employee counts to Oracle, just as they've been required to justify Named User Plus/Desktop quantities," Gartner said in [9]a research note .
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Gartner also said that while the 50,000 processors implied in the new licensing terms "seems generous," it is not yet clear if Oracle's use of the Oracle Partitioning Policy to enforce licensing requirements in soft-partitioned and virtualized environments come to an end.
"Oracle has emphasized strong growth rates in Java, and Gartner believes this is an incentive for continued monetization of Java compliance," Gartner said.
In Gartner's calculations of the cost of the Java licensing changes, the worst-case scenarios see costs more than double, while the best case might see costs fall by 94 percent.
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The Register has asked Oracle to respond. ®
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[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/oracle_java_licensing_change/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/oracle_java_licensing_change/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/10/java_slips_behind_c_in/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/11/nsa_urges_orgs_to_use/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/25/meta_java_kotlin/
[9] https://www.gartner.com/doc/4090899
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[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms
> wean your company off any of Oracle's proprietary products
That's why they are going after Java.
You dump Oracle but you use Virtualbox or the next bit of infrastructure Oracle buy
Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms
Hmm.
I choose to run a few VMs in VirtualBox (strictly for personal use) on Linux for a couple of reasons.
1) It virtualises the guest machine's display and shows it in a host system's window.
2) It continues to work when you upgrade from one (free beer) version to another.
I dunno how things are now, but going back the free version of VMWare suddenly changed to rendering the guest display in a Java applet embedded in a web page, which was deeply unwelcome, and Hyper-V only gave you any kind of display via RDP.
Should the free version of VirtualBox suddenly cease to exist then I dare say that something like KVM will step in to the void.
-A.
Re: Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms
> Gartner is warning that Oracle "actively targets organizations" on Java compliance
Surely it's "compliancy"?
-A.
Is there still _any_ reason to run Oracle-branded Java?
Old, non-portable Java 8 code can stay on old, license-free Java versions.
New stuff under active development can be run on OpenJDK/Temurin or derivates.
What use cases of Java do really require considering this Oracle-extortion scheme?
...showed between 2x to 4x price increases...
That is what you will pay now and it excludes the exorbitant cost of lawyers when dealing with oracle.
Never deal with the devil. You will always burn in the process. Time to invest in porting to openjdk and friends, which will be massively cheaper than continuation with the devil.
Oracle really is the worst.
Oracle seems to be on a quest to make Microsoft look good, even they aren't this craven. Hell, Microsoft gives away the dotnet compiler, library and even the VSCode editor including the source code.
Mark of the devil
Make sure you never have a file named .oracle_jre_usage
Some old apps bundle an Oracle JRE that will pop up a security warning and ask to update to the latest ($$$$$) version. Kill it all with fire to be safe.
Oracle is targeting users on Java compliance after new licensing terms
This comes across as just more of Oracle's usual snakery* - customer compliance audits that invariably find in favour of Oracle.
The moral of this tale is to wean your company off any of Oracle's proprietary products at the earliest opportunity because one day they will come for you too.
*Definition:
The act of doing something shady. To be conniving, plotting, evil-doing. Trying to screw people. To act like a snake in the grass, e.g. Larry was up to his usual snakery.